Robert Hollingworth received his earliest musical education from his mother and as a chorister at Hereford Cathedral. He also studied violin and keyboard, going on to read music at New College, Oxford University, recording and touring extensively with the choir and working with distinguished conductors and orchestras. He spent a year on the post-graduate Early Music Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with David Roblou (continuo) and Philip Pickett.

At Oxford, encouraged by Edward Higginbottom and John Milsom, he founded I Fagiolini, and has since concentrated much of his musical life with this group. With them he has toured worldwide from the UK Proms to both ends of Africa, the Far East and the USA, releasing recordings on Warner, Chandos and Metronome.

In 2001 Robert directed a new performance of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo for Dutch company Opera Zuid, the first time the company had used period instruments. The highly innovative and atmospheric production was set in the basement vaults of the Technical University of Eindhoven, the audience following the singers and musicians from space to space. In 2003 he conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra in anew project bringing old and new repertoire together and in 2004 works with the Netherlands Chamber Choir in a new staged project entitled ‘Faust’. In 2005 he conducts the BBC Singers in a programme of Jacob Handl.

Robert was conductor of the Leicester Bach Choir for four years, working on core baroque repertoire. He has directed Florilegium and The Bach Players (period instruments) in performances of Bach, Handel and Monteverdi and The Brook Street Band on a number of staged projects, notably Handel's Acis and Galatea and Purcell's Indian Queen.

He is a regular guest conductor at the Dartington International Summer School and appears all over Europe running workshops and singing weeks. He has researched extensively for BBC Radio on programmes such as CD Review and The Early Music Show. He was founder and director for three years of London's Visual and Dramatic Festival of Music, presenting amazing programmes using light and space in the Gothic interior of Islington's Union Chapel. He has also worked on a number of films including Quills.