Andy Watts

About Andy Watts

Multi-instrumentalist Andy Watts is leader of the folk/early music group The Carnival Band and for many years was principal bassoon with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. After graduating from Cambridge University he studied bassoon and recorder at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and baroque bassoon at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. In the 1980s he was musical director for touring theatre company The Medieval Players and went on to play with a number of renaissance music ensembles and with many of London's period instrument orchestras including The Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, The London Classical Players and The English Baroque Soloists. He made several guest appearances with Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus in Vienna and Graz. In 1984 he formed The Carnival Band playing a mixture of early, traditional and world music and with them has toured as far afield as Sudan, the Gulf States and Japan. The band has won acclaim for their recordings and live performances with folk-rock star Maddy Prior. A keen music educator working with children and adults of all ages, Andy is professor of baroque and classical bassoon at the Royal Academy of Music and a visiting teacher at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He is a trustee of Severn Arts, the lead organisation of Worcestershire’s Music Education Hub. Andy plays baroque bassoon, recorder, whistle, clarinet, shawm, dulcian, and medieval bagpipes.