Dominican-American pianist and keyboardist, improviser, composer and educator from Chicago who has performed classical and jazz repertoire throughout the United States as well as in Spain, Mexico and Belgium. A classically trained artist, Peabody Conservatory graduate, and DePaul University Concerto First Prize Winner, their work has found a home in jazz performance, improvisation and cross-cultural collaboration since developing experimental collaborative programs as a founding member of the Peabody Improvisers Collective.
While at Whitney Young High School in Chicago, they won the DePaul University Concerto Festival First Prize, won Alternate First Place at the Music Teachers National Association Illinois competition, and studied at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, Gijón Piano Festival, Brevard Music Festival and Colburn Piano Festival.
Julián is a Jazz Performance graduate from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, studying with Warren Wolf as a recipient of the Merit School of Music's Alice S. Pfaelzer Tuition-Free Conservatory Blue Ribbon Scholarship for the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Albert and Rosa Silverman Memorial Scholarship and the Douglas and Hilda Perl Goodwin Endowed Piano Scholarship.
Original compositions are central to two projects they direct: the Julián and Friends concert series now in its third year at The Jazz Showcase, and Mamey, a project inspired in Dominican and Haitian music. Mamey completed a Spring South Arts Jazz Tour of the East Coast and will release its debut album in 2025 thanks to a Pathways to Jazz grant, a donor advised fund of the Boulder County Arts Alliance. Julián is a Carrier Records artist, and most recently had their composition Chord Prelude/Moriviví premier at the DiMenna Center for New and Classical Music during the Yarn/Wire Institute Festival in New York. They recently completed a Banff Center for the Arts Jazz and Sonic Arts composition residency and performed as a Chicago Park District´s Night Out in the Parks Art Partner.
Julián has been in the faculty at The Music Offering in Evanston, Illinois and Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center in Chicago, and is a collaborative pianist at the Joffrey Ballet’s Grainger Academy, and well as the host of “The Changes”, a multilingual monthly radio show that presents a mix of local and international jazz innovators, broadcast through Lumpen Radio.