Born in Leningrad. In 1968, he completed his studies at the Choir College attached to Leningrad's Academic Glinka Capella. He is a graduate of two faculties of the Leningrad Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatoire: the faculty of choral conducting (1973) and the faculty of opera and symphony conducting (1978).

From 1976-86, he was conductor of the Glinka Academic Capella. From 1988-2000, he was chief chorus master and conductor at the Leningrad Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet (from 1992 - the Maryinsky). With this Theatre's chorus he rehearsed over 70 works in the opera, cantata-oratorio and symphony genres.

For a long time, he was artistic director and conductor of the Saint-Petersburg-Mozarteum, a group combining a Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Chorus, musicians and vocalists.

Since 1996, he has been assistant professor at the Saint-Petersburg Conservatoire.

He has twice won Saint-Petersburg's most prestigious theatre prize the Zolotoy Sofit (1999, 2003).

With the Maryinsky Theatre Company (conductor Valery Gergiev), he has done more than 20 recordings of Russian and foreign operas on the Phillips label. He has given performances with the Maryinsky Theatre Chorus in New York, Lisbon, Baden-Baden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Omaha.

In April 2003, he took up the position of chief chorus master of the Bolshoi Theatre.
At the Bolshoi Theatre, he worked with the chorus on new productions of the following operas: Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, Verdi's Macbeth, Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, Shostakovich's The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk, Falstaff, Leonid Desyatnikov's The Children of Rosenthal (world premiere), Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Mozart's Die Zauberfloete, Prokofiev's War and Peace, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin,  Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, Bizet's Carmen, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and of the Maiden Fevronia, Berg's Wozzeck, Strauss' Die Fledermaus.

In 2005, the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus was awarded the special jury prize of the National Theatre Golden Mask award for the premieres of the Theatre's228^th season - Macbeth and The Flying Dutchman.

In 2004, Valery Borisov made his conducting debut at the Bolshoi Theatre: the work chosen was the opera Eugene Onegin.