Teaching Biography
Dr. Julia Nielsen has been one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most sought-after vocal pedagogues since founding her private voice studio in 1999. Her students are currently performing leading roles with opera companies, soloing with symphonies, starring in Broadway musical national tours, and raising their voices in elite professional choruses across the United States. Nielsen’s students can be heard with the San Francisco Opera Chorus, the Grammy-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and the Philharmonia Baroque Chorale. From 1999 to 2014, Nielsen was also on the voice faculty of the award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus, teaching young women at the chorus’s professional level.
Dr. Nielsen has had the privilege of studying voice with several world-famous operatic performers, including Metropolitan Opera legends Martina Arroyo, Margaret Harshaw, Blanche Thebom, and Giorgio Tozzi. However, she attributes her expertise in teaching voice to her own current teacher and mentor, David Jones. Through her intensive apprenticeship with this extraordinary technician since 2006, her teaching continues the traditions of the Swedish-Italian School of Singing. This school has its roots in the teaching of Alan Lindquest (1891-1984) and his teachers, two of whom studied with Manuel Garcia (1805-1906), and two of whom trained the famous singers Jussi Bjorling and Kirsten Flagstadt in Stockholm. (For more information, please see The Swedish-Italian School of Singing.)
Dr. Nielsen graduated from Indiana University with a Doctor of Music degree in Voice under Martina Arroyo and a Masters Degree under Margaret Harshaw. She earned her B.A. in Music from Stanford University, with distinction and with honors. She has also received training from, and works closely with, the Voice and Swallowing Center at the nationally ranked University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center.
