I have been so fortunate to have met and worked with some truly great musicians who have shaped my life.

I was a founding member and Principal oboe of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for 21 memorable years. Surely one of the greatest orchestras in the world, its philosophy is simple; the joy of making music together at the highest possible level and creating life long friendships that transcend national boundaries.

There were many highlights, but some experiences stand out:

The humanity of Alexander Schneider, (violinist of the legendary Budapest String Quartet and close friend of Pablo Casals); emotionally charged concerts with Claudio Abbado, who could shape the sound of the orchestra with a gesture; the revolution of working with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and being part of a Beethoven Symphony cycle, which – it is no exaggeration – changed our perceptions of how the music of the great "Classical" composers should be performed; the warmth and complete conviction of Paavo Berglund. Performing and recording Sibelius symphonies with him, was simply being involved with a true master at work.

“I always wanted to conduct but I am glad I waited. These 21 years were the best conducting lessons I could have imagined.”

After a memorable concert with COE in Paris in 2002 with Claudio Abbado I put my oboe in its box for the last time. Watch the full video on YouTube.

My first major conducting commitment (and first love) was Manchester Camerata. I had 10 fabulous years with them as Music Director and I have nothing but admiration for their musicianship and friendship. Working on a financial shoestring, they nevertheless always perform at the highest level of commitment, energy and quality. Our Beethoven Symphony cycle is testimony to that.

My work with Camerata opened up invitations from other parts of the world. As Artistic Partner of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota for 6 years and Principal Guest Conductor of the Colorado Symphony, I have spent a lot of time making music in the US.

Conducting continues to take me to all corners of the globe, but whether I am performing in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Budapest or at home in the UK, I try to stay true to the “COE spirit” which has shaped me.

I spent 7 years as Music Director with Musikkollegium Winterthur, now one of Switzertland’s leading orchestras. It was an honour to follow in the distant footsteps of conductors such as Richard Strauss, Furtwangler and Busch, all of whom enjoyed relationships with MKW.

My main commitments now are split between opera and the concert hall. As Artistic Director of Garsington Opera, I have a wonderful opportunity to shape the future of one of the UK’s great summer opera festivals. With orchestre de chambre de Paris, I have an orchestra embracing the future on and off the stage, which has exciting partnerships with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Philharmonie and a commitment to engage in the cultural life of Paris, in particular through innovative educational projects which reach thousands of children and adults across the Paris region.

More important than all of this – is my family, my 3 extraordinary children and my wife Sally, whose love, support and musicianship (she is a wonderful cellist) has sustained me over the years.

Tchaikovsky “Eugene Onegin” Garsington 2016

Our critic is blown away by Garsington’s excellent Eugene Onegin

“But it was the musical performance under Douglas Boyd that really lifted the spirits. Indeed, in almost 30 years of attending Garsington, I don’t think I have heard a ‘classic’ opera cast with such care and accomplishment”.

HUGH CANNING Sunday Times

Douglas Boyd makes a virtue of leanness by conducting an admirably taut account of this marvellous score”.

RICHARD MORRISON The Times

“With fine support from Garsington’s musical director, Douglas Boyd and his orchestra, this is a triumph”.

DAVID MELLOR DAILY MAIL

“It is rarer than it should be to see a cast in Yevgeny Onegin that one can believe in, or to hear Tchaikovsky’s ardent and heartbreaking score performed with an uncomplicated sense of its drama and lyrical ebb and flow. That’s what Garsington and its music director Douglas Boyd achieved with this production, though, offering an Onegin that tugged at the heartstrings and pricked the tear ducts with unerring skill. And the clear-sightedness is what stuck in the mind, not least given the quality of Boyd’s conducting, flexible and impassioned, and bringing out playing of the very highest quality from the Garsington orchestra”.

HUGO SHIRLEY Opera

“With superb conducting and committed orchestral playing, though, Tchaikovsky is well served. The singing is heartbreaking, from Brindley Sherratt’s exquisite rendition of Prince Gremin’s aria to Roderick Williams’s tonally gorgeous but psychologically screwed-up Onegin, a man he plays as beset but emotions but hostage to the mores of his time”.

MARK VALENCIA  What’s On Stage

“Douglas Boyd’s urgent, well-shaped conducting perfectly complemented the unfolding drama”.

BARRY MILLINGTON Evening Standard

“Garsington Opera opens with a thrilling and full-blooded production of Eugene Onegin that gets to the heart of its conflicting and conflicted characters…I have never been more moved by the opening pages – the sisters sing dreamily of their future as the older women look back on how their own ideals were tempered by practicality, love sacrificed on the way. The musical and visual juxtaposition is simply heartbreaking…Douglas Boyd whisks the orchestra inexorably to the drama’s tumultuous end”.

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD Culture Whisper

“The orchestra under Douglas Boyd gave a wonderfully lyrical account of the score. Lithe and passionate, the performance was beautifully fluid but focussed and controlled, so that under Douglas Boyd’s disciplined hands the passion was there but the orchestra never came anywhere near overwhelming the singers.

This was a superb season opener, a demonstration of how Garsington Opera has moved on from being and outstanding specialist in a couple of composers, into a house where immensely thoughtful highly crafted work is being done in all areas”

ROBERT HUGILL Opera Today

“In the pit, Douglas Boyd and the Garsington Opera bring Tchaikovsky’s heartfelt, harrowing score magnificently to life. This Eugene Onegin was a highpoint of a very successful Garsington season…”.

GEOFFREY SMITH Arts Journal

“With its large orchestra and very large chorus, Eugen Onegin is Garsington Opera’s most ambitious production in its twenty-eight seasons. Conducted by the company’s artistic director, Douglas Boyd, and directed by Michael Boyd (no relation), artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2002-2012, and with large scale sets by Tom Piper, also a veteran of the RSC (as well as the designer of the WWI-commemorating swathe of ceramic red poppies first seen at the Tower of London with artist Paul Cummins), this is Garsington Opera’s biggest adventure yet. It’s a triumph”.

PAUL LEVY Critics Circle

FINAL CONCERT MUSIKKOLLEGIUM WINTERTHUR JUNE 2016

“…but the outgoing chief conductor kept true to his motto – always make music as if it was the last time. This innovative programme of  Mozart’s last three symphonies delivered a summit of storms which contrasted with playful precision in interaction and tonal delicacy…..

…Douglas Boyd and the Musikkollegium closed the season, memorable not only in terms of the special occasion, but also justified in rewarding contrasts and swashbuckling initiative which expressed the turbulent nature of these works.  Their despair and bravado was carved into the centre, but the relaxing moments of happiness in the Islands of each Trio had their space – and particularly striking – the sense of the fragile, groping in Mozart existentially charged music.

HERBERT BUTTIKER Der Landbote

“The Musikkollegium Winterthur – living up to the occasion – were inspired and thanked their long-time director with a sparkling interpretation. Thomas Zehetmair, who takes over the orchestra next season, may look forward to working with a well-established ensemble”.

THOMAS SCHACHE Neue Zurcher Zeitung

AS NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR OF “L’orchestre de chambre de Paris”

“But we would like to once again draw your attention to the eternally forgotten Paris Chamber Orchestra, whose two opening concerts, with Roger Norrington in Mozart and with its new musical director Douglas Boyd in Schönberg,  gave us devilish pleasure, for the spirit as well as for its instrumental quality. What is happening in this ensemble is a true renaissance. For a long time we saw in the OCP potential just waiting to be exploited in order to find its place in the Parisian music scene: it seems that this time they have taken the bull by the horns”.

CHRISTIAN MERLIN Le Figaro

“No reservation on the other hand for the rising quality of the orchestra, which has woken from its slumber by the lively and sympathetic Boyd, who hardly knows how to economise on effort and knows how to showcase the beauty of the violins…”.

JACQUELINE THUIELEUX Journal

“The first moments of this marriage between orchestra and conductor seem happy. We wish them many long years of harmony”.

CHRISTIAN WASSELIN Web Theatre

“Douglas Boyd’s Schubert Unfinished Symphony will be for many a discovery. Suffice to say that this reading, soft and airy, was almost Mozartian…Boyd fetches sound material with bare hands, to send it ricocheting into the air. A beautiful second theme: the accompaniment of repeated notes accompanied fantastically shaped phrases that were infused by the woodwind. Boyd journeyed through the Andante con moto with the eloquence of simplicity”.

JULIEN HANCK, Bachtrack

Haydn “The Creation” Garsington Opera 2015

“Douglas Boyd, artistic director, conducted with the commitment of one determined to share this masterpiece with an audience perhaps more familiar with opera”.

FIONA MADDOCKS The Observer

“Add a trio of superb solo singers, Garsington’s own chorus and orchestra and artist Pablo Bronstein as designer, and you have an extraordinary hybrid conception”

ALEXANDRA COGHLAN Arts Desk

“Meanwhile, cloistered behind a cardboard Gothic rood screen, a crack team of soloists, a lusty choir and a crisp, responsive orchestra under Douglas Boyd gave one of the best performances of The Creation  I have heard”.

AMANDA HOLLOWAY Opera

“Garsington Opera has teamed up with the Rambert Dance Company to stage The Creation  and the results are extremely impressive”.

SAM SMITH OMH

“…and this year collaborated with Ballet Rambert in a truly remarkable evening featuring Haydn’s The Creation…this was a brave and wholly successful experiment”.

PAUL LEVY Arts Journal

Shakespeare, Mendelssohn “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Garsington Opera, 2015

“So it was a brilliant idea for Garsington Opera, which has an orchestra and chorus to hand, to invite the Royal Shakespeare Company to stage an abridged version of the play with Mendelssohn’s entire score attached. Conducted by Douglas Boyd and directed by Owen Horsley, the result is a perfect marriage of words and music in a setting – with the local woods skirting one side of the theatre – that is nigh-on ideal. With the Garsington Opera Orchestra on its finest form, this is a superior performance of a piece rarely experienced in its totality.” (5 stars)
The Guardian

Mozart “Così fan tutte”, Garsington Opera, 2015

“Boyd coaxes and caresses an evening of ravishing playing from the Garsington Opera Orchestra … It’s a marvellous interpretation of what is, for many, one of the most sublime scores in all music.”
WhatsOnStage

“Boyd conducts with considerable insight into Mozart’s style and content, and the Garsington Opera Orchestra is consistently keen and alert”
STAGE

Verdi “Requiem”, Musikkollegium Winterthur, 2015

“A grandiose performance of Verdi’s operatic Requiem, led by Douglas Boyd, the chief conductor of Musikkollegium Winterthur. The dynamic balance between Choir, orchestra and soloists succeeded excellently. In short, this performance was deeply moving and one can only congratulate.”
Der Landbote

“Christ and the Cross”: 7 Last Words of Haydn and James MacMillan

“Expressionism in its purest form – intensively molded from the hands of the conductor Douglas Boyd . The range was complete- from the silver pin of the sopranos to the black graphite colour of the basses it was an evening of the most moving musical devotional mages.”
Der Landbote 

Mozart, Antonio Salieri: Arien

Grimm MDG 901 1897-6 (2 CD)
“The Musikkollegium, under the direction of Douglas Boyd, achieves, with their sharply articulated accents and economical use of vibrato , a historically informed performance that is nevertheless their own style.”
Neue Zurcher Zeitung

Beethoven “Eroica Symphony”, Musikkollegium Winterthur 2014

“Musikkollegium Winterthur, under the baton of its Chief Conductor Douglas Boyd, presented its end of season concerts in excellent form . They managed a thrilling tension over the four movements.”
Neue Zurcher Zeitung

“Douglas Boyd, in 2011, performed all 9 Beethoven symphonies with his vision of musical and emotional power , with belligerent tempos and a challenging dynamic voltage. More experienced now , perhaps almost effortless , as his own gestures suggest , we still witnessed again how urgent and extraordinary this epochal work can be.”
Der Landbote

Beethoven “Fidelio” Garsington Opera 2014

“A reading that is splendidly rhythmic and profoundly considered”.
RICHARD MORRISON,  THE TIMES

“Strong casting and masterly conductor Douglas Boyd lead John Cox’s Fidelio to success. Boyd’s deep understanding of the score ensures the highest musical standards and superb playing from the Garsington Opera Orchestra… The result is a Fidelio to remember…. a major event in the UK ‘s operatic calendar”.
GEORGE HALL, THE STAGE

“John Cox’s revival of his originally underpraised Garsington production is one of the most viscerally powerful accounts of Beethoven’s opera I have ever seen. Cox’s direction is faultless, as is Douglas Boyd’s support from the pit”. ( 5 stars)
MICHAEL CHURCH, THE INDEPENDENT

“At the conclusion of the performance, my wife and I were united in our overwhelming sense of having been emotionally engrossed in a production realised by singers, director and conductor in a manner that that is all too rare today with concepts and updated staging. I can best describe it by saying we went away elated, having been involved and overwhelmed by the emotions of the story and the manner of its realisation by all concerned. It is not an experience we often get these days with live lyric theatre……, a golden evening indeed for this listener and his partner”.
ROBERT FARR, SEEN AND HEARD

“Douglas Boyd directed the Garsington Opera Orchestra in a performance which showed not just the intimacy with this work for which he is already known, but an ability to bring out the best in the players which would not disgrace many much larger houses. From the delicacy of the strings in the great quartet to the triumphant horns at the finale, it would be difficult to imagine better playing. This is a Fidelio which you should not miss”. (5 stars)
MELANIE ESKENAZI, OMH 

” Garsington Opera opened its 25th season with as good a performance and production  of Beethoven’s Fidelio as I have witnessed for many years. Principal credit for this must go to Garsington’s new music director, Douglas Boyd, who brought a fresh and exhilarating intelligence to every note. Some may have found his tempos on the slow side compared to the current fashion for rattling through the score at breathless speed, but the symphony cycle he recorded during his recent distinguished directorship of Manchester Camerata showed that he knows how to pace Beethoven’s music. The same clarity and lack of fuss dominated the phrasing in Fidelio. Boyd gave the music time to breathe – to sublime effect in the “Wunderbar” quartet in Act I, in the Prisoners’ Chorus and in the great choral epilogue”.
MICHAEL KENNEDY, OPERA MAGAZINE

Schoenberg: Transfigured Night, November 2013:

“Douglas Boyd conducted the orchestra with lightness and transparency and a sense of poetic structure and gestural freedom.”
Sybille Ehrismann, Der Landbote

Bruckner, 4 October 2013:

“This journey drew from Douglas Boyd an energy that went to the extremes, with expansive tempos for the opening movement. It allowed for a moving vision of calm, or one could say,  flowing threads of “blessing”. Boyd’s direction in the final movement, brought out tranquility, but also strength.”
Ramona Früh, Der Landbote

Beethoven Triple Concerto, Brahms Symphony No.3, September 2013:

“One thought oneself temporarily in a chamber music concert, so restrained and tender did the orchestra play in their first subscription concert of the season in Winterthur under the direction of Douglas Boyd.”
Alex Hoster, Der Landbote

Musikkollegium Winterthur, “Der Landebote”, Switzerland, Autumn 2013:

“So much sun, so many balloons, so much joy.”
Sybille Ehrismann, “Summer outdoor concert for the city of Winterthur”, Der Landbote

Don Giovanni, Garsington Opera, June 2012:

“This is as stimulating and refreshing a Don Giovanni as I have seen anywhere in the last decade, sung and played to a level that sets a new benchmark at this address.”
The Sunday Times, June 05 2012

“…admirable conductor Douglas Boyd…kept the orchestral playing razor-sharp.”
The Times, June 04 2012

“But the Garsington Opera orchestra’s playing, under Douglas Boyd, is the biggest draw.  Boyd coaxes exquisite balance from his players, and is passionately attuned to both the music’s turbulence and intimacy.”
The Stage, June 04 2012

“…the conductor Douglas Boyd keeps things fizzing.”
The Independent, June 04 2012

“Conductor Douglas Boyd and his orchestra filled the beautiful purpose-built hall with rich, transporting sound, completely immersing the audience in the world of the opera…Quite simply, this was the single best operatic production I have ever seen.”
The Daily Information

The Marriage of Figaro, Garsington Opera, June 2010:

“In the pit, Douglas Boyd proved to be a natural Mozartian. His tempi were broadly on the fast side, but with no loss of detail, and the playing he got from the Garsington Orchestra was accomplished throughout. Boyd also proved to have a natural rapport with his singers, and there were no signs of awkwardness between pit and stage, as there often can be: ensembles went with a swing, solo numbers and duets were nicely judged, sforzandi and dynamic contrasts abounded – delightful.”
Musical Criticism, June 16 2010

Fidelio, Garsington Opera, June 2009:

“And the music certainly does sound sublime under Douglas Boyd’s direction…his grasp of the Beethovian idiom, pungent underlining of orchestral detail, empathy with his insgers’ phrasing, and bold speeds, all this sounded more like a masterclass than the work of a conductor who made his opera debut only last year.”
The Times, June 05 2009

Concert work:

“The magnificent interpretations of these works [all-Schubert programme in Winterthur] by Douglas Boyd and the College orchestra were thoroughly well thought-through, giving the listener a chance to hear these brilliant scores afresh.”
Zurichsee-Zeitung (translated)

“He is one of the major British occupants of a rostrum today and will be increasingly recognised as such. He has the born conductor’s ability to make music sound fresh, to detect its inner life and pulse and to expose them without over -exposing them and to make his players give more than they thought they could”
The Sunday Telegraph

“The Toronto Symphony Orchestra was in fantastic form at Roy Thomson Hall on Wednesday night under visiting Scottish conductor Douglas Boyd. ….Under Douglas Boyd Beethoven Symphony No. 5 sounded as fresh as if the ink were barely dry on the page.”
Toronto Star, February 11, 2010

“… principal guest conductor Douglas Boyd again demonstrating why he is such a hit in Denver with audiences and musicians alike… Boyd and the orchestra conveyed the work’s essential drama, finding the suspense and anticipation embedded in it.”
Denver Post, September 25, 2010

“One can only marvel at the vigor and poetry of Friday morning’s phenomenal concert by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, led by the superb…Douglas Boyd… Boyd and the orchestra showed an incisive rapport…In Boyd’s hands the symphony was rhapsodic and ruminative but also tragic and tumultuous, with moments of lyric terror that quickened respiration.”
The Star Tribune, St. Paul, MN

CD Reviews:

Beethoven Symphony No. 9:

“Under Douglas Boyd it has produced a terrific set of Beethoven recordings, to which this is a resounding conclusion”
The Times

“Boyd’s approach may differ a bit from Toscanini’s  in its closer adherence to Beethoven’s instructions, but it is to his credit that he does not go to Furtwanglerian extremes. Rather, his performance shines, musically and sonically, as the finest of the “period” accounts I have heard. An outstanding release”
International Record Review

Strauss Vier letzte Lieder/Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme:

“Scottish conductor Boyd, the ensemble’s music director, and his players deliver this Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite rather in the manner of Strauss’s own recordings – essentially classical with little riots of 20^th-century colour bursting through like carnation buttonholes.”
Gramophone, July 2012

“Boyd’s conducting is not only crisp and clean, but also brings out the genial humor of the score. I would place this reading but one step down from the superb Rudolf Kempe version.”
Fanfare

“There have been many recordings of the work, including superb performances conducted by Reiner, Krauss and Beecham, all great champions of the composer. Even when compared with them however the present performance is worth hearing for its very particular qualities. It has wit and charm, both essential here.”
Musical Criticism