Senior  Julia Brav ‘08 has been selected to the International Association for Jazz  Education (IAJE) Sisters in Jazz Collegiate All-Star Quintet. The group will  perform at the IAJE 35th Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada from  January 9-13, 2008 for one of the world’s largest jazz gatherings, with more  than 7000 educators, musicians, and industry representatives from over 35  countries expected to attend.   Julia is a music major and a member of the certificate program in  musical performance at Princeton University and has been a member of the  university jazz program since she was a junior in high school. This is Ms.  Brav’s second major international recognition in jazz performance this year.  In May she was named winner of “Outstanding Performance” honors in the “Best  College Jazz Soloist” category in Down Beat magazine’s 30th  Annual Student Music Awards Competition.  
 
Ms.  Brav has also performed and recorded with  Princeton’s Jazz Composers Collective and traveled to Estonia in the fall of  2006 for a series of concerts sponsored by the Department of State of  the United States of America, the U.S. Embassy in  Estonia, and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Her original music was  featured in performance at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, the  Geneva Night Club in the city of Narva, which was recorded for broadcast on  Estonian National Radio, and at Theatre No. 99 in Tallinn. Her  composition “Il Mago” can be found on the group’s most recent CD release  Expanding Horizons.   
 
While  at Princeton Julia has also performed as a featured soloist with the  University Concert Jazz Ensemble, Crossing Borders Improvisational Music  Ensemble, Ornette Coleman Ensemble, Ellington/Strayhorn Ensemble, Wayne  Shorter Ensemble, Afro-Groove Ensemble, Jazztet, Horace Silver Ensemble, and  the Jazz Vespers Ensemble. As part of these affiliations, she worked  alongside of such guest soloists as Jimmy Heath, Conrad Herwig, Don Braden,  Bryan Carrott, and Guilherme Franco, and  was the featured pianist for the world premieres of commissioned big  band compositions by Conrad Herwig and Ralph Bowen. Julia  was also featured in joint concert at McCarter Theatre in Princeton with the  Juilliard Jazz Orchestra, directed by Wycliffe Gordon, and the Princeton  University Concert Jazz Ensemble performing Duke Ellington and Billy  Strayhorn’s “Far East Suite.” In addition, Julia was twice selected to  the New Jersey-IAJE Intercollegiate Big Band and has performed with a quartet  at the “Women in Jazz” Festival in Trenton, New Jersey.
 
Julia is also a wonderfully imaginative and  skillful composer. Recently she composed three works comprising a suite  that was inspired by three women composers who have made invaluable  contributions to modern jazz writing over the last quarter-century. The first  piece of the suite, “Cat Dance,” was influenced by the music of pianist Joanne  Brackeen (who has been Julia’s private teacher for several years now), while  the two remaining compositions, “Falling Feather” and “Heliocentric,” draw  upon the compositional styles of composer/arranger Maria Schneider and  saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom respectively.
 
The mission of the IAJE Sisters in Jazz program is to encourage  and promote the participation of young women in the art of jazz, both  educationally and professionally, through a mentoring program linking them  with established women musicians. The annual Collegiate Competition is an  outgrowth of the mentoring mission, providing intensive opportunities for  outstanding young instrumentalists and singers to meet more experienced female  artists and industry professionals, perform before international audiences,  and engage in peer-mentoring.  The  Sisters in Jazz initiative has been in existence since 1998 with past all star  ensembles being featured in performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington,  D.C. as well as such major European jazz festivals as the Umbria Jazz Festival  (Umbria, Italy), North Sea Jazz Festival (The Hague, Netherlands), and Jazz à  Vienne (Vienne, France). Former ensemble members have also had the opportunity  to work alongside such internationally renowned artists as Herbie Hancock, Roy  Haynes, Geri Allen, Renee Rosnes, and Terri Lyne  Carrington.