Laurence Cummings is one of Britain's most exciting and versatile exponents of historical performance both as a conductor and a harpsichord player. A noted authority on Handel, the Guardian has written of him “he now ranks as one of the composer’s best advocates in the world. Self-effacing on the podium, faithful above all to the score, he matches Handel’s energy and invention with unmistakable lyricism, generosity and dignity.”

He is Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music and Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música in Porto and has previously held positions as Artistic Director of the Internationale Händel-Festpiele Göttingen (2011 – 2021) and Musical Director of the London Handel Festival (1999 – 2024). 

 Frequently praised for his stylish and compelling performances in the opera house, his career has taken him across Europe, conducting new productions at houses including Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Jephtha), Opernhaus Zurich (Belshazzar, King Arthur), Oper Frankfurt (Hercules), Theater an der Wien (Saul), Gothenburg Opera (Orfeo ed Euridice, Giulio Cesare, Alcina and Idomeneo), Theater Basel (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Théâtre du Châtelet Paris (Saul) and Opera de Lyon (Messiah). He has worked with directors including Barrie Koskie, David McVicar, Christoph Marthaler, Deborah Warner, Adele Thomas, Claus Guth, Oliver Mears, Sebastian Baumgarten, John Caird, Graham Vick and Peter Sellars

 He has appeared regularly for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, English National Opera, Garsington Opera and at Opera North where his recent production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo featured musicians from both western and Indian classical traditions.

 Equally at home on the concert platform, he is regularly invited to conduct both period and modern instrument orchestras worldwide. In recent seasons this has included Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Netherlands Bach Society, Wroclaw Baroque and Croatian Baroque Orchestra in Europe, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The English Concert, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony and Ulster Orchestra in the UK, and St Paul Chamber Orchestra, St Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, National Symphony, and Handel and Haydn Society Boston in the US.

His recordings include discs with Emma Kirkby and Royal Academy of Music on BIS, Angelika Kirschlager and the Basel Chamber Orchestra for Sony BMG, Maurice Steger and The English Concert for Harmonia Mundi and Ruby Hughes and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on Chandos, as well as a series of live opera and concert performances recorded at the Göttingen International Handel Festival and released on Accent. He has released numerous solo harpsichord recital and chamber music recordings for Naxos.

J.S. BACH | Brandenburg Concertos |Academy of Ancient Music

Its high point rightly came when Laurence Cummings, directing the whole show from the harpsichord, delivered the famous first-movement cadenza not as the feverish clatter of prestissimo passagework one usually hears but as one imagines Bach himself might have done — with pauses for emphasis and subtle variations in speed.  – The Times

J.S. BACH | St Matthew Passion| London Handel Orchestra

With Laurence Cummings directing from the harpsichord/organ, and some fine principals heading the chorus of the period-instrument London Handel Orchestra, this towering masterpiece was in ideal hands....Thanks to Cummings’s furious momentum, the symmetrical contours of this great edifice came splendidly clear, and its alternations of chaos, rage, and celestial calm were presented to greater effect than is ever possible in a concert performance. - the Independent ****

HANDEL | Alcina | Opera North 

Laurence Cummings encourages really stylish, sensuous musicianship from the Opera North orchestra (he’s also on cracking harpsichord duty)  - The Times

Laurence Cummings choosing perfect tempos and dynamic contrasts. The score is Handel at his most melodious and subtle, with many passages for small groups of instruments or even solo instruments, and under Cummings the small orchestra plays beautifully - The Reviews Hub 

HANDEL | Alexander’s Feast| London Handel Festival

Laurence Cummings [is] a conductor steeped in Handelian style, and the ornamentation, particularly by the fiddles and oboes of the London Handel Orchestra, was profuse and precise. But he is also alive to the spirit of the music and isn’t afraid to deploy big dynamics to bring it to life. The passages when the excellent London Handel Chorus let rip must have made strong lampposts quiver well north of Oxford Circus. -  The Times

HANDEL | Giulio Cesare | Glyndebourne Opera

with a first-class cast, the Handelian Laurence Cummings conducting a work he knows inside out, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment excelling in the pit..- The Guardian

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment played with joy and exemplary balance under the baton of that Handelian par excellence Laurence Cummings.  - Opera Magazine

A whole chapter could be written on the collaborative glories from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the vintage guidance of Laurence Cummings. Every introduction and rounding-off teem with personality; singing, perfectly phrasing violins are underpinned by a thunderous bass line where needed. This, too, is where proper rehearsal time pays off in the dialogues of instruments and voices. -  The Arts Desk

It was significant that on the first night the most ecstatic cheer was not for a singer but for the conductor Laurence Cummings, the undisputed king of Baroque opera, who steered a perfectly assured path through Handel’s ravishing musical landscape.  -  iNews

HANDEL | Messiah | National Symphony Orchestra 

On Thursday, he certainly showed himself to be a major Handelian in this fluid, fleet, fine-feelinged reading. Rapid passagework in Baroque music can sound finicky, with a kind of sewing-machine needling; but time and again, Cummings encouraged playing and singing that were smooth, gentle, even tender - The Washington Post

He brought an easy authority to the score, conducting from one of the two harpsichords in the orchestra, augmented nicely by portative organ in the larger pieces...Cummings emphasized the more operatic qualities of the work - Washington Classical Review 

HANDEL | La Resurrezione | St-Martin-in-the-Fields

Cummings proved an exacting judge of the sometimes tricky balance between drama and reflection, teasing out instrumental detail as he went – the woodwind that alternately grieve and console, the warmth in the strings, the gleam in the brass that eventually heralds the triumph of light over darkness. - Tim Ashley, The Guardian ****

HAYDN | Creation | Academy of Ancient Music

Delectable timbres and colours didn’t stop leaping from Cummings’s expert band, who played with such vigour - The Times

Cummings kept his tempi lively (as did Haydn, it appears) and drew some thrillingly tight and fierce choruses from the choir behind. This Creation glinted and shone in a bracingly clear light.-  theartsdesk

HAYDN | The Seasons | Academy of Ancient Music

 A slow-burn, glorious performance by the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Laurence Cummings.-  Opera Now

MONTEVERDI |  L’Orfeo | Garsington Opera

Cummings opts for a beguilingly lush wash of continuo from five different musicians, and splits his instrumental forces effectively on either side of the stage, but his main achievement is ensuring his singers constantly invest their lines with emotional significance as well as stylish ornamentation. It’s all bewitching [...].  - The Times, 5*

[The staging] allows for the musical freedom Cummings draws without actually conducting [...] With Cummings stepping away from the harpsichord to sing Apollo’s intervention and joining the Monteverdi madrigal sung as an encore, this is an evening of true ensemble work.- The Telegraph, 4*

The dynamic and barefoot English Concert is on stage, its players in the heart of the action. Laurence Cummings directing this pulsating score from the keyboard even sings as Orfeo's father in the closing moments.- Culture Whisper, 5*

MOZART | Paris Symphony | Scottish Chamber Orchestra

His Mozart Paris Symphony was a delight, full of gesture and rhetoric – seldom can its first movement’s rushing scales have had so much sheer meaning – but superbly balanced in a buoyant slow movement -  The Scotsman ****

TELEMANN/HANDEL | Ebb und Fluth | Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester

With vigor and verve, the HR Symphonie Orchester conducted by English Baroque specialist Laurence Cummings showed in the Sendesaal why Telemann’s overture “Hamburger Ebb und Fluth” was so successful at its performance in 1723…The second part of the programme was Handel’s “Wassermusik” Suite. The orchestra left nothing to be desired in terms of liveliness, made music in a transparent and emotional way. - Frankfurter Neue Presse

He builds on the ears of the musicians and on the pulling effect of the harpsichord. Then he does not have to conduct much, said Laurence Cummings in an introductory talk to the recent “Baroque +” concert in the broadcasting hall of the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt. The justified trust in the musicians of the hrSinfonieorchester, in their keen sense of playing with sounds and energies, in their ability to take responsibility for the whole and to contribute their very own part, was the certain something that gave this concert its enormous colour power, sound sensuality, warmth and vitality. Because the precise optical impulse of the conductor was missing, tiny blurs and thus a softness in the lecture, which was found to be soothing, especially in slow movements. Quick phrases were expected to decelerate, and a few obviously chattered inserts were eager to be heard, as well as the fundamental openness of that sound - Rhein-Main-Zeitung