John Wilson is in demand at the highest level across the globe, having conducted many of the world’s finest orchestras over the past 30 years. In 2018, he relaunched Sinfonia of London, described as "one of the finest orchestras on the planet" (The Guardian). Wilson and the Sinfonia’s much-anticipated BBC Proms debut in 2021 was praised as "revelatory music-making" (The Times). They are now highly sought-after across the UK, regularly returning to the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival and London’s Barbican Centre among other festivals.

Wilson’s large and varied discography with Sinfonia of London has received near-universal critical acclaim, and in the summer of 2026 they released their thirty-second album since 2019. Their recordings have earned several awards, including numerous BBC Music Magazine Awards for recordings of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp (2020), Respighi’s Roman Trilogy (2021), Dutilleux’s Le Loup (2022), Oklahoma! (2024) and a disc of works by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius, and Elgar, which won both the Orchestral Award and Recording of the Year. The Observer described the Respighi recording as “Massive, audacious and vividly played” and The Times declared it one of the three “truly outstanding accounts of this trilogy” of all time, after those by Toscanini (1949) and Muti (1984).

Born in Gateshead, Wilson studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music where, in 2011, he was made a Fellow. In March 2026, John Wilson was awarded the prestigious RPS Conductor Award, and in 2021 he was appointed Henry Wood Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music.