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 As
a young pianist, Julia Gregory was a featured artist
with the Sacramento Youth Symphony, was featured
soloist at the Oakland “Festival of The Masters”,
and was a finalist in the San Francisco Baroque
Competition, Young Pianist’s Beethoven Competition,
and the Northern California Piano Competition.
She won the CCPO Concerto Award and the Mendelssohn
Society Piano Competition. She went on to study
music theory at Mount Saint Mary’s College
winning the distinguished President’s Award
and numerous other scholarships. She moved to San
Francisco to study with Jeanie Delgado at UC Berkeley.
At that time, she began her studies in directing,
musical directing, and English Literature graduating
summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts from San
Francisco State University. Soon she expanded her
focus to include acting and dancing, studying at
the prestigious American Conservatory Theatre,
Berkeley and Oakland Ballet Schools. During her
years in the San Francisco Bay Area, she had the
great fortune to perform in numerous classical
plays and study intently her love of classic literature.
Julia moved to New York to study Shakespeare with
Stuart Vaughan (Public Theater) and singing with
Edward Sayegh. Julia has performed in the Broadway/Pre-Broadway
and National Tour productions of Showboat, Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Damn
Yankees,
My Fair Lady, A Chorus Line, West
Side Story, and
Mame. Regional productions include: Hamlet (Ophelia),
Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Much Ado
About Nothing (Beatrice), Les Liaisons
Dangereuses (Madame Tourvel),
Agnes of God (Agnes), and Dancing
at Lughnasa (Rose)
as well as Mack and Mabel (Mabel), The
Boyfriend (which won her a Carbonelle Nomination), and A
Little Night Music (Anne). Other New York credits
include: An Ideal Husband (Mabel), Jane
Eyre (Jane),
Wuthering Heights (Catherine), The
Secret Rapture (Isobel), and Look
Back In Anger (Alison). She
has been in over 30 commercials and industrials
and is most proud of her Pepsi commercial which
won a coveted Silver Lion Award at the Cannes Advertising
Festival in France. Julia can also be heard as
the voice of the “The Evil Queen” in
the acclaimed animated series Snow White and the
7 Dwarfs for Candlelightstories.com. She has worked
with Hal Prince, Jerome Robbins, Susan Stroman,
James Hammerstein, Garry Marshall, Alan Johnson,
Rob Marshall, Jack O’Brien, Peter Matz, George
Abbott, Richard Adler, and Bayork Lee. She has
taught at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York
and Los Angeles, as well as numerous Master Classes
across America and Japan.
After years in New York, Julia became discouraged
by the lack of strong female characters in musical
theatre and set out to change that. First she took
on the daunting task of adapting the novel La Dame
Aux Camélias for the musical theatre stage,
which had it’s first workshop in June 1996.
It was on this production that she met her soon-to-be
collaborator and husband, Renato. Together they
took on Dracula, turning the story completely on
its head. Shortly thereafter they turned their
attentions toward the roaring 20’s, setting
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s charming story, Bernice
Bobs Her Hair. While Renato concentrated on his
novel, Julia proceeded full steam ahead on her
pet project, Persuasion, a chamber musical based
on the novel by Jane Austen. That project lead
beautifully into their latest collaboration, Felix & Fanny,
based on the lives of the virtuosic Felix Mendelssohn
and his extraordinarily talented sister Fanny.
In addition to musical theatre, Julia’s music
is featured on top Psychic Stacey Wolf’s
meditation CDs (check them out at StaceyWolf.com)
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