D.M.A. University of Michigan; M.M. University of Michigan; B.M. University of Michigan

Soprano Julia Broxholm has a career that spans opera to Broadway, oratorio to vocal chamber music, and recitalist to recording artist. In recent years she has devoted herself to teaching and the results are spectacular. Her former students are leading players on stages on Broadway, in Las Vegas, in national touring companies, and in Europe. Noted for her understanding of vocal technique and articulation of text, she is quickly becoming a most sought after pedagogue.

As a recitalist she is well known for her performances of vocal literature by American composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. She continues to work with Steven Blier, coaching this repertoire, and collaborates with Russell Miller in performances of this exciting song literature. With pianist Martin Katz and clarinetist Fred Ormand, she has recorded the major literature for soprano, clarinet, and piano. Of Shepherds, Romance and Love features music of the 19th century, and the more recently released Transience includes the song cycles Ariel by Ned Rorem, and To Be Sung Upon the Water by Dominick Argento as well as Toot Suite, a set of classic songs from the musical theater world. She is quickly becoming known in this repertoire which includes some of the most recognized vocal chamber music with instruments. Composer John Harbison was effusive in his praise of her performance of his Chorale Cantata. In the May/June 2008 issue of American Record Guide, respected music critic Robert Moore wrote of her performance in Transience, "Julia Broxholm offers striking readings and displays impeccable vocal technique, marked by purity of tone, clarity of articulation, and effortless-sounding singing above the staff. "

Dr. Broxholm received a D.M.A in vocal performance from the University of Michigan where she was lauded for setting a new standard of excellence for performing musicians in the areas of research and performance.

Pianist Russell Miller has been a coach and teacher of vocal repertoire at Eastman since 1995. He has performed throughout the United States and abroad as soloist and chamber musician, including concert tours to Korea and Hong Kong with tenor Robert White and to Alaska and the former Soviet Union with cellist Stephen Kates. With violist Donald McInnes, he has recorded works of Hindemith and Loeffler on the Kleos Classics label. Notable collaborations include Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Robert Swensen at the Pierpont Morgan Library, as well as recitals with Jan Opalach, Julia Broxholm, Lynn Blakeslee, Zvi Zeitlin, Susan Shafer, Todd Graber and Marilyn Horne. In October 2012, he was privileged to give the first North American performances of four newly-discovered songs of Claude Debussy with soprano Elizabeth Calleo as part of Eastman’s “Prismatic Debussy” festival organized by ESM Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Marie Rolf. For twelve years he was the musical director for the vocal quartet “SATB”, which performed a wide variety of repertoire from classical chamber pieces to Broadway.

A native of Los Angeles, Dr. Miller studied at the University of Southern California, the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School, and holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan. His principal teachers have been Edith Knox, Brooks Smith, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Marshall Williamson, Margo Garrett, Martin Katz, Louis Nagel and Graham Johnson, with additional study in the Alexander Technique with Marilyn Barach. For twelve years he was a staff pianist and faculty member at the summer Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. He also served as pianist and harpsichordist for several professional opera companies, including the Florentine Opera of Milwaukee (Rossini’s La cenerentola and Verdi’s Aïda), Mercury Opera of Rochester (Mozart’s Don Giovanni) and several productions for Eastman Opera Theatre.

Besides his current appointment at Eastman, Dr. Miller has also held faculty positions at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green State University, The Ohio State University and Oberlin College Conservatory, and has given master classes at Ithaca College, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the University of Missouri. Thanks to the generosity of ReachOut Kansas, Inc., he enjoys an ongoing relationship with the School of Music of the University of Kansas in Lawrence as a visiting vocal coach and teacher of collaborative piano. In recent summers, he has taught and performed at the Pine Mountain Music Festival in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Vancouver International Song Institute (VISI) in British Columbia, and at the International Conducting Workshop and Festival (ICWF) in the Czech Republic.