Julian Grant is a composer, writer, educator, music journalist and broadcaster.
He has composed 20 operas of various lengths and sizes which have been performed by English National Opera, The Royal Opera, Almeida Opera, Mecklenburgh Opera and Tétè-a-Tétè, and has won the National Opera Association of America’s New Opera prize and been nominated for an Olivier Award.
From 2002-7 he was Director of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London, a post previous occupied by Gustav Holst and Vaughan-Williams. In Hong Kong, he hosted a classical music radio show and has also lived in Tokyo. From 2007-10 he lived in Beijing, where he worked with the Beijing New Music Ensemble, and attempted to master the Yang Qin (Butterfly Harp).
In 2012, his Cultural Olympiad commission Hot House, devised by Gareth Malone, was premiered at the Royal Opera House. He currently lives in Princeton and New York where he has an ongoing relationship with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. His chamber opera, with librettist Mark Campbell, The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr Burke & Mr Hare, a co-commission with Music Theatre Group and Boston Lyric Opera, premiered in Boston November 2017, and was nominated for an International Opera Award in 2018. During the pandemic he wrote a Suite for Solo Viola, a commission from the Harvard Musical Association for the 50th anniversary of Emmanuel Music - Salt, and Scarlatti in Soweto, a further commission from Buskaid after the widely performed Sancho’s Dance Mix (2014). Jump Cuts was premiered by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in 2022, and he is currently working on Vaudeville in Teal, for harpsichord and small orchestra for Mahan Esfahani.
