Sandy Burnett

Biography

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile musicians and music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing.

With the Chiswick Chamber Orchestra and West London Baroque Consort he has directed a complete performing cycle of Bach’s sacred cantatas, the other major sacred works and the Brandenburg Concertos, leading to further invitations to direct this repertoire in Oxford and St Andrews in the UK and at the Valletta Baroque Festival in Malta.

He has conceived and conducted a William Byrd choral Discovery weekend with the Monteverdi Project in Valletta, supported by the British Council, and has conducted the Southbank Sinfonia and student orchestras at the RAM and Guildhall School of Music in immersive educational projects. Placing great music in the context of its time, both for performers and audiences, is a central part of his practise.

After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as a leading theatre music director, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on the UK’s classical music station BBC Radio 3. Unusually co-inhabiting the worlds of both classical and improvising music, Sandy is also a first-call jazz double bass player.

Since 2013 he has devised and led cultural holidays all over the world; he is an accredited Arts Society lecturer, runs an online classical music appreciation Listening Club and is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music.