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 Julian Brown became concertmaster of the Silicon
Valley Symphony Orchestra in 2008. He is also co-concertmaster of the California Pops Orchestra, and recently was concertmaster for the Stanford Summer Symphony. He has made a number of solo
appearances with the SVS and the California Pops playing among other things Massenet's Meditation from Thais, the theme tune from John Williams's
movie score for "Schindler's List", and the solo violin part from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
Born in the UK, he has followed a multi-faceted career
as musician, radio producer, science writer, software engineer, and scientist. He taught himself to play the violin at age 8 and took up formal lessons with British
violinist Anthony Saltmarsh at age 12. After studying physics at Cambridge University he worked at the BBC in London as a radio producer
making talks and documentaries about science and technology.
After leaving the BBC, Brown worked as a science writer and wrote several popular
science books including "Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse", a mind-stretching account of the history and science of quantum computing. In 1998 he came to the US
and worked for several years as a software engineer before joining Stanford University where he has worked for the last eight years in a brain research lab.
Throughout these times he has pursued a second life as an active musician playing in numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles. His violin heroes include Jascha
Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, and Maxim Vengerov.
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