Welcome to Con Fuoco, our interview series with emerging artists in Australia.
Sydney-born Justin Julian found his passion for the viola at 13 years old. Just two years after switching from the violin, he played principal viola in the Alexander Orchestra at the Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp, and by the age of 17 he was working as a freelance orchestral musician. He now performs as a violist with the Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra symphony orchestras, and the Opera Australia Orchestra in Sydney. In 2017, he was also an Emerging Artist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Justin studies viola on a full scholarship at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. An enthusiastic chamber musician, he is also a member of the Pietra Quartet, which performed at the Estivo Chamber Music Festival in Verona, Italy, and won the Westheimer String Quartet Fellowship in 2017.
Justin is a 2018 Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellow.
Your all-time favourite piece of music?
There’s so much great music out there, and it’s very hard to narrow it down to one favourite! If I had to pick one, it would be Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1. I love the absurdity of its dissonant, broken references to tropes in music from Baroque to jazz, and quotations of famous musical works. Schnittke’s pastiche style here is a darkly humorous take on music, the world, and a general loss of meaning and logic.
Biggest fear when performing?
As much as I can, I try to see past the typical anxieties of whether a performance was technically satisfactory, and have faith in my preparation. My biggest fear is that an audience will go home after a concert feeling that the performance was not musically fulfilling or meaningful to hear, and that it had no personal or emotional significance.
Most memorable concert experience?
I’ve played in many memorable concerts. Some highlights would have to be the concerts towards the end of a tour of regional New South Wales and Queensland in September 2017 that I did with Pekka Kuusisto directing Australian Chamber Orchestra Collective, and Matthew Hunt playing solo clarinet. We tried to make every concert unique and spontaneous, and by the end of the tour, it had created a special kind of focus and communication within the ensemble.
I’m looking forward to making lots of new memories of fantastic concerts this year with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship program.
How do you psych yourself up for practice on a lazy day?
I’m completely dependent on my paper diary to get anything done, so usually a brief glance at everything I’ve written in will remind me how much work I need to do. If I get stuck while practising, a fail-safe strategy to revitalise my practice is to think of ways I haven’t yet approached learning or refining a piece of music. Coffee helps, too!
Most embarrassing moment on stage?
Most often, I have to put mistakes behind me straight away so they don’t distract me from continuing to perform well. Music is an artform where you have to be very much in the moment. If I had to pick one instance, though, that has stuck out, I’d say it was an Australian Youth Orchestra concert years back when I played the quite-exposed first note in the viola part of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony very out of tune, right under the conductor’s nose!
Best piece of musical advice you’ve received?
One of the most profound musical experiences I’ve had was a week of string quartet masterclasses and lessons last year with Professor Eberhard Feltz in Verona, Italy. Across this week, I was given some fantastic guidance and advice. I was exposed to a philosophy of music where every note and chord is a meaningful part and driving force within each component of each phrase, and each phrase serves a greater structural purpose.
In this view of music, a deep and complete understanding of how music fits together, plus completely shared intentions and direction in ensemble playing, makes ideal music.
Favourite post-gig ritual?
A gin and tonic and some good company with friends and colleagues definitely takes the cake. If it’s a late concert, though, you’ll probably find me on public transport travelling home with my headphones in and music still going!
What are you most proud of in your musical career so far?
To go for something abstract, I’d say I’m proud of the progress I’ve made in my playing in the past year. I’m beginning to feel like my technique on the viola is progressing to a level where it doesn’t inhibit my freedom to be musical. In other words, my limitations now rarely get in the way of my musical ideas.
What do you love most about making music?
The ability to turn some black dots on paper, and artistic intentions – often hundreds of years old – into something fulfilling and significant in the present! In spite of the bad press about classical music ‘dying’, I love the enduring relevance of music and the universal joy it can bring anyone, anywhere. Most of all, I love when the shared energy and intense focus on stage makes you feel like you’re completely inside the sound of a section or ensemble, and everyone is thinking and feeling as one. In that moment, it’s like nothing else matters.
What’s your ultimate goal?
I would be very happy with a full-time job in a professional orchestra with plenty of chamber music, preferably a string quartet, on the side. So much of the best music is written for quartet, and it allows you to distil all the essential components of great violin, viola and cello playing.
I hope to strive for the highest level of music making in ensembles both large and small, and throughout my career, always see music as a passion foremost, as well as a job.
Learn more about the SSO Fellows and their upcoming gigs on the website.
Image supplied. Credit: Keith Saunders.
