Bio

Julia Rahm is a vocal artist, voice and piano teacher, composer and poet. Having grown up in small town Central Oregon, she received her bachelor’s degree in Theatre, Music and French at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and her master’s in Voice Performance from Roosevelt University in Chicago. She also studied for one year at The École Normale de Musique in Paris. She currently resides in San Diego, California.

In the classical realm, she has performed solo repertoire spanning Debussy, Ravel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Rossini, Wolf, Barber, Offenbach, and Massenet. Her fondness for both French and Baroque music was born while she was living in Paris, performing as a soloist in Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus and Gloria at Chartres cathedral and St. Germain de L’Auxerrois with the choir Jubilo Canto.

While in Paris, Julia performed and recorded with the French pop/variété band Benjamin Swax, playing synth and singing back-up vocals. Placing 8th in the finals of the Emergenza Music Festival, Benjamin Swax played in the celebrated venues of the Alhambra theater and the Machine du Moulin Rouge in the City of Lights.

Her operatic experience includes performances with Evanston Chamber Opera, California Opera Association, the Franco-American Vocal Academy and the Crittenden Opera Workshop. For three years, she was a regularly performing member of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.

From 2019-2021, Julia served as the Director of Social Justice & Programming of The Valkyrie Ensemble, a Chicago-based vocal/opera ensemble that seeks to promote women and women’s stories through music. She wrote the script and performed in the filmed pastiche opera, Gaia Gala which premiered on Earth Day 2021. It featured a world-premiere art song “Wisdom Whispers on the Wind” with music by composer Laura Jobin-Acosta and lyrics by Julia.

Her first book of poetry premiered on November 18th, 2021. You can order copies of Wild Heart: Poetic Musings of a Queer Mystic here.

Julia is currently working on her first solo album, an experimental, existential journey full of dynamic vocal layers, drawing on her classical, folk and theatrical background, as well as some Celtic and Sufi roots. She is also performing synth and backup vocals and touring with her girlfriend’s band moondaddy, teaching private voice and piano lessons, and singing with the Coronado-based chamber vocal ensemble Musica Vitale.