Marinus Verkuil received his first music lessons from his father who was a music teacher. He studied at the Stedelijk Conservatorium in Groningen School Music and Orchestral Conducting. After he finished these studies in 1983 and 1985 he started to teach music on a secondary school. There he developed a new curriculum for music, which also included the performance of school musicals each year. In the year 200 he was invited as core teacher for the discipline of Methodic and Didactic at the Prince Claus Conservatoire in Groningen. In 2003 he was appointed as head of the School Music Department of the same institute and is also a member of the Management Team of the conservatoire. In that function he is responsible for Young Talent Coaching, Innovation and Education. In 2009 he finished his Master Studies at the department of the Master of Education in the Arts, where he is one of the core teachers now. In 2005 he took the initiative for an international Intensive Project, which stimulated the development of an international perspective a lot in that department.  
In the past decades he also was a conductor of a big variety of choirs and orchestras and he was active as a workshop leader and music advisor in the north of The Netherlands. At this moment he is the conductor of the Groninger Mozart Ensemble, a choir and orchestra that gives concerts in the country and abroad.