Director, writer and composer Bill Barclay is artistic director of Concert Theatre Works and Music Before 1800 in New York City. He was director of music at London’s Shakespeare’s Globe from 2012 to 2019, where he produced music for 130 productions and 150 concerts, composing 12 shows including Hamlet Globe-to-Globe, which was performed in 197 countries. Broadway and West End credits as Music Supervisor include Farinelli and the King, Twelfth Night, and Richard III, all starring Sir Mark Rylance.
Collaborators in the last year include the National Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Center, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Handel & Haydn Society, Gandini Juggling, United Strings of Europe, Chautauqua Institution, Caramoor Festival, Winston-Salem Symphony, Leeds International Concert Series, King’s Place, and the Harlem Chamber Players.
A “personable polymath” (London Times), Barclay has created works of concert-theatre for the LA Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Grammy-winning Silkroad Ensemble, City of London Sinfonia, and annually with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has created new works for some of the world’s most iconic spaces: Hollywood Bowl, Kennedy Center, the Barbican, Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Southbank Centre, Hampton Court Palace, and Washington National Cathedral. Collaborators include conductors Marin Alsop, Andris Nelsons, Dame Jane Glover, Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, JoAnn Falletta, Bramwell Tovey, Gianandrea Noseda, Harry Christophers, Trevor Pinnock and Sakari Oramo. Other partners include The English Concert, Tanglewood, Spoleto Festival, the Virginia Symphony, Orchestra for the Age of Enlightenment, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Barokksolistene, and The Sixteen.
New concert-theatre works next year include Secret Byrd, touring to 15 cities with The Gesualdo Six and Fretwork, and Letters to a Young Poet with the Brodsky Quartet in its 50th year, premiering at the Aldeburgh Festival.
As a composer, Barclay’s original music has been performed for President Obama, the British Royal Family, the Olympic Torch, the United Nations, and refugee camps in Jordan and Calais. He recently created a new Four Seasons Recomposed for Max Richter on period instruments with the puppetry masters Gyre & Gimble. He conducted Soumik Datta’s King of Ghosts on tour with City of London Sinfonia, and the USACH Orchestra in Chile.
Barclay seeks to collapse the space between arts and advocacy, composing the film A Mother’s Love for the Wild Foundation, creating Tales in Migration to score immigrant’s stories, and funding The National Alliance for Audition Support. His single Let Nature Sing, made entirely of birdsong, debuted at #11 on the UK Pop Charts for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. A noted curator, he piloted the Candlelit Concerts series in the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from its construction in 2014. He founded the record label Globe Music, recognized by the BBC and Royal Philharmonic Society, for Shakespeare’s Globe.
Contributor to The Guardian and Songlines, Barclay writes and lectures widely and has been published in Cambridge and Oxford University Presses on the music of Shakespeare.
His newest concert-theatre work, The Chevalier, will have its UK debut at the London Philharmonic Orchestra next year.