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, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Lyric Opera 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 Weill 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 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.