Marianne Schofield is a founder member of The Hermes Experiment and is in high demand as an exponent of the double bass in contemporary settings, as a chamber musician, as an orchestral player, and as an improviser and arranger.

Marianne is committed to presenting new music in an engaging way and, alongside her projects with The Hermes Experiment, she is an artistic board member of Riot Ensemble, London’s award-winning new music collective.  She has performed the premieres of many new solo works for double bass, including solo performances at Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Arctic Arts Festival Norway and MaerzMusik Berlin.

A dedicated chamber musician, Marianne has performed with the Haffner Wind Ensemble, GBSR duo, the Solem Quartet, the Navarra Quartet, United Strings of Europe, Chroma, and Manchester Collective. She also performs regularly with UK orchestras including Aurora Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, English National Opera, London Mozart Players, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sinfonia of London, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Marianne is active as an arranger of music; she has arranged over a dozen pieces for The Hermes Experiment, and recently made a new arrangement for Héloïse Werner’s latest album. She also made many arrangements of traditional folk tunes as a member of the band The Coach House Company.

Marianne has been involved in music education at many different levels, and has enjoyed coaching and working with undergraduate students from the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, as well as helping to devise the Virtual Composition Project, The Hermes Experiment’s lockdown secondary school music project. She has also worked on learning and engagement projects organised by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Hallé, Wigmore Hall, and the Multi-Story Orchestra.

Marianne is an alumna of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, where she studied academic Music. She completed a postgraduate degree in double bass performance at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she was taught by Graham Mitchell, Dominic Seldis and Chi-chi Nwanoku, graduating with distinction and the Eugene Cruft Prize for double bass. Marianne continued her studies in Manchester after being accepted onto the year-long Hallé Orchestra/RNCM String Leadership Scheme, where she was mentored by Roberto Carrillo-Garcia, Jiri Hudec and Ronan Dunne.

Marianne is hugely grateful to the individuals and organisations that generously supported her studies; in particular the Cambridge Bursary Scheme, the Headley Trust, and the Greenbank Scholarship (RAM).