Robert Hollingworth founded I Fagiolini in 1986. Directing this group has taken up most of his time since but he has conducted other ensembles, most recently the Academy of Ancient Music, BBC Singers, Norddeutscher Rundfunk Chor, Nederlands Kamerkoor and National Chamber Choir of Ireland. In 2004 he co-created Faust, a groundbreaking new music-theatre project with Henk Schut, acclaimed by the Dutch press and set in startling venues such as a vast ship-building yard in Amsterdam, a disused railway station and Bremen Cathedral. He directed Opera Zuid’s underground production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Rufus Müller in the title role, and conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra in a project with Anne Dudley, the Academy-Award-winning composer behind The Full Monty (no relation). He founded the spectacular Islington Winter Music Festival, writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio, and has worked on a number of films, including Quills. Robert Hollingworth is an Artistic Advisor to the York Early Music Festival and the Trigonale Festival in Austria, and claims Monteverdi and Monty Python as equal influences