Julia Glenn

Boston native Julia Glenn has been called "remarkable," "gripping," and "a brilliant soloist" by the New York Times and performs internationally on modern and baroque violins. She recently joined the Naumburg-winning Lydian String Quartet and the faculty of Brandeis University after teaching for three years at the Tianjin Juilliard School, where she served as violin and music theory faculty and was a member of the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble.

Ms. Glenn has performed on stages including Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Sanders Theatre, Jordan Hall, the Beijing Recital Hall, Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts, and Shanghai Concert Hall. She has appeared with groups and artists including the New York New Music Ensemble, ACRONYM, Cantata Profana, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Boston Artists Ensemble, the Shanghai Camerata, Soloists of New England, and members of the Juilliard, Ysaÿe, Muir, and Shanghai String Quartets. In January of 2016 she gave the world premiere of Milton Babbitt’s violin concerto to critical acclaim; her article on the work was published in 2022 in Contemporary Music Review.  

With a deep interest in exploring and sharing the music and culture of China, Julia enjoys drawing on her backgrounds in phonology and Chinese language to open up new avenues in perception and performance. Her dissertation was titled “Hearing in Tone: A Phonetic Approach to the Analysis and Performance of Chinese Contemporary Music.” The recipient of Juilliard’s 2019 John Erksine Faculty Prize, she has also received awards and support for her work from Tianjin Juilliard and Brandeis University. She has presented talks and lecture-performances at the Harvard Shanghai Center, Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theatre, Harvard University, Shanghai Conservatory, Beijing Central Conservatory, and Juilliard. Her forthcoming solo album "The Road" features new and recent works by Chinese and Chinese-speaking composers.

Ms. Glenn has previously recorded for Parma, Spice Classics Records, and Swan Studios. She is a 2018 graduate of Juilliard’s C.V. Starr doctoral program, where she worked with Joseph Lin, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Cynthia Roberts. In 2013 she obtained her master’s from New England Conservatory with James Buswell, and in 2012 her bachelor’s in linguistics magna cum laude from Harvard University. She plays a 2018 violin by Benjamin Ruth and a 2008 baroque-d violin by Andrew Ryan.

photo by Christopher Huang