You Are Your Instrument

Julie Lyonn Lieberman is the author of 13 books (see list below), 5 DVDs, 2 National Public Radio series, close to 50 string orchestra scores (published by Kendor, Carl Fischer, Alfred Music and Julie Lyonn Music), and over 50 magazine articles for publications such as STRINGS Magazine, STRAD Magazine, ASTA Journal, Fiddler Magazine, and Band and Orchestra, to name a few. She is a multi-style improvising violinist, vocalist, educator, radio producer, composer, recording artist, and performer as well as the Artistic Director for the summer program, Strings Without Boundaries, founded in 2003.

Ms. Lieberman has performed on and off Broadway as well as in folk and jazz clubs throughout the United States, Canada, Wales, Scotland, Portugal, Guatamala, and France. She’s taught as an adjunct at The Juilliard School and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music among other institutions, and has presented master classes for American String Teachers Association (ASTA), European String Teachers Association (ESTA), National Association for Music Education (NAfME), the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE), the Suzuki Institute, National String Workshop, National Orchestra Festival, International String Workshop, National Young Audiences, and the Carnegie Hall LinkUp Program. Julie is a longtime D’Addario Clinician, an NS Design and Volta performance artist, and an Eastman Strings Ambassador.

Her most recent project, Planet Strings Informance, offers three multi-style concert programs for bowed strings: “Fiddling in America,” “Contemporary Strings,” and “Stringin’ the World.” She is the Artistic Director for Strings Without Boundaries, a D’Addario Orchestral Premiere Clinician, an NS Design Performance Artist, and an Eastman Strings Ambassador.

Titles Include: “You Are Your Instrument,” “Improvising Violin,” “Rockin’ Out with Blues Fiddle,” “Planet Musician,” “Creative Band and Orchestra,” “A Festival of Violin & Fiddle Styles,” “ The Contemporary Violinist,” and “How to Play Contemporary Strings.”

 She…

• Wrote, edited and appeared as the moderator in the documentary, Improvising Violin: Four Personal Views, which won Honorary Mention in the American Film and Video Festival
• Worked for WBAI in NYC on a weekly show for four years interviewing American composers, titled “Hear and Now,”
• Acted as a consultant to Ken Burns’ documentary, JAZZ.
• Co-wrote the curriculum book for American String Teachers Association

Ms. Lieberman composed the music for the Off-Broadway play "The Yellow House" by Leonardo Shapiro, which won critical acclaim in the late eighties, premiering at La Mama in New York City for 30 days, followed a thirty-night run at the Theatre of Nations Festival. She played violin, keyboards, and sang for the production.

She is the recipient of over two dozen ASCAP awards and eight Meet the Composer awards and has performed her original music off Broadway, throughout the U.S., Canada, and in Europe, as well as on television and radio. She also has five recordings of original music to her credit.

Ms. Lieberman acted as composer-in-residence for four seasons at the City Center Manhattan Theatre Club Writers in Performance series. Her music for Alec Baldwin’s/Steve Lawrence’s production of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" aired on WNYC after premiering at City Center. Other productions include, "The Don," based on Edith Grossman’s new translation and in celebration of Don Quixote’s 400th birthday starring Mario Cantone, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Daphne Rubin-Vega; "Hemingway," starring Peter Gallagher, and "Edgar," based on the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as two other shows.

She was also the composer-in-residence for the first feminist theatre company in the world, “Emmatroupe,” for a handful of years in the 1980s. The productions were contributed to by writers Gloria Steinem, Kate Millet, and Andrea Dworkin and directed by Eleanor Johnson. The off-off-Broadway productions included “A Girl Starts Out” and “Against Silence.”

She has composed for and performed with such theater companies as Shaliko Company, The Magic Circle Opera Company, Imaginations Unlimited, and the Women’s Ensemble Theatre. Compositions for dance companies include Sundance, The American Spanish Dance Company, and choreographers Merian Soto, Judy Dworin, and Holly Fairbanks.

Lieberman’s world jazz string quartet, "Ben’s Millennium Romp," was commissioned by Manchester Music Festival and premiered to a standing ovation. The piece opened their season in 2000 and was followed by compositions by Tania Leone and David Amram. She also composed and recorded the soundtrack for the Taoist exercise video "Body Logos" in 2002, and designed and recorded violin lines for Laura Nyro’s final album, Mother’s Spiritual. Her opus to the planet, The Green Anthem, was included in the Music Educators National Conference’s 2010 World’s Largest Concert.

Ms. Lieberman’s recordings of original music include "Empathic Connections," 1981, "Arcturus," 1984, "The Roaring Brook Fiddler," 1991, and "Mixing America," 1994. She was also a guest artist on Laura Nyro’s album, "Mother’s Spiritual," 1984, designing her own violin lines for the album.

Her recording of her string orchestra score, Bollywood Strings, has been performed world-wide, used by a football team(!), and used by the record company, Bella Union, located in England.