Julie Jordan Gunn has spent her life in the arts playing, conducting, producing, and teaching. She is devoted to building spaces where all generations can develop their talents, tell our communities’ stories and inhabit their creative potential.
Trained as a pianist, she has been heard with many of the greatest art song, opera, and musical theatre singers, especially her husband and artistic partner, Nathan Gunn, on many of the world’s most prestigious recital series, including the Aspen Festival, Boston’s Celebrity Series, Brussel’s La Monnaie, the Carnegie Hall Pure Voice Series, the Cliburn Foundation, Lincoln Center Great Performers, Manhattan’s Café Carlyle, the Ravinia Festival, St. Paul’s Schubert Club, the Sydney Opera House, Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and the United States Supreme Court. In the last few years she has particularly enjoyed recitals with Mandy Patinkin and Adam Ben-David, and with her daughter, cellist Jordan Lee Gunn.
She is an advocate for initiatives benefitting the arts and children’s lives, establishing programs or campaigns with Krannert Center’s Endow the Dream and “Showtalk” interview series and founding the Illinois Community Music Academy for talented young chamber musicians and composers. She served as the Interim Director of the Glimmerglass Festival Young Artists’ Program in 2022. She was appointed Rector of the Arts and Performing Arts of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois by Governor JB Pritzker. In July 2026, she will begin her tenure as the Director of the Museum + program at the innovative multi-disciplinary Peoria Riverfront Museum, bringing performance into the mix of science, films, visual art, folklore, hall-of-fame and more. The Gunns debuted their “Heart of the Matter” musical talk about a life in music at the world-renowned Sinai Forum in the fall of 2025.
She served as the President of the Countryside School Board of Directors and is a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Children.
She attended Dartmouth College, majoring in Economics, and received her Masters and Doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois, where she has been awarded the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Award. She lives in Champaign, Illinois with her husband Nathan, where they raised their five children.
This summer, Julie looks forward to music directing Shot in the Dark’s I Hear America Singing at the Wilcox Performing Arts Center and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
In 2013 the Gunns conceived a new way of thinking about and teaching sung theatre which has at its core, instead of a particular type of repertoire, the values of creativity, flexibility, and wellness. Lyric Theatre @ Illinois was built on that foundation and is in its second decade as part of the University of Illinois School of Music and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. As the General Director of Lyric Theatre @Illinois, Dr. Gunn produces numerous operas or musical theatre works each year at the Krannert Center and other regional venues, lately including larger celebrations—Lyric Under the Stars at Allerton Park and Retreat Center—and Carnaval! at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts-combining spectacular performances with festive hospitality.
A member of the faculty at the University of Illinois School of Music, Dr. Gunn engages students in all sorts of musical collaborations, teaching songwriting, chamber music, vocal coaching and accompanying, vocal literature, career preparation, stage management and design for sung theatre, the producing of opera and musical theatre, and performing arts leadership. Dr. Gunn enjoys working at the intersection of different disciplines and collaborates with artists in the fields of theatre, dance, and design whenever possible. She is committed to the development, production and resonance of new works and in recent seasons has been part of several world premieres and workshops, as a producer, a pianist, or as a conductor. They include staged works like Black Square (Demutsky), Candinho (Ripper), PRISM (Reid), The Surrogate (Macklay), Sensorium Ex (Prestini), Take Flight! (Maultby and Shire) and Bhutto (Fairouz), often in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, and concert works by Iain Bell, Augusta Read Thomas, Jennifer Higdon, and Harold Meltzer. She mounts workshops and public performances of student compositions in musical theatre and opera each year.
She has served as a coach or conductor at many distinguished opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Program and Wolf Trap Opera. She has given masterclasses at universities and young artists’ programs all over the United States and Canada, including the Aspen Festival, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Florida State University, the Glimmerglass Festival, Highlands Opera Studio, the Houston Grand Opera Studio, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Opera Theatre St. Louis, the Ryan Young Artists’ Program, the Santa Fe Opera, and Ravinia’s Steans Institute. She served as a master teacher in the 2023 National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program. A member of ASCAP, she is the author of many arrangements of songs for chamber groups and orchestras. Her arrangements have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Symphony Center, the DeBartolo Center, Ithaca College, Interlochen, the Kennedy Center, the Krannert Center, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in Sun Valley, Idaho. She has conducted several chamber operas and musical theatre works for Lyric Theatre, among them The Rape of Lucretia, Cabaret!, The Light in the Piazza, She Loves Me!, Fun Home, and The Wild Party, and Anastasia.
