Since completing apprenticeships with the Santa Fe Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley has appeared in leading operatic roles (Carmen, Rosina, Dorbella, Despina, and both Rossini and Massenet Cinderellas) from Anchorage to New York, and has been featured as a soloist with orchestras led by George Manahan, Raymond Leppard, Oliver Knussen, Robert Shaw and Pierre Boulez. She performs in Chicago with Mostly Music, CUBE, the Contemporary Chamber Players, the Orion Ensemble, Pinotage, the New Budapest Orpheum Society, Ensemble Noamnesia, Fulcrum Point, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Chicago Opera Theater, Concertante di Chicago, the Newberry Consort, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Lyric Opera and the MusicNOW series at Symphony Center with conductor Cliff Colnot. In 2001 she appeared to critical acclaim at Weill Hall with Pierre Boulez as the soloist in Le Marteau Sans Maître. She has recorded on the Albany, Cedille and Tintagel labels. Recent engagements have included performances of La Damnation de Faust with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, Pierrot Lunaire with eighth blackbird, La Cenerentola with Sacramento Opera, Little Women with the Dayton Opera, and the Bach B Minor Mass with the Apollo Chorus as well as chamber music series in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. She currently teaches voice at the Music Institute of Chicago. She teaches graduate Song Literature at North Park University, and is on the voice faculties at the DePaul University School of Music, Concordia University, and The Music Institute of Chicago. She is pleased to return to Buffalo after her recent appearances with the Slee Sinfonietta.

Jezioro, Jan. Program notes, “A Musical Feast performs works by John Bacon, W.A. Mozart, Bernard Rands, Nathan Heidelberger and Elliott Carter.” Concert. Buffalo, NY: Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, May 18, 2012.