BILL
BARCLAY

Stage Director

 

April 24
2026


Boston Baroque debut

 
 
 

Bill Barclay will make his Boston Baroque debut as the Stage Director for Mozart’s Idomeneo in the Spring of 2026.

Writer, director, and composer Bill Barclay is best known for his 25+ productions of concert-theatre including Secret Byrd, Markus Passion, and The Chevalier. He is artistic director of Concert Theatre Works which tours his productions to 30 cities internationally each year. As Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe, he produced live music for over 130 productions and 100 concerts, composing original music for over a dozen. His Broadway and West End credits include Farinelli & The King, Twelfth Night, and Richard III, all starring Sir Mark Rylance.

 

Barclay’s original works have been described as “witty and incisive” (NY Times), “emotionally supercharged” (The Times, London), “quietly transfixing” (New Yorker), and “quite simply exquisite” (The Guardian).

 

He has been commissioned five times by The Boston Symphony Orchestra, staging his own original adaptations including Romeo & Juliet, Peer Gynt, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, L’Histoire du Soldat, The Chevalier, and The Magic Flute. A Weston native, he has worked on over 30 productions between Shakespeare & Company and the Actors Shakespeare Project, as well as collaborations with Revels, Handel & Haydn Society, and dozen of other organizations in the Boston area.

National orchestral partners include The LA Philharmonic (at The Hollywood Bowl), National Symphony Orchestra (Kennedy Center), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Barbican), London Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New World Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Harlem Chamber Players, and symphonies in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St Louis, New Jersey, Virginia, Colorado, Indiana, Hartford, Harlem, Winston-Salem, and Chautauqua.

An early music specialist, his productions Secret Byrd, Markus Passion, Bach’s Art of Fugue and others have variously featured The Gesualdo Six, Music of the Baroque, The English Concert, The Sixteen, Handel & Haydn Society, Fretwork, Academy of Ancient Music, Dunedin Consort, Barokksolistene, Orchestra for the Age of Enlightenment, St Martin-in-the-Fields, National Centre for Early Music, Oregon Bach Festival, Early Music Seattle, Portland Baroque, San Francisco Early Music Society, Abendmusik and others, at dozens of festivals around the world.

 
 

“A well-established master of sui generis music-theatre events.”

The Tablet

As a composer, his original music has been performed for President Obama, for the Olympic Torch, at the United Nations, and three times for the British Royal Family. He was the composer for Hamlet Globe-to-Globe which toured 197 countries, and Call of the Wild which toured to 42 states. He directed Silkroad’s Heroes Take Their Stands, and conducted City of London Sinfonia on international tours. He has been commissioned by The Royal Albert Hall, Washington National Cathedral, The Hollywood Bowl, and four times by The Boston Symphony Orchestra.

A contributor to the Guardian and Songlines, Barclay is published on the music of Shakespeare by both Cambridge and Oxford University Presses, and he lectures widely on Shakespeare and the music of the spheres. His newest work isWhat Music Is,aimed at revealing music’s essential role on our planet (@whatmusicis). He is the recipient of a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, the largest grant for actors in the United States, and spent 12 years as a company member at both Shakespeare & Company and Actors’ Shakespeare Project, where he collaborated on over 40 productions. Barclay is from Weston, MA and earned his MFA at Boston University. He can be followed @barclayarts andconcerttheatreworks.comBack to top