Julian Dawes has worked extensively as a composer, accompanist and teacher. He has written scores for many theatre productions including credits at the Royal Court, Ther Everyman Theatre Liverpool, The Riverside Studios, The Arts Theatre, The Watermill Theatre Newbury, and The Bristol Old Vic. His scores for Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle and Edward ll are both scores for these plays with the Brecht Estate in Berlin.
In the concert hall he has written a mandolin concerto, a large body of chamber music for a variety of combinations of instruments, as well as fourteen song-cycles including 'Songs of Ashes', a setting of fifteen poems by the Polish poet, Jerzy Ficowski, and 'I never saw another butterfly' both about the Holocaust. His cantata 'The Death of Moses' and Oratorio 'Ruth', were both premiered in London. In December 2008 a concert at the Wigmore Hall featuring his music was highly acclaimed.
He is Music Advisor to the European Association of Jewish Culture.
Julian Dawes has a wide-ranging and varied creative oeuvre which has found particular vigour in dramatic genres for both instrumental and vocal media. If some of his song cycles and oratorios deal with biblical or historical topics, Dawes' instrumental works offer a window into the lighter, theatrical and more abstract aspects of his expressive palette. Amongst his 20th century English influences are the pastoralism and extended tonality of Herbert Howells, the richness of Walton, the elegant delicacy of Berkeley and the jazzy impetus of Rodney Bennett; wider European influences include the caustic irony of Shostakovich and Kurt Weil and the rhythmic impetus of Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Yet Dawes welds from his influences an individual voice that is distinctive and refreshing, displaying assured craftsmanship and characterful invention (Malcolm Miller -- 2008).
