Biography Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".
Early life
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. Lloyd Webber was a scholar at the Royal College of Music in London and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973. He 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.
Work
Lloyd Webber has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, including Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti and Esa-Pekka Salonen as well as Stéphane Grappelli, Elton John, Cleo Laine and Eric Whitacre.
Lloyd Webber has made many recordings, including 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, which was described by Gramophone magazine as "beyond any rival". He has also recorded several CDs of short pieces for Universal Classics including Made in England, Cello Moods, Cradle Song and English Idyll: "It would be difficult to find better performances of this kind of repertoire anywhere on records of today or yesterday or tomorrow" - Gramophone.
Lloyd Webber has given more than 50 works their premiere recordings and has inspired 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). Recent concert performances have included four further works composed for Julian - 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.
Lloyd Webber's more recent recordings include Phantasia, which is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and features the violinist Sarah Chang, The Art of Julian Lloyd Webber (2011) and Evening Songs (2012).
Instrument
Lloyd Webber plays the Barjansky Stradivarius cello, dated c.1690.
Other
Lloyd Webber is also greatly involved in music education and formed the "Music Education Consortium" with James Galway and Evelyn Glennie in 2003. On 21 November 2007, the UK government announced an infusion of £332 million for music education which resulted from successful lobbying by the Consortium. In 2008, the British Government invited Lloyd Webber to be Chairman of its In Harmony project which is based on the Venezuelan social programme El Sistema. The government- commissioned Henley Review of Music Education (2011) reported that “there is no doubt that they (the In Harmony projects) have delivered life-changing experiences”. In July 2011 maestro José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema in Venezuela, recognised In Harmony as part of the El Sistema worldwide network. Since then, the programme is being called In Harmony • Sistema England. In November 2011 the British government announced it would roll out 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 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 was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1994 and has received honorary doctorates from both the University of Hull and Thames Valley University.
In May 2001, he was granted the first busker's licence on the London Underground.
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.
He is also a 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.
In September 2009 he joined the Board of Governors of the Southbank Centre. He was the Foundling Museum's Handel Fellow for 2010. He is known to be a lifelong supporter of Leyton Orient football club.The composer Herbert Howells was his Godfather.
Personal life
Lloyd Webber has one son, David (born 1992, Hammersmith, London) from his marriage to Zohra Mahmoud Ghazi, a great niece of the Afghan King Zahir Shah. He married fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng in 2009. and they have one daughter, Jasmine Orienta, who was born on June 14, 2011.