Andrew Parrott has been a major fixture of the world’s musical life for the past twenty years, both as a widely respected scholar and as an internationally known conductor. He has worked as a tireless champion of the early music movement in his writings and on the podium, and his efforts have yielded results described as virtually faultless.

Parrott is perhaps best known as music director and conductor of the Taverner Choir, Consort and Players, a group of singers and instrumentalists he formed in response to an invitation to the Bath Festival by Sir Michael Tippett in 1973. Specialising in the music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the ensemble has become one of the foremost performing groups of early music active today. Under exclusive contract with Sony Classical, they made their label debut with Heart’s Solace (SK 60155), featuring two motets and the Trauer-Ode by J. S. Bach. Their second release was a collection of Christmas music from the Middle Ages to the present, titled The Promise of Ages: A Christmas Collection (SK 60713). Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (SK 62993), was released in March 1999. In October, the label released Out of the Night (SK 61753), an album of music by two of today’s best-known and most-performed classical composers, the Estonian Arvo Pärt and the Englishman John Tavener.

Shortly to be released on the label in April 2000 is a disc of Gesualdo's Tenebrae (SK 62977), to coincide with the observance of the Catholic Church’s most sacred holidays.

Parrott also maintains an international conducting schedule, both in opera houses and on the symphony stage. From September 2000, Parrott will become Music Director of the London Mozart Players. In past seasons he has performed in Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and the United States.

Although his specialty is vocal music of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and more generally early music, Parrott is equally comfortable with music of later eras. He worked for several years as an assistant to Sir Michael Tippett, and he has conducted major works by Britten, Henze, Nono, Stravinsky, Tippett, and Varèse, as well as premiered works by Vladimír Godár and Judith Weir.

Parrott is a well-known musicologist who combines scholarship and performance as much as possible. A specialist in the performance practice of early music, he is also co-editor of the New Oxford Book of Carols.