Julius Baker was one of the foremost American orchestral flute players.
13 Facts About Julius Baker
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Julius Baker attended the Eastman School of Music, where he was pupil of Leonardo De Lorenzo, and the Curtis Institute, where he studied with William Kincaid and had classes with Marcel Tabuteau.
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Julius Baker went on to a distinguished and long tenure as principal flute in the New York Philharmonic.
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Julius Baker was well known as a teacher and served as a faculty member at the Juilliard School from 1954, the Curtis Institute of Music from 1980, and Carnegie Mellon University from 1991.
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Julius Baker made many recordings with conductors such as Bruno Walter and Leonard Bernstein, and played second flute with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1937 to 1941.
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Julius Baker emerged as principal flautist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner from 1941 to 1943, the CBS Symphony Orchestra under Alfredo Antonini at the CBS network in New York City, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Kubelik from 1951 to 1953, and subsequently with the New York Philharmonic for 18 years, beginning in 1965 under such legendary conductors as: Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta.
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Julius Baker loved chamber music and was one of the founding members of the Bach Aria Group, with whom he played from 1946 to 1964.
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Julius Baker performed on several notable film scores, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Lovesick.
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Julius Baker collaborated with Glenn Gould, the violinist Rafael Druian and members of the New York Philharmonic in a recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No 4 in G Major, BWV 1049.
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Julius Baker gave the first American performance with orchestra of the Ibert Flute Concerto in 1948 with the CBS Symphony under the direction of Alfredo Antonini for Voice of America, and that concert was later issued on his own label, Oxford Records.
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Julius Baker retired from the New York Philharmonic in 1983 in order to devote himself to playing recitals programs and concertos around the United States, Europe and Asia.
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Julius Baker was an electronics buff and amateur ham radio operator.
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Julius Baker built audio equipment upon which he taped his early solo recordings.