Born in 1945 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Julio Racine lost his mother when he was only two years old. As he described his family life,

My grandmother and my uncles [helped my father]. The way the culture is in Haiti, when you have a tragedy like this, the whole family gathers and shares responsibilities. The main person was my grandmother, my mother’s mother. My uncles shared different roles as they raised us.

His love of music was evident at an early age, and when Racine was 15, he began studying flute at the National Conservatory in Haiti. He came to the United States in 1970 to study music performance at the University of Louisville, returning to Haiti in 1974 with his wife to further music education in his native country. Racine dedicated his life to championing Haitian music until he died in 2020.

Racine’s original compositions are intentionally folk-inspired. As he explained, “I use rhythmic development in my music because Haitian music is essentially rhythmic. In fact, most every instrument in folk is a one-pitch instrument, which tells you it’s mainly rhythmic.” The Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra received its world premiere in 2010, performed by the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and clarinetist Jorge Montilla under the direction of Joshua Dos Santos. Its three movements—En Bref, Remembrance, and Ti-Congo—are breathlessly intense, rhythmically charged, and highly virtuosic.