British conductor Justin Doyle has been active with choirs and orchestras not only in his native country but also, more unusually, in Germany, where he serves as conductor of the prestigious RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin. He has also arranged world music for choir and conducted musical forces for film scores. Doyle was born in Lancaster, U.K., and grew up in a highly musical family; his father was conductor of the local Haffner Orchestra and a university music lecturer, his mother a piano teacher, and his sister a soprano. Doyle first picked up a conductor's baton at seven. That year he also joined the Westminster Cathedral Choir, which has spawned an unusually large number of British musical careers, and when he was eight he sang in a concert given for the Pope. He also studied conducting and cello at the choristers' school, and he entered King's College, Cambridge University, as a choral scholar. Devoting himself seriously to conducting, he made guest appearances with top groups around Britain, including Opera North, the Haffner Orchestra (where he supplanted his father as conductor), and the BBC Singers, an ongoing relationship that began after he took second place in the highly competitive Cadaqués Conducting Competition in Spain. Doyle has also made guest appearances with the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and the New London Orchestra. He has traveled extensively in Africa, mostly in Kenya and Ethiopia, arranging indigenous music for choirs and incorporating African influences into his own compositions. In 2015, Doyle made his debut with Berlin's RIAS Kammerchor on the occasion of their performance at the opening of the Pierre Boulez Saal concert hall at the city's Barenboim-Said Akademie. He was subsequently hired as chief conductor, communicating with the choir in German, and he has led the choir on a tour of Japan. Doyle lives in Skipton, U.K., with his family and commutes to Berlin for rehearsals and concerts. He made his recording debut with the RIAS Kammerchor in 2019, on an album of choral music by Benjamin Britten on the Harmonia Mundi label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi