Julian Lloyd Webber

Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British cellist, conductor and the principal of the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone (a piano teacher). He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer Herbert Howells was his godfather. Lloyd Webber was educated at three schools in London: at Wetherby School, a pre-prep school in South Kensington, followed by Westminster Under School and University College School. He then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973.

Lloyd Webber made his professional debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in September 1972 when he gave the first London performance of the cello concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, including Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Sir Andrew Davis and Esa-Pekka Salonen as well as Stéphane Grappelli, Elton John and Cleo Laine. He was described in The Strad as the "doyen of British cellists".

Lloyd Webber in 2013

His many recordings include his BRIT Award winning Elgar Cello Concerto conducted by Yehudi Menuhin (chosen as the finest ever version by BBC Music Magazine), the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich and a coupling of Britten's Cello Symphony and Walton's Cello Concerto with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Several CDs are of short pieces for Universal Classics including Made in England, Cello Moods, Cradle Song and English Idyll.

Lloyd Webber premiered the recordings of more than 50 works, inspiring new compositions for cello from composers as diverse as Malcolm Arnold (Fantasy for Cello, 1986, and Cello Concerto, 1989), Joaquín Rodrigo (Concierto como un divertimento, 1982) James MacMillan (Cello Sonata No. 2, 2001), and Philip Glass (Cello Concerto, 2001). More recent concert performances have included four further works composed for Lloyd webber – Michael Nyman's Double Concerto for Cello and Saxophone on BBC Television, Gavin Bryars's Concerto in Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Philip Glass's Cello Concerto at the Beijing International Festival and Eric Whitacre's The River Cam at the Southbank Centre. His recording of the Glass concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz was released on the Orange Mountain label in September 2005.

Recent recordings include The Art of Julian Lloyd Webber (2011), Evening Songs (2012) A Tale of Two Cellos (2013) Vivaldi Concertos for Two Cellos (2014) and his debut recording as a conductor of English music for strings 'And the Bridge is Love' (2015).

In May 2001, he was granted the first busker's licence on the London Underground.

Demonstrating his involvement in music education, he formed the "Music Education Consortium" with James Galway and Evelyn Glennie in 2003. As a result of successful lobbying by the Consortium, on 21 November 2007, the UK government announced an infusion of £332 million for music education. In 2008, the British Government invited Lloyd Webber to be Chairman of its In Harmony programme which is based on the Venezuelan social programme El Sistema. The government- commissioned Henley Review of Music Education (2011) reported, "There is no doubt that they (the in Harmony projects) have delivered life-changing experiences." In July 2011 the founder of El Sistema in Venezuela, José Antonio Abreu, recognised In Harmony as part of the El Sistema worldwide network. Further, in November 2011 the British government announced additional support for In Harmony across England by extending funding from the Department for Education and adding funding from Arts Council England from 2012 to 2015. Lloyd Webber now chairs the charity Sistema England. In October 2012 he led the Incorporated Society of Musicians campaign against the implementation of the EBacc which proposed to remove Arts subjects from the core curriculum. In February 2013 the Government withdrew its plans.

Lloyd Webber has represented the music education sector on programmes such as BBC1's Question Time, The Andrew Marr Show, BBC2's Newsnight and BBC Radio 4's Today, The World at One, PM, Front Row and The World Tonight.

In May 2009, Lloyd Webber was elected President of the Elgar Society in succession to Sir Adrian Boult, Lord Menuhin (who conducted his Brit Award winning recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto) and Richard Hickox.

In April 2014, Lloyd Webber was awarded the Incorporated Society of Musicians' Distinguished Musician Award (DMA) at their annual conference. In September 2014, the charity Live Music Now announced Lloyd Webber as its next public spokesman.

On 28 April 2014, he announced his retirement from public performance as a cellist because of a herniated disc in his neck. His final public performance as a cellist was on 2 May 2014 at the Forum Theatre, Malvern, with the English Chamber Orchestra when he played the Barjansky Stradivarius cello (dated c. 1690) which he had played for more than thirty years.

In March 2015, he was announced as principal of the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Lloyd Webber received the Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in 1998 and a Classic FM Red Award for outstanding services to music in 2005. He won the 'Best British Classical Recording' in 1986 at the Brit Awards for his recording of Cello Concerto (Elgar) with Sir Yehudi Menuhin and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1994 and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Hull, Plymouth University and Thames Valley University.

He is vice president of the Delius Society and patron of Music in Hospitals. He has been an ambassador for the Prince's Trust for more than twenty years and a patron of CLIC Sargent for more than 30 years.

In September 2009 he joined the board of governors of the Southbank Centre. He was the Foundling Museum's Handel Fellow for 2010. He was the only classical musician chosen to play at the Closing Ceremony of Olympics 2012.

On 16 April 2014 Lloyd Webber received the Incorporated Society of Musicians Distinguished Musician Award.

Lloyd Webber has been married four times. He married his first wife, Celia Ballantyne, a journalist, in 1974. His second marriage, in 1989 to Zohra Mahmoud Ghazi, a great niece of the Afghan king Zahir Shah, produced one child, David (born 1992, Hammersmith, London). His third marriage was to French-Algerian Kheira Bourahla. He married fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng in 2009 and they have one child, Jasmine Orienta, who was born on 14 June 2011. He is a lifelong supporter of Leyton Orient football club.

Cello and orchestra recordings

• Frank Bridge – Oration (1976)
• Édouard Lalo – Cello Concerto (1982)
• Frederick Delius – Cello Concerto (1982)
• Joaquín Rodrigo – Concierto como un divertimento (1982)
• Joseph Haydn – Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 4 (1983)
• Edward Elgar – Cello Concerto (1985)
• Victor Herbert – Cello Concerto No. 2 (1986)
• Arthur Sullivan – Cello Concerto (1986)
• Antonín Dvořák – Cello Concerto (1988)
• Arthur Honegger – Cello Concerto (1990)
• Camille Saint-Saëns – Cello Concerto No. 1 (1990)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Variations on a Rococo Theme (1991)
• Nikolai Myaskovsky – Cello Concerto (1991)
• Gustav Holst – Invocation (1993)
• Gavin Bryars – Cello Concerto (1994)
• Benjamin Britten – Cello Symphony (1995)
• William Walton – Cello Concerto (1995)
• Michael Nyman – Concerto for Cello, Saxophone and orchestra (1996)
• Max Bruch – Kol Nidrei (1998)
• Granville Bantock – Sapphic Poem (1999)
• Philip Glass – Cello Concerto No. 1 (2003)
• Andrew Lloyd Webber – Phantasia for violin, cello and orchestra (2004)
• Romantic Cello Concertos (2009)
• Eric Whitacre – "The River Cam" (2012)
• Vivaldi Concertos for Two Cellos (2014)
• Howard Goodall - And the Bridge is Love (2015)

Cello and piano recordings

• Peter Racine Fricker – Cello Sonata (1976)
• John Ireland – Complete Piano Trios (1976)
• Benjamin Britten – Third Suite for Cello (1979)
• Claude Debussy- Cello Sonata (1979)
• John Ireland – Cello Sonata (1979)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff – Cello Sonata (1979)
• Malcolm Arnold – Fantasy for Cello (1986)
• Alan Rawsthorne – Cello Sonata (1986)
• Benjamin Britten – Cello Sonata (1988)
• Sergei Prokofiev – Ballade (1988)
• Dmitri Shostakovich – Cello Sonata (1988)
• Gabriel Fauré – Elegie (1990)
• Charles Villiers Stanford – Cello Sonata No. 2 (1991)
• Frederick Delius – Caprice and Elegy (1993)
• Edvard Grieg – Cello Sonata (1995)
• Delius – Cello Sonata (1995)

Solo cello recordings

• John McCabe (composer) - Partita for Solo Cello (1976)
• Benjamin Britten - Third Suite for Cello (1979)
• Malcolm Arnold - Fantasy for Cello (1986)
• William Walton - Passacaglia for solo Cello
• Benjamin Britten - Tema Sacher (1979)
• J S Bach - Bourrees from Suite No.3
• Trad. Irish - Star of the County Down (1993)

Semi-classical

• Variations with Gary Moore, Barbara Thompson, Rod Argent (1978)
• Oasis, with Peter Skellern and Mary Hopkin (1984)
• Two Worlds, with Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin (2000)

Collections

• Travels with my Cello (1984)
• Pieces (1985)
• Encore! – Travels with my Cello Vol.2 (1986)
• Cello Song (1993)
• English Idyll (1994)
• Cradle Song (1995)
• Cello Moods (1998)
• Elegy (1999)
• Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber (2001)
• Celebration (2001)
• Made in England (2003)
• Unexpected Songs (2006)
• Romantic Cello Concertos (2009)
• Fair Albion – Music by Patrick Hawes (2009)
• The Art of Julian Lloyd Webber (2011)
• Evening Songs (2012)
• A Tale of Two Cellos (2013)

Conducting recording

• And the Bridge is Love - English Music for Strings (2015)

• Travels with My Cello, Julian Lloyd Webber, Pavilion Books Limited, London (1984). ISBN 0-907516-27-0
• Julian Lloyd Webber: Married to Music. The Authorised Biography, Margaret Campbell, Robson Books, London (2001). ISBN 1-86105-400-9.
• Short Sharp Shocks - A Masterclass of the Macabre, ed. Julian Lloyd Webber, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1990, ISBN 978-0-297-81147-3.
• Song of the Birds. Sayings, Stories and Impressions of Pablo Casals, compiled, edited and with a foreword by Lloyd Webber, Robson Books, London (1985 . ISBN 0-86051-305-X
• Numerous editions prepared for publication, including Arnold’s Fantasy for Cello (Faber Music), Rodrigo’s Concierto Como Un Divertimento (Schott) and a series of editions for Faber Music's Young Cellists’ Repertoire (books 1, 2 and 3), followed by two advanced volumes, Recital Repertoire for Cellists (books 1 and 2.)
• Editions of the major cello repertoire, The Julian Lloyd Webber Performing Edition, for Kevin Mayhew Ltd.