Julius Williams is an award-winning conductor and composer who was named one of Musical
America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2022. His career has taken him from his
native New York to musical venues around the globe, and has involved virtually every
musical genre. He has conducted American orchestras in Dallas, Buffalo, New Haven,
Savannah, Hartford, Sacramento, Tulsa, Knoxville, Oklahoma, Vermont, Akron, Paducah,
and Norwalk, as well as the Vermont Philharmonic, the Harlem Symphony, the Washington
Symphony and many European orchestras. He also serves as a cover (understudy) conductor
to the Boston Pops Orchestra (Boston Symphony Orchestra) in Boston. This season he
conducted the premiere of Edmonia at Interlochen and on public television in Michigan.
He is currently artistic director of the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra in
Boston at the Berklee College of Music and music director and conductor of Trilogy An
Opera Company in New Jersey. From 2019 to 2023 he was President of the International
Conductors Guild. He is currently Co-Chair of the Conductors Constituency committee
at the League of American Orchestras and has recently served as guest curator for the
Sirius XM Radio Program 'Living American’.
A prolific composer, his music has been performed by countless symphony orchestras
including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the
St Louis Symphony, and many other orchestras around the world.
Julius 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”, which are
all available on the Albany Records label. “Moments of Arrival” was released by Centaur Records,
and “The Bird That Wants to Fly”, an opera for children, by 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 Records Label.