Julia Brown is currently director of music and organist at First United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon, while also maintaining a full schedule of teaching, performing and recording. She has appeared in concert in North and South America and in Europe, having performed for the American Guild of Organists Regional and National Conventions, the Latin American Organist Conventions, the Oregon Bach Festival and other international organ and music festivals. She is also active as a harpsichordist, exploring performance practice and early music in chamber music settings. Between 1996 and 1999 she was president of the Brazilian Association of Organists and organised conventions, concert series and festivals.

As a Naxos recording artist she has released recordings of Scheidemann and Buxtehude on Brombaugh and Pasi organs to high critical acclaim.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Julia Brown studied piano with Fernando Lopes, harpsichord with Edmundo Hora and organ with Elisa Freixo in her native Brazil; with a full scholarship from the Brazilian government, she received her MM and DMA degrees from Northwestern University as a student of Wolfgang Rübsam.

Buxtehude belongs to the generation of organists before JS Bach and Handel, who both traveled to Lübeck to hear the master perform at the Marienkirche. There Buxtehude served as organist for 40 years, from 1668 until his death in 1707. He wrote a considerable quantity of music (choral and instrumental) for church use, as well as chamber music and keyboard music of a more secular kind.

Keyboard Music

Buxtehude’s many surviving compositions for the organ include some 20 preludes and a larger number of chorale preludes and variations on Lutheran chorale melodies. His harpsichord music includes fugues, toccatas, suites and works in other contemporary forms.

Chamber Music

Buxtehude added also to the repertoire of chamber music, notably in a series of violin sonatas.

Sacred Vocal Music

Amongst Buxtehude’s settings of a large number of biblical and poetic texts is the more extended, devotional Membra Jesu Nostri—a cycle of seven cantatas, each addressed to a different part of Christ’s body on the Cross (his limbs, side, breast, heart and face).