Dr. Julie Bemis is the Vice President of Education & Community Engagement at the Richmond Symphony, where she thrives in collaborating with both staff and musicians. Passionate about connecting the community to music, Julie believes in its transformative power to inspire, unite, and uplift people of all ages and from all backgrounds. She is particularly dedicated to creating opportunities for young people to engage with music.
In her previous role at the Colorado Symphony, Julie contributed to impactful programs such as El Sistema and the Very Young Composers program, which foster creativity, collaboration, and self-expression in children. She also played a key role in community partnerships, including the creation of the annual DaVita Day of Music, an initiative that brings live performances to patients receiving dialysis at clinics across the region.
As a college educator, Julie served as Assistant Professor of Percussion at the University of Northern Colorado and has lectured at institutions such as UCLA, Florida State University, the North Carolina School of the Arts, CU Boulder, Colorado State University, and Clemson University. She has served on the University Curriculum Committee of the Percussive Arts Society, and her academic writing has been published in Percussive Notes. Her dissertation entitled Theater Percussion: Developing a Twenty-First-Century Genre Through the Connection of Visual, Dramatic, and Percussive Arts, is available online.
A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Germany), Julie has performed on Broadway and with orchestras including the Munich Symphonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Concert Orchestra, and Colorado Symphony.
