William Lyons

William is Director of the acclaimed early music ensembles The Dufay Collective and The City Musick. He is also a regular performer with leading early music groups such as The Gabrieli Consort.  Time is otherwise spent as a music consultant, researcher and lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal College of Music and until recently the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His Radio 4 documentary on the lives of civic musicians in Tudor London was well received and was made ‘Pick of The Week’.

In 2011/12 William worked closely as collaborator and advisor with Damon Albarn on the creation of the innovative ‘Dr Dee’ that successfully premiered at the Manchester International Festival and for English National Opera.

As an expert performer William can be heard on the soundtracks of numerous films, including most recently Robin Hood, Pride & Prejudice, The Hobbit and Les Miserables and Grand Budapest Hotel.

William composes and arranges music for film and TV, including the Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.  On Harry Potter and the Prisoner of  he was a performer and advisor to John Williams on scoring and historical soundscapes.

He has a long association with the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre as a composer, performer, Musical Director and Historical Music Adviser. Previously for the Globe he has composed for Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, Liberty, All’s Well That Ends Well, Blue Stockings and the acclaimed productions of Howard Brenton’s In Extremis and Anne Boleyn, the latter winning the ETT Best Touring Production 2012. He composed for the new play by Brenton, Dr Scroggy’s War that premiered to critical acclaim at the Globe in September 2014.

In 2015 William composed an eclectic score for the National Theatre production of ‘Everyman’, directed by the new Artistic Director, Rufus Norris. He composed music for Helen Edmundson's 'Heresy of Love' for the Globe Theatre and directed a Gabrieli Consort collaboration on The Merchant of Venice in Washington DC and at the Globe in London. 

In 2015 William also composed a soundscape for a wonderful wedding painting by the mid painter Martin van Cleve. This was for the Frieze Masters Exhibition in Regents Park, one of the world's premier art fairs.

William is currently composing music for the video display at the British Library 'Shakespeare in Ten Acts' Exhibition.