Douglas is well known to music educators and choral practitioners in the UK and beyond. He is a prolific composer, choral clinician and conductor. Much of his compositional output involves singers – from full-length Cantatas, Masses, a Requiem , a Ballet and Operas, to separate songs for a variety of forces. Douglas is always open to commissions and projects involving voices. He frequently conducts massed choral events for young people at the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, The Barbican, London and in major concert halls elsewhere. In-service teachers’ courses, as well as conducting and writing for the New English Concert Orchestra (the orchestra for the Battle Proms series), two adult choirs and many choral and orchestral commissions, also feature in his very full schedule. He has been an adjudicator since 1968 and has been the Chair of Adjudicators for the British and International Federation of Festivals (Music.) In November 2010, Douglas was delighted to accept an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Gloucestershire University and he was also honoured to have been awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of 2012 for Services to Music. In October 2019 he was elected Associate Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge University in recognition of his work with the college’s Charter Choir. As well as on-going work with Homerton Charter Choir, he is now conductor of The Homerton Singers, a choral society based at the college, encompassing staff, students and outsiders – in addition to his a cappella chamber choir The Ensemble of Friends. His teaching at Homerton College also includes conducting and orchestration.
Douglas has been the music consultant for the annual BBC TV Songs of Praise School Choirs of the Year competition and Chairman of the panel of adjudicators for the Barnardo’s Choral Competition since its inception. He meets countless young people and adult singers in the UK and abroad in the course of his workshops and conducting clinics. As a music educator, over a period of 20 years, he wrote, produced and broadcast two BBC Programmes for Schools – Time and Tune and Singing Together through which he helped teachers and children develop a love for and an understanding of music. Douglas was also responsible for many original worship songs and all 250 arrangements in the three Come and Praise books published by the BBC.