A Dominican-American pianist and composer based in Chicago and Baltimore, Julián´s journey started with the Caribbean rhythms of their childhood. Julián started musical studies in the Chicago Children's Choir, and piano studies at age nine, graduating from both the DePaul University Community Music School pre-college program and the Merit School of Music’s Alice S. Pfaelzer Conservatory. A classically trained artist, their work found a home in jazz performance, improvisation, and collaboration.
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.
For the last two years, they have been creating and performing improvisational music for the ballet and modern dance program classes at Peabody and is a board member of the Peabody Improvisers Collective at the Conservatory, the only improvised music student organization on campus. They enjoy teaching immensely and have had a private piano studio for the duration of their studies in Baltimore.
One of their latest projects, Julián and Friends, a performance series created to celebrate and platform composer-instrumentalists, debuted at Chicago´s venerable Jazz Showcase in the summer of 2022 and has returned to the club as a monthly series as of summer 2023.
They are also working on their Mamey Afro-Caribbean project, enriching the experience through cultural research and musical exchange.