From 1973 until 1977, he was the director of the Voices of New Africa House Workshop Choir, an ensemble of 50 voices drawn from Smith, Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts. Under his direction, the group performed throughout New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. The choir appeared with such artists as Max Roach, Archie Shepp, gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates, and poet Sonia Sanchez. From 1978 to 1999, Boyer directed the Vocal Jazz and African American Music Ensemble of the University of Massachusetts. This ensemble presented concerts throughout New England, and was selected to present a jazz concert at the Music Educators National Conference in Miami Beach in 1980.

With his brother James, a Professor of Education at Kansas State University, Boyer has traveled throughout 40 states, performing gospel music as the Boyer Brothers, and has recorded on the Savoy and Nashboro labels. The Boyer Brothers have appeared in concerts, festivals and on television in over 300 appearances in solo performances, and with such other gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, Alex Bradford, Dorothy Love Coates and James Cleveland. They were featured in concerts at the Smithsonian Institution in 1983 and 1984.

As a vocal soloist, Boyer has appeared in numerous solo recitals, and as musical director, has overseen such musicals as "Purlie," "Do Lord, Remember Me," and James Baldwin's "Blues for Mr. Charlie" in association with the author. In 1984 Boyer toured Poland; in 1988 Japan; in 1990 Russia, Australia and New Zealand; in 1992 and in 1994, Central Europe, including Bern, Switzerland; Venice and Milan, Italy; and Paris, France, with "Trade Winds," a faculty jazz ensemble from the University of Massachusetts.

In addition to his performing activities, Boyer is engaged in research into African American vocal music and has published over 40 articles in such journals as Music Educators Journal,  The Black Perspective in Music, and the Black Music Research Journal. He served as advisor on gospel music to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music (1986), to which he contributed 45 biographical entries and an analytical essay on black American gospel musicians. As an arranger, he contributed ten arrangements of Negro spirituals and gospel songs to Lift Every Voice and Sing, a 1982 supplement hymnal for the Episcopal Church of the United States, for which he served as General Editor for its 1993 revision. He also arranged two spirituals for Lead Me, Guide Me, the African American Catholic hymnal. Recently he contributed six chapters on classic gospel music composers to "We'll Understand It Better By and By," African American Pioneering Gospel Composers, published in 1993 by the Smithsonian Institution Press. Boyer has also furnished liner notes for the Columbia Records gospel legacy series, and among the artists for whom he wrote liner notes (on reissued recordings) were Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams and the Staple Singers.

As a clinician and lecturer, he has appeared at such schools as Harvard, Yale, Temple, Oberlin, Howard and Tuskegee Universities, the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Harlem School of the Arts. He was the Cesar Chavez-Rosa Parks-Martin Luther King Professor at University of Michigan in Spring 1988, Senior Research Scholar and Visiting Professor at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music in 1992, and held professorship residencies at Ithaca College during the summer of 1993 and University of Buffalo during the summer of 1994. One of the highlights of Boyer's career was his appointment as Curator of Musical Instruments at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, a-position he held from 1985-1987. During his residency at the Smithsonian, he also served as the United Negro College Fund Distinguished Scholar-at-Large during which his duties included directing the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers. This group appeared in thirty-five concerts under his direction.

Boyer is listed in the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians, as well as International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory. The recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, he serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Rejoice, the Advisory Board of the Center for Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, Board of Directors of the National Council for the Traditional Arts of Washington, D.C., and as a consultant for the Smithsonian Institution.

In recognition of his teaching and contributions to music, Boyer was named a Chancellor's Distinguished University Lecturer by the University of Massachusetts in 1990 and was awarded the Chancellor's Medallion.