A co-founder of the influential instrumental group Fretwork, William Bill Hunt has been a major presence on the British early music scene for many years. He later became a member of the Dunedin Consort.

Hunt matriculated at the Marlborough College boarding school in Marlborough, England, in 1966. He went on to Cambridge University, studying law, languages, and music. He graduated in 1974 and, with the British early music movement strongly on the rise, decided to devote himself to music, and specifically to the viola da gamba and other viols. Hunt landed a spot on a tour of Spain organized by the Taverner Consort and its director, Andrew Parrott. With free time on the tour, Hunt and viol players Richard Campbell and Richard Boothby began to play together and to work on the, at that time, mostly untouched viol repertory. Those sessions were the nucleus of what became Fretwork, which Hunt co-founded in 1985; by then, it had six members, and soon it attracted prestigious vocal guests such as soprano Emma Kirkby and countertenor Michael Chance. Hunt played with Fretwork until 2005 and founded the group's publishing arm in 1989; it was one of the first publishing companies to use computer music notation software, and it continues to flourish, expanding into vocal consort music as well as instrumental music. Since leaving Fretwork in 2005, Hunt has continued to play with the group occasionally, to record with it often, and to serve it as a consultant. In 2007, he joined the Dunedin Consort, remaining a member of that group as of 2020. He has worked as a musicologist with the Magdalena Consort on its recordings of vocal consort music.

Hunt has been in demand as an ensemble recording artist and has appeared on more than 30 albums, not only with Fretwork and the Dunedin Consort but with many other groups. He made his debut on viola da gamba with the English Concert in 1982, on a recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Most of his recordings since then have been of Renaissance music, with such groups as the Taverner Consort and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, with whom he appeared on the two volumes of In Chains of Gold, collections of English pre-Restoration verse anthems. The second of these appeared in 2020. ~ James Manheim, Rovi