Since completing apprenticeships with the Santa Fe Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera, mezzo-soprano
Julia Bentley has appeared in leading roles with opera companies throughout the country, 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, Ensemble Noamnesia, Fulcrum Point, the Chicago Chamber Musicians,  Chicago Opera Theater, Concertante di Chicago, Music of the Baroque, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the MusicNOW series at Symphony Center with conductor Cliff Colnot. She has been a regular guest artist with the Chicago Chamber Musicians’ Music at the Millennium series, most recently in works by Berio, Carter, and Boulez under the direction of Mr. Boulez. In 2001 she appeared to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall, also with Mr. 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 the Messiah with the Apollo Chorus at Orchestra Hall, and appearances with the Ars Viva Orchestra and the Bach and Handel Week Festivals, as well as chamber music series in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. In the 2004-05 season she sang La Cenerentola  for the Sacramento Opera, Meg in Little Women for Dayton Opera, and Time Cycle by Lukas Foss during the composer’s Chicago residency.

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