John Butt is musical director of Dunedin Consort and a Principal Artist with the OAE. He was Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow, 2001-24, where he continues as an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow. His career began with his appointment as organ scholar at King’s College Cambridge, and this led to various academic and performing posts (including at UC Berkeley, 1989-97). His work, as both musician and scholar, gravitates towards music of the 17^th-18th centuries, but he is also concerned with the implications of the past in our present culture. Author of five monographs centering around Bach, the baroque and the concepts of historical performance practice, his recent work concerns music and modernity, listening cultures, and music and film.  

Having made 11 recordings on organ and harpsichord for Harmonia Mundi (including the complete organ works of Elgar), he has made 19 recordings for Linn Records. Highlights, directing Dunedin, include the Gramophone award-winning recordings of Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem, together with recordings of Bach’s Passions, Mass, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio and Brandenburg Concertos and Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers. A recording of Bach cantatas won a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2021. Further recordings, of Bach Orchestral Suites and Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, were released 2022-23.

With Dunedin and other orchestras he has made multiple appearances at the BBC Proms, London, and the Edinburgh International Festival. International tours have covered much of Europe, the US, Mexico and Colombia. As guest conductor he has worked with many period orchestras and symphony orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Stavanger Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, CBSO, Academy of St Martin’s in the Fields, Hallé Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  

Since winning the W.H.Scheide prize for his first book, he has received the Dent Medal of the RMA together with the RAM/Kohn Foundation’s Bach Prize. He has been awarded an OBE, FBA and FRSE, together with the medal of the Royal College of Organists.