Bill Barclay

Director, writer, and composer Bill Barclay has created dozens of theatrical concerts with the world’s most prominent ensembles. He is Artistic Director of Concert Theatre Works and was Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe from 2012-2019. He last appeared with Music of the Baroque in February 2022.

Bill Barclay’s original works have been performed at hundreds of venues around the world including The Hollywood Bowl, The Kennedy Center, The Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Barbican, Washington National Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and The Southbank Centre. A “personable polymath” (London Times), his theatrical concerts are praised as “witty and incisive” (New York Times), “Effortless perfection” (The Observer), “quietly transfixing” (The New Yorker), and “quite simply exquisite” (The Guardian).

Broadway and West End credits include Farinelli and the King, Twelfth Night, and Richard III, all starring Sir Mark Rylance.

Major tours include The Chevalier (London Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Center, Tanglewood, Chautauqua, Music of the Baroque, Harlem Chamber Players, Caramoor, Snape Maltings, Buffalo, Virginia, Indianapolis); Secret Byrd for The Gesualdo Six and Fretwork (30+ cities on tour); Anthony & Cleopatra (LA Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony); Peer Gynt (Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras); and Markus Passion for Oregon Bach Festival, Dunedin Consort & The Sebastians (NYC, Pittsburgh, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Portland, Seattle, Eugene, Chicago). He has been commissioned five times by The Boston Symphony Orchestra, appearing across nine seasons.

Other projects include directing the Silkroad Ensemble on tour, Beyond Beethoven 9 for Marin Alsop, Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream for Andris Nelsons, L’Histoire du Soldat for Charles Dutoit, Four Seasons Reimagined for Max Richter and puppeteers Gyre & Gimble, and 1791: Mozart’s Last Year for Gianandrea Noseda and The National Symphony Orchestra.

As a composer, Barclay composed the historic Hamlet Globe-to-Globe, which toured to 189 countries, and Call of the Wild, that performed in 42 US states. He has composed three times for the British Royal Family, for President Obama, for the Olympic Torch, at the United Nations, and in refugee camps in Jordan and Calais.

His newest work, Letters to a Young Poet, premiered with The Brodsky Quartet at The Aldeburgh Festival before performances at Lincoln Center and Tanglewood. He regularly appears in major international festivals in Kilkenny, Spoleto, Lammermuir, Edinburgh, Death of Classical, Chelsea, Oxford, Bath, Teatro a Mil, Perth, Canterbury, Aldebugh, and many others.

Opera directing includes The Seven Deadly Sins for The New World Center starring Danielle de Niese, Idomeneo for Boston Baroque, The Magic Flute for the BSO, and La bohéme in 2027.

Bill Barclay has been published on the music of Shakespeare by both Cambridge and Oxford University Presses, and edited The Jon Lipsky Play Anthology for Smith & Kraus. A contributor to The Guardian and Songlines, he has lectured on the Music of the Spheres on three continents.

A noted curator, Bill Barclay's concert programming as artistic director of Music Before 1800 has been praised as “one of the most creative and stimulating things happening on New York City’s classical music scene.” He created the sold-out Candlelit Concerts series from the launch of London’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2014, partnering with The Royal Opera House and BBC Proms. He founded the label Globe Music, recognized by The Royal Philharmonic Society, for Shakespeare’s Globe, where he produced music for 130 productions and 150 concerts over seven years.

His single Let Nature Sing, made of birdsong with singer Sam Lee, debuted at #11 on the UK Pop Charts to support The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Appearances on the podium include King of Ghosts on tour with Soumik Datta and City of London Sinfonia, and conducting the USACH Orchestra on tour in Chile.

Bill Barclay has collaborated with soloists Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams, Pekka Kuusisto, Ian Bostridge, Paco Peña, Camilla Tilling, Anoushka Shankar and Alison Balson, and dozens of the world’s most prominent conductors including Andris Nelsons, Marin Alsop, Dame Jane Glover, Louis Langree, Stéphane Denève, Charles Dutoit, Gianandrea Noseda, Ken-David Masur, Bramwell Tovey, JoAnn Falletta, Sakari Oramo, and Trevor Pinnock.

A lauded actor, Bill Barclay received a Fox Foundation Fellowship, the largest grant for actors in the US. A Boston native and past acting company member at Shakespeare & Company (11 years), the Actors Shakespeare Project (10 years, Artistic Associate), and The Mercury Theatre (UK), he trained in Bali, The National Theatre Institute and Vassar College. MFA in Playwriting, Boston University.