Andrew Watts
Baroque bassoonist and multi-instrumentalist Andrew (Andy) Watts is a founder member and Associate Principal Bassoon of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and founder and director of folk/early music group The Carnival Band. 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. 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. He is currently engaged on a major research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for which The Carnival Band will record the 100 most popular broadside ballads of the 17th century.