Aside from his award-winning work with I Fagiolini, Robert is a conductor, broadcaster, educator, editor, Monteverdi specialist and festival director. Robert founded “musical shapeshifters” I Fagiolini in 1986 to share his love of vocal music – the group will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2026 and has performed its signature projects around the world on stage, online, on radio and tv “following [his] giddy, eclectic imagination wherever it leads” (The Spectator). Robert has spent much of his life considering how audiences receive music, instead of just how performers want to deliver it.
Upcoming conducting highlights include multiple world premiere album releases of large-scale, multi-choir Benevoli Masses with I Fagiolini, and directing territory premieres of the same with choirs and orchestras including RIAS Kammerchor. Robert was musical director of Shobana Jeyasingh Dance’s Monteverdi/Roustom production Clorinda Agonistes, with tenor Ed Lyon. He has conducted orchestras including the English Concert, Academy of Ancient Music, BBC Concert Orchestra, Irish Baroque Orchestra and directed some of the world’s finest chamber choirs including Accentus, NDR Chor, RIAS Kammerchor (Berlin), Netherlands Chamber Choir, National Chamber Choir of Ireland, BBC Singers, Danish National Vocal Ensemble and Capella Cracoviensis.
Robert is Artistic Director for Stour Music Festival and Reader in Music at the University of York where he directs two choirs and the UK’s only MA in Solo-Voice Ensemble Singing. Aside from recording wor with I Fagiolini, Robert is co-director for De Profundis’ Morales Project in collaboration with Eamonn Dougan. The project is an ambitious 12-album series of Morales’ complete Masses and Magnificats for Hyperion, the first of which won a Diapason d’Or – Gramophone notes “We can feel confident that the future of this bold project is in the best possible hands”.
Robert has written and presented programmes on BBC Radio 3 and more recently created over 30 episodes of the YouTube choral series SingTheScore as well as founding and co-presenting the UK’s top choral podcast series, Choral Chihuahua, with Eamonn Dougan and Nicholas Mulroy, now in its sixth season. Robert Hollingworth is managed worldwide by Percius. www.percius.co.uk