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Our Musicians and Music

Musicians

Josh Hanlon

While #1 Billboard crossover/classical albums with The Texas Tenors (America’s Got Talent), and five years as Pianist/Conductor with Country Music Hall of Fame artist Ray Price may be convincing evidence of Josh Hanlon’s musical versatility, he remains glued to a singular musical identity: jazz pianist.

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A reasonable argument, as Hanlon taught jazz piano at almae matres University of North Texas and St. Francis Xavier University, and has made music with luminaries of jazz: Jimmy Cobb, Sean Jones, Bill Watrous, Ernie Watts, and many others.

Heard recently on OA2 recordings by Idit Shner (9 Short Stories) and The BiCoastal Collective, Vol. 5, and Armored releases by the Maniacal 4 (Open House) and frequent collaborator Stockton Helbing (Swimming In Place,) Hanlon’s own second album — The Baytree Sessions, Vol. 1, is available on the Armored label.

When not touring the continent, or maintaining an extensive freelance recording and performance schedule, Hanlon maintains a private studio; and instructs, performs, and arranges with the Helbing Jazz Initiative. Current projects include producing wife Michelle’s second album, and quintet album NS/TX with guitarist brother Jake. Originally from Nova Scotia, Hanlon has lived in Denton for over 15 years, happily raising a growing young family. He is proud to contribute to the creative team supporting the worship experience at DUUF.

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Júlia Coelho

Júlia Coelho (she/her, pronounced ‘ʒu.li.ʌ ku.’ʌ.ʎu) comes from an ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse Portuguese family of artists and social educators. While in Portugal and Italy, she studied philosophy, foreign languages, and music. Over the years, she has been very involved in performance, research/publication, and education, as well as in several social causes through different organizations. She is proud to be a part of DUUF as Song Leader/Musician since 2019.

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Besides her voice and piano studio, she is currently employed as a Teaching Fellow in the Music History area at the College of Music at the University of North Texas. There she serves as a Music Senator for the Graduate Student Council and as a representative at the CoM Advisory Council on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. She is also the current editor of the peer-reviewed journal Harmonia and is working on her Musicology Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Representations of Disability as Otherness in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera.”

As a musician, she performs regularly in the U.S. and in Europe in a variety of musical genres, with special emphasis in Fine Arts Music. She often accompanies her singing on the Gothic harp, psaltery, or keyboard/piano, also performing some of her compositions and musical arrangements. She has won several vocal performance awards in national and international competitions, and records professionally on a regular basis—most recently, she was featured in Chris Poovey’s Micro-Opera Vessels and Kory Reeder’s Codex Symphonia as the solo soprano, and on Kory Reeder’s album Codex Praxis singing and playing the Gothic harp.

As a researcher, she has publications in musicology, music theory, and philosophy in English, Italian, and Portuguese, and has presented papers and lecture-recitals in several national and international conferences. Her research and publications are focused on the intersections of music and disability, politics, and rhetoric, as well as on early Opera, history of music theory, and 13th-century Portuguese-Galician secular music.

In addition to her work, she writes and publishes poetry in English, Italian, Portuguese, and French, namely her Portuguese poetry book Fragmentos de Infinito (2017, with illustrations by her father Gabriel Coelho). She has set some of her poetry to music in recent years, and other composers have used her texts in their works, including an upcoming song cycle of poetry about time composed by Kory Reeder.

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Her performances, publications, and recent news can be found on her website:
https://xjcoelhox.wixsite.com/juliacoelho