Crown Heights Groupmuse

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Duo No. 2 in Bb Major
Manuel Ponce - Sonata a Duo

BIOS:

Violinist Julia Danitz has recently received her Doctorate of Musical Arts at CUNY Graduate Center, and is a graduate of The Juilliard School with a Masters of Music. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at Columbia University, where she was enrolled in the rigorous dual degree Columbia-Juilliard exchange program, majoring in Political Science. Her violin tutelage includes noteworthy professors such as Daniel Phillips, Yoko Takebe Gilbert, Masao Kawasaki, and Li Lin.

She leads a multifaceted performing career which has led her to diverse concert venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, to on the screen and behind the scenes on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Julia has collaborated with Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste on various projects.

She has performed at many prestigious summer music festivals including the Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival USA, Aspen Music Festival and School, Lake George Music Festival and Bowdoin International Music Festival. At Tanglewood she had the privilege to collaborate with the iconic Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at the Seiji Ozawa Hall. In the summer 2022, Julia received 2nd place at the Ravel Prix competition for her performance of the Ravel Duo at Fontainebleau School of Music and Fine Arts in Fontainebleau, France. She was also a finalist in the 2022 Cadenza Contest, an online music competition.

Julia maintains a musicians collective, Sonora Collective, which performs living composers works as well as contemporary and underrepresented repertoire in the classical music canon in unique and artistic spaces in New York City.

To learn more about Julia, visit www.juliadanitz.

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Originally from Uniondale, New York, 26-year old first-generation Filipino-American Jay Julio is a multi-instrumentalist, teacher, and composer-arranger based in NYC. Jay is the Assistant Principal Violist of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra, substitute violist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, the Dallas, Memphis, Charleston, and Virginia Symphonies, and has been invited to play with the New York Pops, the American Composers Orchestra, the Metropolis Ensemble, and PROTESTRA. Recent appearances include solo turns with the Ocala Symphony, the Marquette Symphony, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and chamber music performances on the TIME SPANS Festival with the Talea Ensemble, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition‘s Arts in Action Festival, and on tour with Norman Menzales' Sampaguita Filipino Flute Project.

They have shared the stage with Broadway singers, pop stars, and classical music’s hottest young talents in performances from Washington D.C. to the Philippines, and can be heard on violin and viola on Captured Tracks, Fiendish Endeavor, and Broadway Records. They appeared in the official collaborative music video for Major Lazer & Marcus Mumford’s single, Lay Your Head On Me, released as a fundraiser for COVID-19 research efforts, performed with Nigerian artist Burna Boy in his Hollywood Bowl debut, and have played behind Audra McDonald on Carnegie Hall’s Great Artists series. Their 2023 debut solo recording of Ann Southam's Re-tuning is forthcoming from the American Viola Society.

Jay has attended the Music Academy of the West, Orpheus@Mannes, the New York String Orchestra Seminar and the Aspen, Pacific, Thy, Spoleto and Lake Tahoe music festivals; they have also spent summers at the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program and the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute as a Young Artist of Color. They have served as a Teaching Fellow at the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program and as substitute viola & chamber music faculty at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division. They have coached the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, have been on faculty at the Stony Brook University Chamber Strings Camp, and hold teaching positions at the Interlochen Center for the Arts Viola Intensive and Midori and Friends.

A prizewinner in national competitions held by the National Federation of Music Clubs and the Music Teachers National Association and recipient of a 2019 Juilliard Career Grant, Jay is indebted to the Virtu Foundation and the American Viola Society for their past support through instrument and bow loans.

For more information, visit jayjulio.com.