Adrian Butterfield

violin

Adrian Butterfield has appeared on numerous stages across the world as a violinist, director and conductor who specialises in performing a wide range of music on period instruments.

 He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Festival, Associate Director of the London Handel Festival and regularly directs the London Handel Orchestra and London Handel Players as well as working as a guest soloist and director in Europe and North America. He has also led the gut-string quartet, The Revolutionary Drawing Room, for over 25 years.

The London Handel Players made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014 and appear regularly at Wigmore Hall. Their latest Handel recording, ‘Total Eclipse’, was released on Somm Recordings in October ’23. Adrian’s world premiere complete recordings of Leclair’s first three Books of violin sonatas have appeared on Naxos Records and his latest solo recording, of Bach’s sonatas with Silas Wollston, was released by Somm Records in early 2023.

He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London, gives masterclasses in Europe and North America and has taught on courses in the UK, Croatia and Serbia.

He has conducted all the major choral works of Bach and numerous operas and oratorios by Handel and his contemporaries and has directed ensembles such as the London Mozart Players, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the European Union Chamber Orchestra and the Croatian Baroque Ensemble.

Plans for the 2023/24 season include directing programmes of Bach Cantatas and multi-instrument concertos at Wigmore Hall, Handel’s Chapel Royal Anthems at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy in London, Handel’s Orlando at UK Festivals, Bach’s St. John Passion at the Tilford Bach Festival and Bach concertos at the Toronto Bach Festival.

'...and all with a neat dexterity and range of colouristic detail to the shaping that suggests that for Butterfield it's all as effortless as falling off a log.' – Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone Magazine, June 2022