ViolaJulia Clancy

Violist Julia Clancy is joining the 2023-24 season of the San Diego Symphony as acting section violist. Prior to this appointment, she performed as a regular substitute in the Nashville Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony and Dallas Symphony. As a member of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, she performs frequently across Europe under the direction of Daniel Barenboim. Up until the pandemic, she was serving a two-year contract at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, performing opera, ballet, symphonic and chamber music. She can be heard on multiple albums with the Boulez Ensemble, Konzerthaus Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin and Aldeburgh Ensemble.

As a soloist, she has performed at 92Y, TheGreene Space, National Sawdust, LACMA and venues across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain. She has acted as principal violist in Krzysztof Penderecki’s festival orchestra, Britten-Pears Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, Sarasota Festival Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, Moritzburg Festival Orchestra and Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Orchestra.

As an educator, Ms. Clancy has taught music theory, history, writing and viola performance at both the Cleveland Institute of Music and Yale School of Music. She is a former associate faculty member of the Encore Chamber Music Institute. She has served on the faculty of the Moabit Musikschule and The Academy of Fine Arts in Shreveport, LA. She is currently an education consultant for Ivy Labs Education.

Julia Clancy’s early musical education began at the Juilliard School where she studied with Heidi Castleman in the Pre-College program. She holds a degree in medical anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and a degree in music from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine, Lynne Ramsey and Robert Vernon. Ms. Clancy received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University, where she was a two-time winner of the Georgina Lucy Grosvenor Memorial Prize.

Outside of performing with the San Diego Symphony, she is making her way through a long list of the incredible restaurants, coffee shops and farmers markets the city has to offer.