Julian Wachner conducts the choir of Trinity Wall Road and the Bang on a Can All-Stars at Lincoln Middle in New York in 2014. Wachner, who was dismissed from his place at Trinity in 2022, has been charged with possession of kid intercourse abuse materials in Indiana.
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This report contains mentions of sexual violence.
Julian Wachner, a conductor and composer who as soon as held jobs with a few of New York’s most revered establishments, has been charged in Indiana with possessing little one sexual abuse materials and cocaine.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in Marion County, Ind., filed 11 felony costs in opposition to him: 10 counts of possessing little one sexual abuse materials depicting youngsters youthful than 12 years previous, and a further depend of cocaine possession. Wachner has pleaded not responsible and posted a $15,000 bond; his protection lawyer, Invoice Frederick, didn’t reply to NPR’s repeated makes an attempt to contact him. The trial in opposition to Wachner is scheduled to start on Oct. 20.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Division alleges in charging paperwork that between August 2024 and February 2025, it tracked about $840 in cryptocurrency that Wachner despatched to digital accounts related to a “darkish internet” web site which traffics in little one intercourse abuse materials. Within the paperwork, detectives allege that Wachner admitted to utilizing cryptocurrency “lots of of instances” to buy movies of kids “ranging in age from roughly 1 to 16 years previous. He additional disclosed that his particular choice was for materials involving youngsters between the ages of 6 and 13.”
Till his arrest, the 55-year-old Wachner had been working as a fourth-grade math instructor at Invent Studying Hub, a neighborhood constitution faculty.
In an announcement despatched to NPR on Wednesday, Invent Studying Hub wrote: “Efficient instantly, Julian Wachner is now not an worker of Invent Studying Hub. We need to be clear with our neighborhood: at no time have been our staff or board members conscious that Mr. Wachner was below investigation, nor did now we have data of the actions that led to this case. As a part of our customary hiring course of, we performed thorough background checks in accordance with our established insurance policies. The security and well-being of our college students stay our highest precedence.”
Wachner’s most up-to-date musical work has been with the Belgium-based early music group Concerto Vocale. As of Monday, Concerto Vocale had posted an announcement on its web site that it had “suspended its relationship” with Wachner after studying of his arrest, although the put up has since been eliminated. In his work with the Belgian group, Wachner had labored intently with a boys choir.
In the course of the heyday of his musical profession, Wachner was twice nominated for Grammy Awards for his work as a conductor. He recorded over a dozen albums of his personal and different composers’ music with labels together with Naxos, VIA and ATMA and performed main orchestras together with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
Wachner had largely been out of the general public eye in recent times, however his arrest on Aug. 20 marked a shocking improvement within the profession of a musician who was as soon as extremely lauded and admired, notably in New York. Till 2022, he was the director of music and the humanities at Trinity Wall Road, one of many metropolis’s wealthiest church buildings and a mainstay in New York’s arts neighborhood. It’s notably well-known for its youth refrain, which attracts younger singers from throughout the town.
Wachner was dismissed from his place at Trinity in 2022. His firing got here after The New York Occasions printed a report that mentioned a girl had accused him of groping her and kissing her in opposition to her will at a Juilliard Faculty residency program in Aiken, S.C. in 2014. Wachner denied the allegations, and no felony costs have been filed in opposition to him. Wachner later filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to Juilliard, accusing the varsity of defamation; that case was dismissed with prejudice by the New York Supreme Court docket in June 2023.
Wachner was scheduled to conduct the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Refrain [ISO] this December, however his title has been faraway from the orchestra’s web site. NPR repeatedly requested remark from the ISO, however didn’t obtain a reply.