Dr Chris Marshall

Dr Chris Marshall is Associate Professor in Professional Development at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, helping students plan their futures, untangling the business of music and preparing for successful portfolio careers. He has devised and taught modules on many aspects of professional development and music production at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervised at MA and PhD level. He has published a chapter on the commissioning fund for the BBC Proms during the 1960s-1980s and has presented his research on the BBC and the music it has commissioned at conferences in the UK and abroad.

Chris is a trustee of the Ludlow Philharmonic Prize Fund (2003-present), was a trustee of the Leicester International Music Festival (2012-2018), and a member of Live Music Now! Midlands Committee (2004-2006). He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Fellow of the Independent Society of Musicians.

Since 1981 Chris worked at or for the BBC. He was a Producer at Radio 3 in London, working as Senior Producer on the Proms in the 1988 and 1989 seasons, before moving to Pebble Mill in Birmingham. During this period he produced the CBSO’s broadcasts with Sir Simon Rattle, including the opening concert from Symphony Hall and the Towards the Millennium Festival; Radio 3’s coverage of the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals; and international chamber music series from Pebble Mill: ‘The most exciting concert series outside London’ (Andrew Porter, The Observer). Chris produced a day-long celebration of Leonard Bernstein, live from New York. He left the BBC in 1999 to become a director of the independent radio production company Classic Arts, the most successful indie making programmes for BBC Radio 3, producing many dozens of editions of Private Passions as well as developing a succession of morning programmes: CD Masters, Classical Collection and Essential Classics. He also produced series on performing and producing opera, Elgar and the Halle, music and spirituality, and evening-long events on Thomas Beecham and Michael Tippett. Chris was educated at Reading University (BA, Music) Goldsmiths (MMus, Music Theory and Analysis) and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (PhD). He studied the flute with Trevor Wye and Edward Beckett.