Julie Moore, born in Manhattan, New York City, is assistant professor in voice and diction at Oakwood College, a position she has held since 1999. From 2001 until 2004, she conducted the Aeolians, OC's famous singing group, while its conductor, Lloyd Mallory, was on a study leave.

Moore grew up surrounded by music. Her father was a flutist and her mother was a singer who sang in church and participated in small opera companies in New York. The tradition of music in the family was longstanding. Her paternal grandfather, a professional musician who had made his living teaching, playing several wind instruments, and working as an orchestrator, had arranged the Jamacian National Anthem.

In her childhood years she studied violin, starting at age four, and made unusually rapid progress. She was musical, had a good memory and a sensitive ear for pitch, and was a good sightreader.

Following Moore's parents' divorce when she was 12, she eventually moved to Detroit to live with her father, who had remarried. She attended Southfield Junior and Peterson Warren academies, nearby Adventist schools.

After graduating from PWA, she entered Marygrove College, a Catholic school in Detroit, where she registered as a computer-science major with a minor in voice. Encouraged by her choir director, James Turner, Moore changed her major to music.

She completed an undergraduate degree in vocal performance at MC, in 1987. She earned a master's, also in vocal performance, at the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan in 1989. In that program she studied with Peter Elkus and Richard Barrett, was coached by Joan Borneman, and was exposed to master classes by some of the premier singers of the time.

She is presently on a doctoral study leave, studying at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she is pursuing voice pedagogy.

A mezzo-soprano, Moore has performed in numerous choirs and often as a recitalist and soloist with orchestras and choirs. While on a tour to Europe with the Marygrove College Choir, she was chosen to sing as a featured soloist in a televised BBC performance of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She later presented a program with the Trenton Symphony in Princeton, New Jersey, where she gave a recital of songs that had been performed by Marion Anderson, acclaimed African-American contralto of an earlier era.

Moore enjoys her work at OC. She recently spoke about the depth of vocal talent that exists there:

ds 2006