Julius P. Williams

Julius P. Williams is an award-winning conductor, composer, recording artist, educator, author, and pianist. He was named one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year. His career has taken him from his native New York to musical venues around the globe, and he has been involved in virtually every musical genre. Maestro Williams’ Carnegie Hall conducting debut was with the “Symphony Saint Paulia" inaugural concerts in New York. He has conducted American orchestras in Dallas, Buffalo, New Jersey, Oakland, Hartford, New Haven, Akron, Vermont, Knoxville, Sacramento, Paducah, Norwalk, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Savannah, as well as the Harlem Symphony, Color of Music Festival Orchestra, and the New Works Orchestra. He was Music Director of the Washington Symphony (1998-2003), which was the official orchestra of Washington, DC. He was also the conductor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning performance of Anthony Davis’s opera Central Park Five, originally premiering and preparing the work for Trilogy: An Opera Company.

Williams’ past positions include artistic director of the Music Festival of the Costa del Sol in Spain and artistic director of the School of Choral Studies of the New York State Summer School of the Arts, where he served for ten seasons. He has conducted on tour with the Oberlin Conservatory Opera and the Cleveland Opera Theater, receiving rave reviews for the performances of the opera Harriet Tubman. He was a guest conductor with the OneWorld Festival Orchestra in Virginia and on Labor Day 2019, he conducted a gala performance with the Dallas Symphony at the Black Academy Third Annual Riverfest Festival in Dallas, Texas. He has served as assistant conductor to the late Maestro Lucas Foss with The Brooklyn Philharmonic and with the American Symphony in New York. He is currently artistic director and conductor of the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra in Boston and music director and conductor of Trilogy: An Opera Company in New Jersey.

Williams served as Composer in Residence with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Composer In Residence Project (2018-20). He also serves as a cover (understudy) conductor to the Boston Pops Orchestra (BSO) in Boston and has served as a cover conductor to the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Most recently, he was the conductor of the Academy Award-eligible film Sky Blossom. He was a guest conductor of the Color of Music Festival in South Carolina featuring the wonderful artist Vanessa Williams. In 2022, he appeared with the Inner City Youth Orchestra at the League of American Orchestras National Conference and also with the National Chorale and Orchestra at David Geffen Hall in New York. His recent past season included performances as guest conductor of the Isabella Gardner Museum Boston Series, the Color of Music Festival Orchestra in Sacramento, the Monteux Festival in Maine, a gala performance with the group “Sweet Honey in the Rock” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the world premiere of the opera Edmonia at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and on Michigan Public Television. He also served as an adjudicator in New York for Opera America and as a commentator with the Boston Lyric Opera.

Internationally, Maestro Williams has performed and recorded with the Prague Radio Symphony, the Moscow Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil José Joaquín de Olmedo in Ecuador, the Principal Military Orchestra of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, the Dvorak Symphony Orchestra, the Volvodanksa Symphony of Serbia, the Dubrovnik Symphony of Croatia, the Brno State Philharmonic, the Bohuslav-Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Music Festival of the Costa del Sol in Spain.

A prolific composer, Maestro Williams has created works for virtually every genre of contemporary classical performance, including opera, ballet, orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus and solo voice, dance, musical theatre, and film. His music has been performed by countless symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Hartford Symphony, and many others around the world. This season, the musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra will perform his "Songs for My Culture for Chamber Orchestra" in November 2024. He has also served as Composer-in-Residence of Connecticut’s Nutmeg Ballet Company, which premiered his ballet, Cinderella. The opera Guinevere was performed at the Aspen Music Festival and the Dubrovnik Music Festival in Croatia. He composed the score for the film What Color is Love? and also scored the theatrical production In Dahomey. His cantata A Journey to Freedom for the Reston Chorale and Festival Orchestra in Virginia was recorded on his album Somewhere Far Away in 2009 on the Albany Record label. He composed the music Dreams for the Boston Children’s Choir’s “Raising the Roof” concert, which was televised nationally and recorded on their 2010 CD. He was recently commissioned to write the music for Those Heroes Who Healed a Nation for the dedication of the Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial, performed in 2022 by the Boston Children’s Chorus and at the 2022 Boston Pops July 4th Spectacular, where the world premiere orchestral version was performed on national television with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Keith Lockhart. He also wrote the music for the 100th anniversary of the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, a composition for jazz ensemble, dance, and choir.

Williams’ discography includes the critically acclaimed Symphonic Brotherhood, a collection of African American symphonic music, Shades of Blue, The New American Romanticism, Somewhere Far Away, Places in Time, The American Soloist, and Midnight Tolls, all available on the Albany Records label, Moments of Arrival on Centaur Records and The Bird That Wants to Fly, a children’s opera on Naxos/Roven Records. In 2024, his newest recordings Alone/Together: The Dreams & Diversity of the American Composer and A Legacy of African American Classical Spirit were released on the Albany Record Parma Label.

In addition to his conducting and composing careers, Williams maintains a demanding schedule of speaking engagements, consulting, and academics. A dedicated educator, Williams has served on the faculties of Wesleyan University, The University of Hartford, and The University of Vermont. He has been visiting conductor of the orchestra at Skidmore College in Saratoga, NY, affiliate artist-teacher of composition at Purchase College of the State University of New York, co-director of Videmus Records, and visiting associate professor and Jessie Ball Dupont Scholar at Shenandoah University and Conservatory in Virginia. He is presently Professor of Composition and Artistic Director/Conductor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and Music Director of Trilogy: An Opera Company.

Julius Williams’ educational consulting and speaking engagements have included serving as president of the judge at the International Wind Band Contest for the “City of Valencia” in Spain in 2024. He has also been an artist at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Russia, and the Shanghai Conservatory in China, where he also served as the first American adjudicator of the Rivers Music Competition. He is immediate past president of the International Conductors Guild, serving as president for four years and co-chair of the League of American Orchestra's Conductors Constituency. Additionally, he has served on the advisory panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and most recently in 2023 (USA) on the adjudication committee for the Fulbright Awards, as an adjudicator for ASCAP, educational consultant to the Norwalk Symphony in Connecticut, and guest curator for the Sirius XM program “Living American”.

Julius P. Williams is the recipient of numerous awards for musical and academic achievement, including an honorary doctorate from Keene State College in New Hampshire, Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year, The Detroit Symphony “Emerging Composer Award”, the Gracie Allen Documentary Award, the Distinguished Medal of Artistic Achievement of the Ecuador Youth Symphony Orchestra Foundation, the Honorary Distinguished Alumnus Award of Langston University, Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award 2017,tThe National Culture of the Arts Award of the Association of Foreign Language Teachers of New York, and ASCAP Awards in Composition for the past forty years. Julius P. Williams has been featured on national television as a featured artist profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning. A sample of artists who have performed with Maestro Williams include Dionne Warwick, Vanessa Williams, Daryl Coley, Florence Quiver, Erykah Badu, Jennifer Holliday, Tremaine Hawkins, Paula Cole, Richard Smallwood, Larry Klein, Donnie Ray Albert, The Clark Sisters, Charley Pride, Charlie Daniels, Burt Bacharach, Myrna Summers, and Martina Arroyo.