Julian Pellicano—Conductor

Conductor Julian Pellicano is currently on the faculty of the conservatory at the Longy School of Music where he serves as Artistic Director of Large Ensembles and Principal Conductor of the Longy Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared as guest conductor with the Tuscaloosa Symphony, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and during the 2009-2010 season he was invited by soprano Susan Narucki to lead performances of Pascal Dusapin’s chamber opera “To Be Sung” at the University of California San Diego with the contemporary music group Palimpsest and the Kallisti Ensemble. He was also one of thirteen conductors selected by Kurt Masur to participate in the 2009 Kurt Masur Conducting Seminar in New York City working with the Manhattan School of Music Orchestra.

Mr. Pellicano completed a fellowship in conducting at the Yale School of Music where he was assistant conductor of the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Shinik Hahm and assisted guest conductors including Sir Neville Marriner, Helmuth Rilling, Reinbert De Leeuw, Peter Oundjian and Jeremy Silver. Mr. Pellicano has led numerous concerts at Yale, conducting the Philharmonia in a wide range of repertoire. As conductor of the New Music New Haven concert series he performed many faculty, student, and guest composers’ works, including a notable concert of the music of John Adams with Mr. Adams in attendance and a recording of Ingram Marshall’s Peaceable Kingdom for New World Records (Released 2010). A recipient of the 2008 Presser Music Award, Mr. Pellicano was afforded the opportunity to travel, visiting several major orchestras in the US and Europe to observe several weeks of rehearsals and concerts with world-renowned conductors Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, David Robertson, John Adams and Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 2007 Mr. Pellicano conducted the American premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Drei Geistliche Konzerte and also received a fellowship from the Centre Acanthes in Paris to undertake an intensive course of study with conductor/composer Peter Eötvös and conductor Zsolt Nagy while conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.

On faculty at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Mr. Pellicano has been conductor of the Norfolk New Music Ensemble since 2008 in collaboration with composer Martin Bresnick and pianist Lisa Moore, and has worked with New Paths, New Music, a New York based organization promoting cultural exchange through contemporary music. Their first tour resulted in five concerts in Turkey featuring music by American composers (Steven Stucky, Pieter Snapper, Michael Ellison, Spencer Topel, Eugene Birman). Mr. Pellicano has also served as assistant conductor of the New Britain Symphony (CT) under maestro Jesse Levine where he developed and conducted educational concerts and gave pre-concert lectures.

Julian Pellicano holds a BA in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, degrees in percussion from the Peabody Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden where his teachers were Jonathan Haas and Anders Loguin, respectively. He also holds an MM in percussion from the Yale School of Music where he studied with Robert van Sice and an MM from Yale in orchestral conducting studying under Shinik Hahm.

Principal conducting teachers have included Shinik Hahm, Per Andersberg and Dr. Harlan Parker. He has worked in masterclasses with Kurt Masur, Carl St. Clair, Peter Eötvös, and Zsolt Nagy. Awards include two stipends from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Yale’s Phillip F. Nelson Award and the Presser Music Award.