Julia Bullock
(Broadway World)
September 18, 2018
Julia Bullock is at the Met in New York
this year--but not necessarily the one that comes to mind when you're
thinking about performances by an opera singer. It's the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
where the soprano kicked off her year as Artist-in-Residence
(2018-2019) on Saturday night with "History's Persistent Voice," the
first in a series of five concerts.
Of course, soprano Bullock is not your
average opera singer but a unique artist, as I found out last spring
when she appeared at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, singing
everything from Schubert to the Blues. (She's yet to perform a
full-length opera in New York, except during her time at Juilliard.) She
was, in a word, "spectacular"--as I wrote about the Weill concert--not a
description I throw around too often, but as appropriate then as it was
at her concert this weekend, though her recent outing was in most ways
as different in style as it was in content.
If she has any diva-worthy tendencies, they weren't on view at the Met, in an event inspired by the museum's current show, "History Refused to Die."
Yes, she's passionate, but only in the service of her material, whether
old or new, and those who helped bring her arresting content to life.
There never seemed to be any emotions not called for in the material.
Her demeanor changed as she gave herself over to the songs, using
her brilliant voice smartly, by turns low-key, angry, mournful and
inspired, and adding hand-clapping, snapping fingers and other effects
as called for. Her voice also morphed in the course of the concert,
starting out with a decidedly mezzo-ish sound, then moving into
full-fledged soprano and back again.
Of course, she not only performed but programmed the evening,
proving that the intelligence she displayed in her Weill recital was no
one-trick-pony. Saturday's "History's Persistent Voice" consisted of the
world premieres of music by four African American women composers.
Some were new settings by Jessie Montgomery (also violinist in
the ensemble) of five traditional slave songs chosen by Bullock from
"Slave Songs of the United States: The Classic 1867 Anthology" while
others were new works on the same theme by Courtney Bryan ("The Hard
Way"), Allison Loggins-Hull ("Momma's Precious Little Thing") and Tania
Leon ("Green Pastures"). Each of the composers had the sense to take a
musical approach that, even when moving into modest discord, made sense
with the words being sung.
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