Andrew Parrott

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Andrew Haden Parrott (born 10 March 1947) is a British conductor, scholar and writer, best known for his involvement with ‘early’ music and, in particular, with historical performance practices.

Following a degree in music and postgraduate research at the University of Oxford – where he conducted Schola Cantorum of Oxford – Parrott founded the Taverner Choir, Consort & Players in 1973, which celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2023.^[1] Under his direction these groups developed and extended their repertoire to become a major performing and recording presence in the classical music world of the 1980s and ’90s.

Parrott succeeded John Beckett as conductor of Michael Morrow’s Musica Reservata in 1973, and from 1999 to 2006 he was music director of London Mozart Players, and from 2001 to 2010 of New York Collegium (New York City). Since 2006 he has served as honorary conductor of Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra.

As a freelance musician, Andrew Parrott has worked with a variety of musical forces, from mixed ‘Renaissance’ ensembles to period-instrument ‘baroque’ and ‘classical’ orchestras, from mainstream chamber and symphony orchestras to ‘new music’ configurations, and in opera. With Ronald Brautigam as soloist, he has recorded all of Beethoven’s music for piano and orchestra (for Sweden’s BIS Records label),^[2] and he conducted both the premiere and the first recording of Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera (with Kent Opera and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, respectively).^[3][4] Also, in Slovakia, he has recorded major works by living composer Vladimír Godár.^[5]