Biography —

Adrian Butterfield has gained an international reputation as a violinist, director and conductor who specialises in period performance of music from about 1600-1900. He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Festival and was Associate Music Director of the London Handel Festival for 25 years. He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London and teaches on numerous baroque music courses.

He leads and directs The London Handel Players and The Revolutionary Drawing Room,  and conducted The London Handel Orchestra for many years as well as being invited to work as a guest with many other ensembles in Europe and North America.

His baroque ensemble, The London Handel Players, performs regularly at Wigmore Hall and throughout Europe and North America and made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014. They have made a number of recordings of music by Handel and his contemporaries for Somm Records. Adrian’s world premiere complete recordings of Leclair’s first three Books of violin sonatas have been released to great acclaim in 2022. His latest solo recording, of the first volume of Leclair’s Violin Concertos, was released by Somm in the autumn of 2025 and LHP’s recent Telemann disc, of his Quadri of 1730, was released on the same label in March ‘25.

He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London, gives masterclasses in Europe and North America and has taught at Dartington, at the Belgrade Baroque Academy and Pro Corda Baroque. He directed an annual baroque project with the Southbank Sinfonia for 20 years.

Adrian has conducted all the major choral works of Bach and about a hundred of his cantatas as well as numerous works by Handel (Messiah, Esther, Alcina, Orlando, Parnasso in Festa, Israel in Egypt, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Resurrezione, Chandos Anthems) and their contemporaries. He has directed ensembles such as the London Mozart Players, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the European Union Chamber Orchestra and the Croatian Baroque Ensemble.

Highlights of the 26/27 season features the upcoming release of the London Handel Players’ Telemann Paris Quartets, Vol 2 ‘The Nouveaux Quatours’ with SOMM Recordings.