Julian Marshall
Julian Marshall (ARCM, FHEA) is a songwriter, composer, teacher, lecturer, mentor/coach, producer and musician. Following education at Dartington Hall School and the Royal College of Music, he became internationally known as the co-creator (with Kit Hain) of the late 1970s group Marshall Hain, whose single Dancing in the City went platinum in 1978. He was also a member of the band The Flying Lizards, scoring a top- five UK hit with the single Money in 1979. In the 1980s he formed the group Eye to Eye with American songwriter and performer Deborah Berg. The group recorded two classic albums for Warner Brothers produced by Steely Dan producer Gary Katz and a latter-day third album produced by Roxy Music producer Rhett Davies.
During the 1980s and 90s, as well as writing and recording his own music, he produced records, played as a session musician on both sides of the Atlantic and worked in A&R for Boulevard Records in Los Angeles and Polydor Records in London.
Since the early 1990s, he has run his own highly successful teaching, mentoring and coaching practice. Past students include Rosie Lowe, Cosmo Jarvis, Gabriel Stebbing. He has taught and lectured at Dartington College of Arts, Plymouth University, Middlesex University and Dartington International Summer School. From 2010 to 2015 he co-launched and was creative director of London Song Company, an organisation for songwriters offering a range of training and opportunities across a wide stylistic brief.
In addition to running his continuing thriving creative coaching practice, he is Associate Professor of Composition at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) in London.
Composition
As well as the many songs written in collaboration for Marshall Hain and Eye to Eye, Julian has also composed music for film, theatre and the concert hall. This includes Old Enough, an Orion Pictures film directed by Marissa Silver, the short film Still Life directed by Emma George, and the score for the play Shakespeare’s Will at Theatre Clwyd (2010) directed by Emma Lucia.
In more recent years, he turned his attention to writing choral music, composing a cantata for mixed voices, two cellos and mezzo-soprano, Out of the Darkness (for Melanie Pappenheim), a follow-up work, for mixed voices, six cellos and tenor, The Angel in the Forest (for James Gilchrist) and a collection of shorter pieces setting texts by Blake, Keats, Rumi, Tagore and others including a series of Christmas carols setting traditional texts (In the Bleak Midwinter, In Dulci Jubilo and The Holly and the Ivy). See The Library for more details about these and other works.
In 2018 he formed The Rupa Ensemble – an occasional vocal ensemble specialising in the performance of Julian’s small vocal ensemble work.
Following a particular commitment to creating work either setting or inspired by the poetic works of Gertrud Kolmar, and with central focus on her Welten cycle (see Out of the Darkness and The Angel in the Forest, above), Julian formed The Welten Project in summer 2021 as an umbrella name for all these and related work. Please see The Library and Notice Board for details.
Julian is married to glass artist Arabella Marshall. They have two adult children, Gabriel and Solomon and one grandson, Joseph.