John Holloway

John Holloway (born 19 July 1948) is a British baroque violinist and conductor, currently based in Bern, Switzerland . He is a pioneer of the early music movement.

Holloway was born in Neath, Wales, and studied in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After initial engagements, including at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and at the English Chamber Orchestra, he became manager and concertmaster of the Kent Opera Orchestra in the 1970s. After an encounter with Sigiswald Kuijken in 1972, he started playing the Baroque violin and gained a reputation as violinist, teacher and conductor in the field of historically informed performance.

In 1977 he became the concertmaster of Andrew Parrott’s Taverner Players, and in 1978 of Sir Roger Norrington's London Classical Players. He has been the concertmaster for such distinguished directors as Ivor Bolton, Frans Bruggen, William Christie, Simon Halsey, Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, Rudolf Lutz, Jean-Claude Malgoire and Nicholas McGegan.

Holloway has taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and the Early Music Institute of Indiana University in Bloomington. He has given classes and led workshops in most European countries, as well as in Canada, Columbia, Korea, New Zealand and the USA. In 2004, he was Regents’ Lecturer at UC Berkeley. From 1999 to 2014 he was Professor for Violin and Chamber Music at the in Dresden.

Between 2003 and 2005 Holloway served as musical director of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, His CD recordings of the Rosary Sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Biber and of Sonatas Opus 5 of Jean-Marie Leclair won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik ("German Record Critics' Award"). He has recorded Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin (for ECM). His recording for ECM of Dowland “Lachrimae Pavans” and other 17th century music won an ICMA (International Classical Music Award) in 2014. In addition to 2 recordings of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (with Jean-Claude Malgoire, and with Andrew Parrott) and L'estro Armonico (with The Academy of Ancient Music), he recorded the complete chamber works of Georg Friedrich Händel with the ensemble L'Ecole d'Orphée he founded in 1975. (See also the discography on his website JohnHolloway.org)