Julian Wachner

Biography

Julian Wachner was born in 1969 in Hollywood, CA into a musical household—his mother, Mary Spire, was a pianist, and his former stepfather, Robert Cole, was a conductor. He began cello and piano lessons at age 4 at the University of Southern California, and from age 9 to 13, Wachner studied composition in New York at the Saint Thomas Choir School under Gerre Hancock.

Wachner later attended the Boston University College of Fine Arts, where he studied with Lukas Foss, Theodore Antoniou, David Hoose and Marjorie Merryman. While a student there, he was appointed the University Organist and Choirmaster at Marsh Chapel. He graduated in 1996 with a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition and orchestral conducting and taught as an Assistant Professor of Sacred Music at BU's School of Theology. From 1999 to 2002, he directed the Young Artists Composition Program at the Tanglewood Institute.

During his tenure at BU, Wachner also headed multiple Boston-area arts institutions. In 1995, he and Peter Watchorn founded the Boston Bach Ensemble, a period instrument orchestra and choir. Their recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, released in 2001, helped launch Watchorn's Musica Omnia label in 1998. Wachner also served as Director of the Back Bay Chorale, releasing a CD of works by Benjamin Britten with the ensemble in 2001. From 1996 to 2006, he was Director of the Providence Singers in Providence, RI.

Wachner moved to Montreal in 2001 to become an Associate Professor at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, a post he held until 2011. As Associate Professor, Wachner served as the principal conductor of Opera McGill and occasionally conducted the McGill Symphony and Contemporary Music Ensemble. He also founded and directed the Schulich Singers, a chamber choir that performs repertoire spanning all musical periods. While in Montreal, Wachner also founded and directed the Bach-Academie de Montréal (now the Montreal Bach Festival) and served as Director of Music of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul.

In 2008, Wachner returned to the United States to direct the Washington Chorus. The Chorus released a CD of Christmas carols in 2010, featuring several arrangements by Wachner himself. Under Wachner's direction, the Chorus also performed with the Rolling Stones in the final concert of their "50 and Counting" tour in 2013.

Wachner was appointed Director of Music and the Arts at Trinity Wall Street in 2011, placing him at the podium of both the church's choir and baroque orchestra. In his first season there, he established NOVUS NY, a contemporary music ensemble. His 2012 recording of Handel's Israel in Egypt with the Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra was nominated for a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

Sacred music

Many of Wachner's earlier published works were liturgical in purpose, written during his tenure as University Organist and Choirmaster at Marsh Chapel in the early 1990s. He first came to public attention with Canticles (1991, revised 1994), a work for chorus and orchestra written as a response to the Gulf War and as a companion piece to Fauré's Requiem. Consisting of five movements, the work features settings of Biblical texts that bookend three poems about the atrocities of war by Shelli Jankowski-Smith.

These Biblical themes were later expanded upon in his first symphony, titled Incantations and Lamentations, which was commissioned and premiered by the Back Bay Chorale in 2001. Like Canticles, Incantations and Lamentations is a work in five movements for chorus and orchestra. In his program notes, theologian Wesley Wildman writes that the work concerns the "superficial opposition between worship and indictment of God ... and their breathtaking merger in the context of the Biblical story of the Babylonian exile." This analysis is echoed in Matthew Guerrieri's liner notes for the Naxos recording of the Symphony: "It undercuts the confidence of Psalm 103 ('I will praise the Lord as long as I live') with the despair and frustration of Psalm 137 ('by the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept')." Canticles and Symphony No. 1 were later recorded by the Trinity Wall Street Choir and NOVUS NY and included in Complete Choral Works, Vol. 2, released on Naxos in 2014.

Secular music

Outside of the realm of sacred music, Wachner has also composed secular song cycles, including Sometimes I Feel Alive (1998) and Rilke Songs (2001). The former, which Wachner composed at the Tanglewood Music Center while conducting the BUTI Young Artists Chorus, sets three erotic poems by E. E. Cummings: "there is a moon sole", "as is the sea marvelous" and "somewhere I have never travelled". The latter sets six poems about animals by Rainer Maria Rilke: "Die Gazelle", "Der Panther", "Die Flamingos", "Der Schwan", "Schwarze Katze" and "Das Einhorn". Both works were recorded by the Elora Festival Singers and included in Complete Choral Works, Vol. 1, released on Naxos in 2010.

While director of Opera McGill, Wachner premiered Evangeline Revisited, an opera in two acts based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline. Written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1755 Expulsion of the Acadians, the opera features a French libretto by Université de Montréal professor Alexis Nouss and blends multiple musical styles, including jazz, blues, Puccini-esque opera, fugue and cabaret. The role of Evangeline is split between two sopranos: one who represents Longfellow's vision, and one who serves as a contemporary commentator. The opera received its US premiere at New York City Opera's VOX Festival in 2010.

Come, My Dark-Eyed One, commissioned and premiered by the Back Bay Chorale in 2009, weaves together poems by John Clare, Emily Dickinson and Sara Teasdale in a libretto compiled by soprano Marie-Ève Munger. Originally a companion piece for Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem, the work charts the "life and death of two lovers" in eight movements.

In 2012, Wachner collaborated with visual artist Erika Harrsch to create a work for The River to River Festival. The resulting installation, titled Inverted Sky, featured a solo flute score with live electronic processing. This accompanied a collection of kites built from various world currencies that were released into the air in time with the music.

Style

Wachner has described his music as lying between the "between the Apollonian world of church music and the academy and the Dionysian world of opera and the stage." In the liner notes of his Complete Choral Works, Vol. 1, he writes of this duality:

For me, I always found this a difficult decision to make, and thus found myself living and working in the no-man’s land between pure post-Impressionism and post-Expressionism—composing music that was criticized as "too simple" from one camp and "too complex" from the other. As I have always considered my compositional process and philosophy to be aligned with the assimilators of previous eras, (Bach, Stravinsky and Foss come to mind)—I have found equal inspiration from strict form or unbridled chaos; tonality, modality or post-tonality; and lyricism, pointillism or minimalism—I find it crucial to have as sweeping a palette of creative possibilities at my disposal as possible, believing that this desire is no different from any composer of the past.

Beth Morrison, an opera producer and longtime collaborator of Wachner's, says of his compositional style: "I see his work as very Americana, firmly following in the steps of Copland and Bernstein." His creative output has also been noted for its multifaceted nature, as in Guerrieri's notes: "Wachner's eclecticism is uncommonly deep, a reflection of his multivalent career: a virtuoso organist, an omnivorous conductor, an exploratory composer; a church musician with a dramatic sense of the sacred and a concert-hall veteran with a reverence for the dramatic."

Awards

Discography

This is a list of recordings by Julian Wachner, either as composer or conductor.