Juliana Gondek
Distinguished Professor - Voice Performance

Chair, Voice Performance (2018-2020)
Distinguished Professor, Voice Performance

Music has been my life-long obsession - classical, popular, world music. It has blessed me with a life rich in wondrous experiences and prized friendships, and now my delight is to share what I've learned and what I love with young artists worldwide and to be inspired by them in turn.

Juliana Gondek is a renowned vocal pedagogue whose success with students has been informed by a more than 40-year performance and recording career on the world’s most celebrated opera, symphony, festival, and recital stages. She has starred in both soprano and mezzo-soprano roles with renowned conductors, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Carlos Kleiber, Nello Santi, Eduardo Müller, and Nicholas McGegan in such celebrated venues as the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Teatro La Fenice, La Scala, Edinburgh Festival, Salzburg Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.  Her performances of over 150 operatic, symphonic, and oratorio solo roles include appearances with the world’s great orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the symphonies of San Francisco, Seattle, Montreal, Dallas, and Detroit.

Gondek is an acclaimed specialist in baroque repertoire, the works of Mozart, early Verdi and Bel Canto composers, contemporary opera, and art song repertoire of the German late-Romantics, Poland, and Spain. Featured in her repertoire are Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and twenty-four Handel starring roles, nearly every Mozart soprano heroine including Vitellia and Aspasia (Mitridate), ten Verdi roles, the title roles in Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero (U.S. premiere), Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, and Bizet’s Carmen, Hoffmann’s four heroines, and fifty-two performances as Mimì.

She’s headlined at the Antibes Bel Canto Festival, Lucerne Festival, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Göttingen and Halle Handel Festivals, and the Santa Fe, Caramoor, Avignon, Aldeburgh, Marlboro, Bard, Newport, and Bowdoin Festivals.  She’s sung nearly 200 art song and chamber recitals worldwide, starred as Marsineh in the musical Kismet with Baltimore Opera, and made her motion picture debut as “The Opera Diva” in Masterpiece Theatre’s The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather.

Gondek has premiered songs and chamber works by Ricky Ian Gordon, Richard Hundley, and Morten Lauridsen, and a dozen new operas including Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, David Diamond’s The Noblest Game, Hugo Weisgall’s Esther (recorded on Naxos with Seattle Symphony), Stewart Wallace/Michael Korie’s Hopper’s Wife and Harvey Milk (recorded on Teldec with San Francisco Opera) and John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (Met premiere — Marie Antoinette cover).   Her discography also includes Handel operas Ottone, Radamisto, Giustino, and Ariodante (winner of Gramophone’s Record of the Year), “Live from the Met” video of Die Zauberflöte with James Levine, the legendary West Side Story recording and video with Leonard Bernstein, “The Complete Songs of Karol Szymanowski” on Channel Classics (winner of Poland’s “Fryderyk” Prize for Best Recording of Polish Music), Bright Sheng’s “Songs from the Sung Dynasty” on Naxos with the Hong Kong Philharmonic (Gramophone’s “Top Ten CDs”), a collection of Four Quartets of Songs & Arias by Roger Bourland on Navona Records, and songs of Bruce Babcock commissioned by Gondek, also on Navona.

She holds positions as Distinguished Professor of Voice at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she has taught since 1997.   She has also taught on the faculties of the Baroque Academy at Leonard Bernstein’s Pacific Music Festival (Sapporo, Japan) with Nicholas McGegan, at Teatro Nuovo with Will Crutchfield, Songfest, and five years as Visiting Artist for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She has presented residencies and master classes at the Shanghai Conservatory & Opera Center, New Zealand Opera Center, Florence’s Cherubini Conservatory, Geneva Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Rice University, and at colleges and music schools worldwide.  She is Director of Vocal Studies of the Astoria Music Festival, was Founder-Director of the NAPA Music Festival, and directed Hawaii Performing Arts Festival’s vocal training programs for many years.  She’s judged prestigious competitions including the Geneva, Spoleto, and Jose Iturbi International Competitions, and the Metropolitan Opera (MONC) Auditions.  Her students include celebrated stars of the Met and European opera houses as well as Tony-winning Broadway performers.

A native of Pasadena, CA,  Gondek trained as a pianist and violinist and entered college as a violin major.  Following her singing debut with San Diego Opera she gained the international spotlight winning back-to-back Gold Medals in the Geneva International Singing Competition and Barcelona “Francisco Viñas” International Opera Competition, and the “Prix Patek Philippe.”

Alumna Sarah Saturnino Wins Metropolitan Opera's 2023 Laffont Competition
Sarah Saturnino, class of 2016 is one of six winners of the Metropolitan Opera’s Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. Saturnino, who majored in voice performance and minored in music industry,
Leonard Bernstein at 100: Four UCLA Professors Reflect on an American Music Icon
World-wide celebrations are underway honoring American composer, conductor and educator Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990 and would have been 100 on August 25, 2018. A multitalented musician, Bernstein rose
Hitomi Oba
Lecturer and Director of Contemporary Jazz Ensemble
John Steinmetz
Lecturer - Bassoon Performance
Cheryl Lin Fielding
Lecturer - Vocal Diction and Vocal Coaching
Lucy Yates
Lecturer - Vocal Diction and Vocal Coaching
William Kinderman
Distinguished Professor and Elaine Krown Klein Chair in Performance Studies
Michael Dean
Professor - Voice Performance
Ryan Brown
Lecturer - Choral Studies and Music Education
Che-Yen Chen
Professor - Viola Performance
Joshua Ranz
Lecturer - Clarinet Performance
Gregory Goodall
Lecturer - Percussion Performance
Andrew Ordonez
Events Manager - Department of Music Performance, Education and Composition
James Miller
Lecturer - Trombone Performance, Associate Principal Trombone LA Phil
Lily Chen-Hafteck
Professor - Music Education, Special Assistant to the Inaugural Dean for Curricular Reform
David Lefkowitz
Professor - Composition, Vice Chair of the Department of Music
Boris Allakhverdyan
Lecturer - Clarinet Performance, Principal Clarinet LA Philharmonic
Ji Young An
Lecturer - Violin Performance
Gloria Cheng
Adjunct Professor - Contemporary Music, Performance Studies
Camilo Cedeno
Assistant to the Chair - Department of Music Performance, Education and Composition
Mildred Yi
Lecturer - Music Education
Melissa Bilal
The Promise Chair in Armenian Music, Arts, and Culture, Director of Armenian Music Program
Sarah Koo Freeman
Visiting Professor - Cello Performance
Iris Malkin
Lecturer - Vocal Coaching
Alison Deane
Associate Adjunct Professor
Nick DePinna
Adjunct Assistant Professor - Musicianship
James Bass
Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, Director of Choral Studies
Dante De Silva
Lecturer - Composition and Music Theory
Rakefet Hak
Continuing Lecturer - Opera UCLA
Shahab Paranj
Gramian-Emrani Postdoctoral Fellow in Music and Lecturer - Composition, contemporary concert music
Peter Golub
Lecturer - Composition, Music and Film
Travis J. Cross
Professor - Conducting, Director of Bands
Neal Stulberg
Professor - Conducting, Director of Orchestral Studies
Vladimir Chernov
Distinguished Professor - Voice Performance
Benjamin Smolen
Lecturer - Flute Performance
Dwayne Milburn
Lecturer - Conducting and Composition
Ben Hong
Lecturer - Cello Performance
Amy Sanchez
Lecturer - Horn Performance
Aubrey Foard
Lecturer - Tuba Performance
Jan Berry Baker
Professor - Saxophone, Head of Woodwinds, Vice Chair of the Department of Music, Special Assistant to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring
Victoria Kirsch
Lecturer - Vocal Coaching
James Lent
Lecturer - Collaborative Piano
David Kaplan
Inaugural Shapiro Family Chair in Piano Performance
Wendy Richman
Lecturer - Performance Studies
Richard Danielpour
Distinguished Professor; Director of Gramian-Emrani Center for Iranian Music
Lindsey Beardsley
Manager - Department of Music Performance, Education and Composition
Kay Rhie
Assistant Professor - Composition
Lou Anne Neill
Lecturer - Harp Performance, Harp LA Philharmonic
Wendy Caldwell
Lecturer - Vocal Coaching
Arturo O’Farrill
Director, UCLA Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra; Professor
Jonathan Davis
Lecturer - Oboe Performance
Noel Cano Hearn
Lecturer - Alexander Technique and Music Education
Ian Krouse
Distinguished Professor - Co-Area Head, Composition
Chris Hanulik
Adjunct Professor - String Bass Performance; Principal Bass LA Phil
Varty Manouelian
Lecturer - Violin Performance, Violin LA Philharmonic
Movses Pogossian
Distinguished Professor of Violin; Founder and Advisor, Armenian Music Program - Music Performance
James Darrah
Professor - Director of Opera UCLA
Theresa Dimond
Lecturer - Percussion Performance
Brendan McBrien
Lecturer - Music Education
Jens Lindemann
Distinguished Professor - Trumpet Performance
Inna Faliks
Professor - Head of Piano
Christoph Bull
Adjunct Professor - Organ Performance
Johanna Gamboa-Kroesen
Assistant Professor - Music Education
Noah Meites
Lecturer - Music Theory

Explore Other Degrees

Conducting
Graduate study and training in choral, orchestral, or wind conducting
Ethnomusicology
The study of global musical traditions through performance training, research, and field work
Global Jazz Studies
Jazz performance and musicianship courses are paired with African American Studies
Music Composition
Mentorship in the creation and realization of music for concerts, opera, and visual media
Music Education
Preparation for music educators leading to a BA and teaching credential in just four years
Music Industry
A leadership-focused professional degree which prepares students to transform the creative, entrepreneurial, and executive structures of the music industry
Musicology
The scholarly study of the histories, cultures, and critical interpretations of music and music-making
Music Performance
Study and training towards professional performance careers in Western classical music