Julie Johnson, flute instructor, has brought her talent and love for the flute to almost every type of venue and genre imaginable. Performing classical, jazz, blues and world music in concert halls, cathedrals, horse barns, and jazz clubs, her work has shown that there is a place for the flute in everything.
Instructing all levels of students from middle school to adulthood, Julie incorporates many different musical styles and techniques into teaching and playing. She experiments with new ways to play the flute and uses those techniques to help students improve tone quality, technique, and musicality. She is passionate about the idea of breaking down walls of genre between performers and audiences by uncovering thematic, melodic, and other relationships between pieces from disparate genres and then bringing them together with her own distinct sound and approach.
Julie has played with orchestras such as the Rome Festival Orchestra and the Duluth/Superior Orchestra and at the 2005 Fete de la Flute in Menton. She has also performed with the American Composers Forum, on the Schubert Club Courtroom Concert Series, and as a featured performer with the Minnesota Chorale and Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble.
She has been a finalist for the McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians and has won grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the American Composers Forum, the Lanesboro Arts Center, Springboard for the Arts, Knight Foundation, MacPhail Center for Music, MRAC, and a Banff Centre residency. As a composer, performer, and improviser, she plays regularly with cellist Jacqueline Ultan in J2J, with her folk/roots trio Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts, and with modern dancer/choreographer/film designer Tamara Ober. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Augsburg University and has studied privately at Conservatoire d’Antibes in Antibes, France.
Favorite non-musical hobby: Reading and art history
