Julia Christenson grew up in what she refers to as a “musical house.”
“It sounds almost cringey, I know, but my mom would narrate what she was doing through song,” recalled Christenson, a Kasson-Mantorville High School graduate who is now a senior at the College of Saint Benedict.
“She’d sing, and we’d all sing to each other. Music was playing all the time. It was a big part of our lives.”
It’s only natural, then, that Christenson would gravitate to the arts at an early age. She started playing the trumpet in her school band when she was in fourth grade.
“We did a session with the music teachers where they had all the instruments out and you could play them,” she said. “Then they’d tell you that you had promise on this one, or that this one maybe wasn’t for you. Initially, I did better with the flute. But I looked and saw most of the people signing up to play trumpet were boys. I thought there needed to be some girls, too, so I got in there to represent.
“Our next-door neighbor had played the trumpet in high school and sold one to us for $40, which is unheard of as far as instrument prices go. So I was lucky enough to get a trumpet of my own when I was 8 and I had it all the way through my sophomore year when I got a new one for my birthday.”
Christenson would continue in band and jazz band in high school while also singing with the choir, captaining the speech team, joining her school’s powerlifting team, playing soccer for a time and participating in theater – another passion she discovered at an early age.
“My theater experience started when I was 5,” she said. “Our parents put (she and her two siblings) in weeklong theater programs. My dad said theater was one of the best ways to get young girls on stage and build confidence. So I’ve been doing it a long time.
“In high school, I did three shows a year – the musical, the one-act and our school play.”
Finding a place where she could continue to pursue her passions, and perhaps add new ones, was a big part of her college selection process.
Her parents – graduates of CSB and Saint John’s University – encouraged her to look at CSB and SJU. And it was on her first visit that she formed an immediate connection with Justin “JZ” Zanchuk, the chair of the music department and the director of the wind ensemble and brass choir on campus.
“I reached out to him before my visit, which was late on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of July,” Christenson recalled. “He said he would come in and do an in-person lesson with me when my tour was over. We had the lesson, and it just clicked. He fixed a problem I’d been having for a long time.
“That was a huge factor in my decision to come here. JZ embodies the way professors here care about their students. He was willing to give up an afternoon on a Saturday, during the two months he has when things aren’t crazy, for a student who didn’t even go here yet. That was really impactful to me.”
Christenson is not a music major herself. Instead, she is majoring in both Hispanic studies and communication with a double minor in Latino/Latin American Studies and global health.
But she is a member of the wind ensemble and brass choir while still taking lessons. In addition, she has been a part of three theatrical productions and is in her third year as a resident assistant. She spent a semester studying abroad in Sevilla, Spain, as a junior and recently attended the Region Five American College Theater Festival in Des Moines, where she had a chance to compete for the prestigious Irene Ryan Scholarship.
“It’s a weeklong conference featuring professors from different universities across the Upper Midwest who give different workshops,” she said. “Then there is also the competition that happens. I was lucky enough to be nominated by an external respondent who saw me perform in (last fall’s production of) ‘Smash.’ It was a really great experience to get to be part of that.”
Christenson also just attended a resident assistant conference at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, and this week (Feb. 13-14), she will rehearse and perform as part of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Honor Band made up of students from colleges and universities across the state.
“I’m definitely someone who likes to stay busy,” she said. “I have a lot of experience with time management. I have my planner, and I try my best to stay on top of everything. I just feel very lucky to be at a place where I can be involved in so many different things.”
Christenson’s ability to manage and succeed in so many areas has impressed those – like Zanchuk – who have had the chance to work with her.
“She’s very intentional about what she gets involved in and she cares so much about each of those things,” he said. “She finds ways to maximize whatever she’s working on when she’s working on it.
“She has a very strong work ethic,” Zanchuk continued. “She’s very self-motivated and she really embraces the dignity of work. She’s committed to her craftsmanship and doing things well.”
Christenson will graduate this May and plans to spend the next year volunteering as an English teacher at a high school in Nicaragua as part of a program for recent SJU and CSB graduates established by Dan and Angie Bastian, who built Angie’s Boomchickapop into a snack food industry giant.
After that, she is looking into the possibility of becoming a certified medical interpreter.
“I just want to continue doing things I’m passionate about,” she said. “It’s something I’ve been really fortunate to have the chance to do here, and I want to continue doing that in the future.”