Julien Wilson is the recipient of the 2015 APRA Art Music Award for Excellence in Jazz, a trifecta of Australian Jazz ‘Bell’ Awards in 2014, the 2008 ‘Bell’ Award for ‘Australian Jazz Artist of the Year’, the 2006 Music Council of Australia/Freedman Fellowship for Jazz, and the 1994 National Jazz Award. The funds from the Freedman Fellowship enabled him to record an album in New York with Jim Black, Mark Helias, Stephen Magnusson and Barney McAll, and take his trio on a three week European tour that included two sold out performances at the Berlin Jazz Festival.
Julien has been featured as a soloist with the Kurt Elling Quartet (USA) & The Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Gavin Bryars (UK) & Aventa Ensemble (Canada) and Paul Grabowsky’s Eye of the Storm Suite for Solo Soprano Sax with Jazz Trio + 30 piece Chamber Orchestra. He has recorded and performed with artists including Charlie Haden, Hermeto Pascoal, Gary Bartz, Hugh Masekala, The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Yunior Terry, Ed Keupper and The Saints, Brian Wilson, Thirsty Merc, Osunlade, Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Nigel Kennedy, Bob Moses, Augie March, George Garzone, James Carter, Phil Treloar, Josh Roseman, Bernie McGann, Vince Jones, Paul Kelly, Meshell Ndegeocello, Checkerboard Lounge, Daddy Cool, Renee Geyer, Mavis Staples & The Artie Shaw Orchestra, and has been a long term member of iconic and stylistically varied Melbourne groups including Rumberos, Los Cabrones, 12Tone Diamonds and Virus.
Born in Melbourne in 1972 he attended primary school in Scotland, took up clarinet at 10, and then switched to tenor saxophone at 14. He was offered a piano tuning apprenticeship at 17, but chose instead to study improvisation at the Victorian College of the Arts with Brian Brown & Barry Duggan. After graduating from the VCA he spent a year studying Spontaneously Performed Interactive Composition with David Tolley. In 2001 he received a Graduate Diploma from New England Conservatory in Boston where he studied under scholarship with Paul Bley and George Russell.
Julien has released twenty albums as leader or co-leader and plays regularly with a wide range of ensembles. Over the last two decades he has toured extensively overseas, spent extended periods living in Zurich & New York, and made decade plus contributions to high profile groups including The Australian Art Orchestra & The Black Arm Band. He has been an integral member of a number of critically acclaimed co-operative groups including SNAG (with Magnusson, Bjorn Meyer and Sergio Beresovsky), Assumptions (w/ Magnusson and Will Guthrie) & Ishish (Ronnie Ferella), and is featured on award winning albums by Barney McAll, Vanessa Perica, Sam Anning, Andrea Keller, Stu Hunter, Jonathan Zwartz, Kristin Berardi, Sarah McKenzie and Ben Salter.
Julien’s long-standing trio with Steve Grant (accordion) and Stephen Magnusson (guitar) have been praised as “one of the most original groups in Australian Jazz”. The Trio were featured on while you were sleeping in 2006 and released Trio-Live in 2007, recorded at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club as part of ABC Jazztrack’s 30th Anniversary Concert. On Swailing (2014), they utilised the recording studio and an expanded palette of instruments to take their music in new directions. Swailing was a finalist for the 2014 Music Victoria Genre Award for Best Jazz Album and was on Birdland’s best-seller list.
In late 2013 Julien released This Is Always at Wangaratta Jazz Festival. For his first recording with a ‘classic jazz quartet’ he assembled the dream-team of Allan Browne, Jonathan Zwartz and Barney McAll to create a timeless set of standards. The album received public and critical acclaim, and in May 2014 Julien became the first ever recipient of three concurrent Australian Jazz Awards – Best Ensemble, Best Album, and Best Composition. This is Always was a Best Independent Jazz Album finalist at the AIR Awards and was Birdland Records’ best-selling jazz release for 2014. The same quartet released a live album, This Narrow Isthmus (2015) which was in Birdland’s top seller list for 2015 and 2016.
Julien’s original music for quartet with guitar/bass/drums has been performed by many mutations over the years, including his regular Sydney quartet with Carl Dewhurst, Cameron Undy and Simon Barker. In 2011 he formed STOCK. The powerhouse band features Craig Fermanis, Chris Hale and Hugh Harvey. In 2018 they received a recording grant from the Australia Council for the Arts and recorded a self-titled album of new material. Released on January 1st 2000 it debuted on Australian Independent Records charts as the first #1 Independent Jazz Album of the decade, and also hit #1 on the ARIA charts.
In early 2017 Julien formed a large ensemble to perform songs of resistance and rebellion from across time and around the globe called The Autonomous Resilience Collective (ARC). Their first performance was on the same day as the US Presidential Inauguration and their second performance was on the eve of “Survival Day” in Australia. featuring a constantly rotating cast of players ARC continue to perform when occasion demands.
This World is a collaborative project with Mike Nock, Hamish Stuart and Jonathan Zwartz formed in 2019. They released a self titled album on Lionsharecords which they toured extensively in early 2020.The band continued to tour and record when possible, releasing an online EP commissioned by the ABC Fresh Start Fund Out of This World in 2021, and a second full length album Another Dance in 2022.
In 2022 Julien released a contrasting yet complimentary pair of solo LPs, Meditations & Mutations, featuring Melodic Electroacoustic Cinematic Soundscapes created using just woodwinds and realtime electronic manipulation. The albums are closer to atmospheric adventures than “solo saxophone”. John Shand (Sydney Morning Herald) called Meditations “Stories of fathomless humanity… as close to communing directly with another human soul as art can contrive” and Adam Page (Wizard Tone Records) called Mutations “like nothing that has come before. An imperfectly perfect melding of acoustic and electric, earth and air, tar and crystal”.
In 2024 a new international collaboration was launched with Canadians Peggy Lee (cello) and Dylan Van der Schyff (drums) plus young Australian guitar enigma Theo Carbo. Their self-titled debut Open Thread was released on Earshift Records and they plan to tour and record a second album in Canada mid 2025.
In 2025 Julien continues performing with his own ensembles plus Open Thread, Andrea Keller’s Transients, Sam Anning Septet, various groups led by Barney McAll, Ed Kuepper and The Saints, Kristin Berardi, Peter O’Mara, Dan Kelly’s Regional Crisis, and the Yunior Terry Quintet. Formed in 2021 by Cuban born, NY/Melb based bassist Yunior Terry, this exciting group explores Yunior’s original compositions and includes Brett Williams (pno) Matt Jodrell (tpt) and Danny Fischer (dms). An album is due for release in 2025.
Julien is currently an Associate Lecturer in Jazz & Improvisation at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and Monash University.
Julien Wilson Trio @ The Sydney Opera House