Julian Lloyd Webber OBE (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist, conductor and broadcaster, a former principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the founder of the In Harmony music education programme.

Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer and music educator 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.^[1][2] He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1968 and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973.^[3]

Lloyd Webber made his professional debut as a cellist 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 conductors Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Mark Elder, Andrew Davis, Charles Mackerras and Esa-Pekka Salonen, pianists Clifford Curzon and Murray Perahia as well as Stéphane Grappelli, Elton John and Cleo Laine. He was described in The Strad as the "doyen of British cellists".^[4]

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),^[5] 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 as "beyond any rival" by Edward Greenfield in Gramophone magazine,^[6] He has also made several recordings of shorter pieces for Universal Classics including Made in England, Cello Moods, Cradle Song and English Idyll.

Lloyd Webber has 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, 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 Glass' Orange Mountain label in September 2005.

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

In May 2009, Lloyd Webber was elected President of the Elgar Society in succession to Sir Adrian Boult, Lord Menuhin, and Richard Hickox.^[7]

On 28 April 2014, Lloyd Webber announced his retirement from public performance as a cellist because of a herniated disc in his neck which reduced the power in his bow arm.^[8] His final public performance as a cellist was on 2 May 2014 at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, with the English Chamber Orchestra.

In September 2014, the charity Live Music Now announced Lloyd Webber as its public spokesman.^[9]

In July 2015 Lloyd Webber was appointed Principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

In 2016 Lloyd Webber scripted and presented 'Classic Cellists at the BBC' for BBC TV^[10] and in 2019, to commemorate the centenary of the first performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto in October 1919, Lloyd Webber scripted and presented 'Music in the Air: 100 years of Elgar's Cello Concerto' for Classic FM.^[11]

In 2021 Lloyd Webber presented and scripted a five-part series for Classic FM in which he chose "30 under 30 of today's finest young musicians at a time when it has never been more difficult for them to show their talents on stage".^[12][13] In November 2021 Sky Arts screened the TV special "Classic FM's Rising Stars with Julian Lloyd Webber".^[14] In July 2022 Lloyd Webber made a further selection of 30 Rising Stars together with Classic FM^[15] and another Sky Arts special was shown in November 2022.^[16] A third series of Rising Stars was announced by Classic FM in March 2023^[17] and broadcast on 13 November 2023 ^[18] In November 2023 Lloyd Webber was presented with the London Cello Society's Lifetime Achievement Award^[19]

Demonstrating his long involvement with music education,^[20] he formed the Music Education Consortium with James Galway and Evelyn Glennie in 2003. As a result of successful and continued lobbying by the Consortium, on 21 November 2007, the UK government announced an infusion of £332 million for music education.^[21] 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^[22] campaign against the implementation of the English Baccalaureate which proposed to remove arts subjects from the core curriculum. In February 2013 the government withdrew its plans. Lloyd Webber has represented the arts 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.

Lloyd Webber was part of the expert panel which produced the UK government's Model Music Curriculum in March 2021.^[23]

He is a patron of the charity Quartet of Peace, which supports the further education of talented young South African musicians ^{[citation needed]}, honorary patron of the Nucleo Project and an inaugural ambassador of the London Music Fund. He is also the Patron of Guildford County School and a Patron of the Purcell School^[24]

Lloyd Webber was appointed principal of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in July 2015.^[25] During his five-year tenure he oversaw the move to a new £57 million building on the Birmingham City University City Centre Campus and the merger of the Conservatoire with the Birmingham School of Acting. In September 2017 the Conservatoire received the Royal status by Queen Elizabeth II. In September 2020, in recognition of his tenure, Lloyd Webber was appointed Emeritus Professor of Performing Arts by Birmingham City University.^{[26][27][28] [29]}

Lloyd Webber received the Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in 1998^[30] and a Classic FM Red Award for outstanding services to music in 2005.^[31] He won the Best British Classical Recording at the 1986 Brit Awards for his recording of Elgar's Cello Concerto with Sir Yehudi Menuhin and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.^[31] 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.^[31]

He is vice president of the Delius Society and a patron of Music in Hospitals.^[31] He has been an ambassador for the Prince's Trust for more than thirty years and a patron of CLIC Sargent for more than thirty years.^[31]

In May 2001, he was granted the first busker's licence on the London Underground.^[32]

In September 2009 he joined the board of governors of the Southbank Centre.^[33] He was the Foundling Museum's Handel Fellow for 2010. He was the only classical musician chosen to play at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony.^[31]

On 16 April 2014 Lloyd Webber received the Incorporated Society of Musicians Distinguished Musician Award.^[34]

Lloyd Webber was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to music.^[35]

In 1974, aged 23, Lloyd Webber married Celia Ballantyne, a marriage that lasted 15 years.^[36] In 1989 he married Zohra Mahmoud Ghazi, a great niece of Mohammed Zahir Shah, king of Afghanistan, with whom he had a son, David. His third marriage was to French-Algerian Kheira Bourahla. In 2009 he married fellow cellist Jiaxin Cheng.^[37] The couple have one daughter, Jasmine Orienta.^[38]

He is a lifelong supporter of Leyton Orient football club in east London.^[39][40][41]

• Travels with My Cello, Julian Lloyd Webber, Pavilion Books, 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 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, Kevin Mayhew Ltd.