A founding member of The Newberry Consort in 1988, David Douglass was appointed the ensemble's Director and Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library in 2007. Since then, Mr. Douglass has carried on the Consort's legacy of cutting-edge programming and world-class performances, while expanding the Consort's presence in the Chicago area. He created two important annual concerts: one to showcase emerging artists in early music, and the other to honor the memory of the Consort's mentor, Dr. Howard Mayer Brown. Embracing multimedia technology, particularly projected translations, Mr. Douglass has heightened the immediacy of the Consort's performances while maintaining the high standard of scholarship audiences have come to expect. Last season, he broadened the Consort's historical range, venturing into the 19th century with the concert "Music of Abraham Lincoln's America," and creating a score using Elizabethan music for Sarah Berhardt's 1912 silent film Elizabeth I.
First trained as a modern violinist, Mr. Douglass has earned a reputation for his performances on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque bowed-string instruments. His playing has been praised by The New York Times for its "eloquence" and "expressive virtuosity". Through his groundbreaking work in the field of early violin performance, he was the first to develop a historical technique producing "a distinctively 'Renaissance' sound and style for the violin" (Fanfare). The King's Noyse, a Renaissance violin band, was the culmination of this work. As director of The King's Noyse, and through his recreation of the improvisational repertory of the early violin band, he has received praise for his "enterprise and imagination" (Stereophile).
In great demand as a guest artist and director, Mr. Douglass has traveled extensively, performing with the world's foremost early music ensembles. A regular with the Boston Early Music Festival orchestra, the Lyra Baroque Orchestra, and the Musicians of Swanne Alley, he has also performed with the Parley of Instruments (London), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Concerto Palatino (Bologna, Italy), The Folger Consort (Washington D.C.), the Waverly Consort (New York City), among many others. Recent concert venues have included Villa i Tatti (Florence) and the Palais de Versailles (Paris).
Mr. Douglass has also made his mark in the recording world. As a performer, he has recorded extensively for harmonia mundi usa, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin, Erato, BMG, Berlin Classics, and Auvidis/Astrée labels. Since 1991, he has also served as a producer for harmonia mundi usa, overseeing recordings for Marion Verbruggen, Paul Hillier and The Theater of Voices, and Paul O'Dette, among others. Several of these have won awards both here and abroad, and four received Grammy nominations between 2005 and 2009.
Mr. Douglass is much in demand as a writer and lecturer on early violin history, technique and repertoire. He contributed the chapters on violin to the Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century volumes in Schirmer's Performer's Guide series, and his essays on the early violin can be found in Strings Magazine. He regularly teaches at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.