b.1980

Knoxville, TN

Radford University

Director of Choral Activities

Julian conducts music that draws opposites into conversation: sacred and secular, ancient and contemporary, classical and popular, individual and collective. It's a philosophy that took root early. His first musical performance took place on the back of a pew, where as a toddler he played imaginary duets with the church pianist every Sunday. His parents promised piano lessons when his feet could reach the pedals, and at the age of eight, he sat down, stretched as far as he possibly could, and just barely brushed the brass. Lessons began immediately. Decades later, he can easily reach the pedals (and even the keyboard at the same time), but he prefers now to stretch the boundaries of choral music.

Named runner-up for the National Dale Warland Award for Choral Conducting, Julian has taught musicians in elementary classrooms and university concert halls across Florida, Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky, and Massachusetts, most recently in Virginia, where he serves as Director of Choral Activities at Radford University, leading three choral ensembles and teaching courses in conducting, education, and music theory.

Before Radford, Julian spent more than a decade in higher education shaping programs that reflected his artistic curiosity. As Director of Choral Activities at Jacksonville University, he directed the University Singers and Choral Union, taught courses ranging from Conducting to Musical Theatre, and founded Infinitus — a student-led new music choral collective and the first collegiate member of the C4 Network. His JU colleagues nominated him for both the Professor of the Year and Faculty Excellence Awards.

The C4 connection runs deep: Julian was a founding member of Triad: Boston's Choral Collective, one of the pioneering ensembles in that network, and the experience became the seed of his doctoral research. At the University of Kentucky, studying under Jefferson Johnson and Lori Hetzel, he examined in his doctoral dissertation how collectively organized choirs challenge the traditional boundaries between composer, conductor, and ensemble.

At Curry College in Milton, MA, he led two choirs, taught arts electives ranging from Music in Film to Music Theory: Songwriting, and co-designed an interdisciplinary course called Monstrous: Within/Without for Curry's inaugural First Year Inquiry program — earning the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2019. He also holds degrees in conducting and composition from the University of Tennessee, studying with David Stutzenberger, Angela Batey, and Kenneth Jacobs.

Julian's compositions explore the same artistic tensions that define his conducting. A Parable of Choices sets Wilfred Owen’s anti-war poetry against the Genesis story of Abraham and Isaac, creating a musical drama that won the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition. Redemption Mass grafts Erwäge from Bach’s St. John Passion and the Doxology onto the traditional Latin Mass, winning the ACDA Raymond W. Brock Student Composition Contest. The Field (ubi caritas) draws Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, the Ubi caritas hymn, and Leviticus into conversation, earning third place in The American Prize for Professional Choral Composition. The Florida Vocal Association commissioned Clarion Call for their All-State Men's Chorus and Concert Band, and it contrasts texts from Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Other commissions have come from the University of Kentucky, San Jacinto College Choir, First Baptist Church of Huntsville, and the Voices of Jacksonville, among others. His works are regularly featured in the Project:Encore catalog and published by EC Schirmer, the Indianapolis Children's Chorus Publishing House, and MusicSpoke. Performances have stretched from Alabama to Australia.

When he isn't on the podium or at the keyboard, Julian loves discussing theology and politics, making guacamole, watching Star Trek (literally every episode) and RuPaul's Drag Race (all except Sweden and The Switch), spending time in the gym, and most of all, his husband Ariel.