Andrew Parrott (Conductor)
Born: March 10, 1947 - Walsall, England
The English conductor, Andrew Parrott, studied at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, and later at the University of Oxford, where he pursued research into the performing practices of 16th and 17th century music (BA 1969; postgraduate research 1969-c. 76).

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.

Andrew 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, featuring two motets and the Trauer-Ode (BWV 198) 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. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, was released in March 1999. In October, the label released Out of the Night 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. In April 2000 Sony Classical released a disc of Gesualdo's Tenebrae, to coincide with the observance of the Catholic Church’s most sacred holidays. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.