Andrew Parrott is a multifaceted musician, conductor, music-director and theoretician whose activity spans a wide repertoire from the 14th to the 21st century. He began his career as assistant to the illustrious English composer Michael Tippet, under whose influence he devoted his work to modern as well as to early music.

Parrott became famous for a production of over fifty pioneering records of the pre-classical repertoire from Machaut to Handel with the London Taverner Consort, which he had founded in 1973.  He later became music director and chief conductor of the London Mozart Players and since 2002 he has occupied the same position with Collegium New-York, an ensemble of players on historical instruments. With it he performed important projects including performances of works by Bach, Handel, Rameau, Biber and Monteverdi.

He has conducted various orchestras in Europe, Canada and Japan, performing operas and symphonic works by Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Sibelius. He also issued CDs of music by modern composers such as Vladimir Godard and Arvo Pärt.
As theoretician of musical interpretation, he published important articles on Monteverdi, Purcell and Bach and is co-editor of the New Oxford Book of Carols (1992). But of special importance is his book The Essential Bach Choir (2000) where he develops the new approach to the performance of Bach’s choral works.
Parrott proves that these compositions were all performed by a small group of singers that often consisted of no more than one singer per part. Bach built his choral style on this basis and only small and well trained vocal ensembles are able to express Bach’s transparent and agile texture with the greatest fidelity.
Since 2007 Andrew Parrott has been Honorary Conductor of Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra.