Juli谩n Pernett Castilla
Latin Jazz Ensembles
Email: jpernettcastilla@usf.edu
Juli谩n Pernett Castilla joined USF Music faculty in 2025 to create and direct the Latin Jazztet. His musical identity is a reflection of his dual heritage: the misty highlands of the Andes and the ode to joy that is Caribbean Colombia. Although Afro-Latin Percussion is his first love, when he was 15 he was studying to be a concert pianist and was mentored by Pilar Leyva for six years. This makes him one of the very few pianists in the world that carry the teachings of Claudio Arrau and Franz Liszt beyond the realms of classical music into Jazz and Afro-Caribbean music.
In 2015 Juli谩n moved to the United States, where his musical perspective became deeply permeated by the rich history of jazz and rock, especially during his academic years in Mississippi and Florida. This eventually led to current collaborations that reimagine jazz traditions, such as his work with The Soko艂owski Trombone Project, an ensemble devoted to revitalizing the legacy of 鈥楤one Bands,鈥� and the New Orleans-stylized Schaff/Wall Collective. Both these projects originated alongside alumni from the USF's jazz studies department and other remarkable Bay area musicians.
Today, Juli谩n carries a relentlessly focused purpose to compose, arrange, produce, and commercially distribute original music. He is the musical director of Sandujazz, an Afro-Latin fusion project that aims to celebrate Antillean, Caribbean, Psychedelic, and Jazz influences around songwriting and arranging. His most recent collaborations also include Ten Cent Tom, a new effort to propose the next frontier in rock fusion music; Benkos, an Ibero-American ensemble created with the collaboration of DMA candidates from The Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University; and an Artistic Residence at the Ashley Gibson-Barnett Museum in Lakeland, FL.
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