Julian Bream

Bio

Julian Bream (1933–2020) was an English guitarist and lutenist who played a central role in reviving the classical guitar as a concert instrument in Britain after World War II. Trained at the Royal College of Music, he toured widely, recorded extensively for RCA, and commissioned new works from composers such as Benjamin Britten, William Walton and Lennox Berkeley. Equally at home on lute, Bream explored early music and collaborated with tenor Peter Pears and the Julian Bream Consort. His recordings of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, as well as twentieth-century Spanish and Latin-American guitar music, remain benchmarks. He received the OBE in 1964 and was made a CBE in 1981.