Margaret Faultless plays violin here at OAE, as well as being one of our talented leaders.

Margaret (or Maggie, because we’re all friends here) is a very versatile performer, playing music from the Renaissance to the present day. Still, she’s best known as an eighteenth-century repertoire interpreter and a historical performance practice specialist. That’s why she suits us – a period instrument orchestra – so well.

As a warm-up to the OAE (you might say) for twelve years Maggie led the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Koopman, as concertmaster and soloist in their ten-year project to perform and record J.S Bach’s Cantatas.

A graduate of Clare College, Cambridge, she is also Director of Performance Studies at the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, Artistic Director of the University Collegium Musicum, a Bye-Fellow of Girton College, and Musician in Residence at St John’s College. She is an Honorary Fellow of Birmingham Conservatoire and Head of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music.

Maggie regularly performs in our Night Shift gig series and even wrote an article about ‘Purcell and a Pint‘.