Andrew Watts is currently principal bassoon with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and one of the leading players of baroque and classical bassoon in the UK. He began his early music career by playing medieval and renaissance instruments at primary school in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire and took up the modern bassoon at the age of sixteen. He studied history and music at Cambridge University, bassoon at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and baroque bassoon at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Starting his professional career as a costumed minstrel in a Mayfair restaurant, recorder teacher for the ILEA and musical director of a touring theatre company (The Medieval Players) he went on to play with a number of renaissance music ensembles and with most of London's period instrument orchestras. He has also played for Nikolaus Harnoncourt with Concentus Musicus in Vienna.

He formed The Carnival Band playing a mixture of early, folk and world music and with them has toured as far afield as Sudan and the Arabian Gulf. He is a keen music educator working with children and adults of all ages, has written two workshop packs for Keystage 3 and is professor of baroque and classical bassoon at the Royal Academy of Music and visiting tutor at Birmingham University.

Andrew is a workshop leader for artworcs.

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