Yulianna Zinovieva is gearing up for a couple of live performances in Los Angeles before bringing her act to Santa Maria. It’s a good thing she has those two dates to “break the ice,” she said, because it’s been two years since she’s performed live, having been wrapped up in recording.
“It’s kind of good for me to come back to my roots and perform, but it’s stressful because people know me,” she said with a bit of shyness.
Now known simply as Yulianna, the singer is anything but shy—at least from what you take away from her albums, a smoky collection of sexy-jazzy-techno-fused pop songs that make good use of her fantastic voice.
Her newest album, La-La-Land, is about her life in Los Angeles, but her story started long before she landed in that metropolis. Now known simply as Yulianna, the Kazakhstan-born singer and her family came to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Already an accomplished violinist, Yulianna began voice lessons. In 1999, she became the first contestant in the history of the Applause Young Artists Showcase and won both the instrumental and vocal competitions. The next year she accomplished the same feat again, becoming the first person to win both categories back to back.
Yulianna had been writing songs and composing before she started training operatically. After moving to Santa Maria in 1997, she attended Righetti High School for two years, then transferred to Dunn School in Los Olivos. She attended CalArts because of the training available in a variety of genres.
Yulianna had an aptitude for opera and worked with OperaWorks, SongFest, and Bel Canto. She also appeared in the movie Jacked and produced the title track.
Though opera was opening doors for Yulianna, she wanted to pursue a bigger challenge, so she embarked on a career in popular music. After consulting with one of her teachers, she was advised that she already had an advantage in popular music because she could write her own songs as well as sing.
Yulianna said songwriting comes fairly easy for her, because she finds inspiration everywhere.
“Nature’s my big muse, but it can come at any moment,” she said.
Take the time she auditioned for a coffee commercial. She sang the jingle at the end.
“Then a wave of inspiration came over me,” she said, “and I wrote like four new songs that had nothing to do with coffee.”
She’s currently putting that inspiration to work on some new songs. She’s shot two music videos this year, and she’s producing her latest video with Oscar-winning director Waleed Moursi. She’s also working with Grammy winning producer Walter Afanasieff, who has long worked with Mariah Carey and was the producer of songs like My Heart Will Go On, performed by Celine Dion.
“When I was still in Kazakhstan, popular music wasn’t banned, but it wasn’t really allowed,” Yulianna said. “I remember having these bootleg tapes of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey and listening to them through those ’80s headphones and thinking, ‘Wow, I wish this producer would work with me on my songs.’ Now, 20 years later, he is.”
Near, far, Arts Editor Shelly Cone can be contacted at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 10-17, 2011.
