I don’t know if there’s a heaven, but if there is, I’m certain soprano Julia Bullock will be leading the chorus. With her rich, mellifluous voice, her perfect phrasing, and her passionate yet restrained delivery, the Julliard-trained singer is an electrifying performer. I’m not a music historian, nor a trained critic, but I know magic when I hear it.
Ms. Bullock has been on the radar of classical music lovers for a decade – ever since she performed the role of Consuelo and sang the iconic “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) in a performance conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony. I ‘discovered’ her while doing research for a job interview. Scrolling through the pages of the Symphony’s website, I saw her arresting portrait and felt compelled to watch the short video interview interspersed with clips of her performances.
On a Saturday evening, I heard Ms. Bullock sing “Somewhere” live as a rare encore while Tilson Thomas, Musical Director Laureate, sat in the audience. Although she performed the same program three nights running, she made the performance extra special for him – and for us! It was so beautiful, my friend cried!
Her main program was a selection of Depression-era songs she had curated in collaboration with Symphony conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The songs included composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin’s, “Somebody from Somewhere” from Delicious (1931), and “Soon” (1929), and George Gershwin with lyricist DuBose Heyward’s “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess (1934).
Ms. Bullock interwove the Gershwin songs with two by Chicago-born composer Margaret Bonds set to the poetry of Poet Laureate Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1936) and “Winter Moon” (1936). I was enthralled by the soulfulness and earthiness of these renditions, particularly “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” of which Bonds stated, Hughes “tells how great the Black man is.” The inclusion of the pieces by Bonds supported Ms. Bullock’s mission to engage listeners with the unfamiliar: all but “Summertime” and her encore were debut performances with the Symphony.
The diva regularly sings the most beloved songs in the classical and popular music repertoires. Although I have heard “Summertime” by many performers, Ms. Bullock performed an arrangement created for Ella Fitzgerald by Nelson Riddle. It was sublime.[1] As part of her quest to educate the audience, she noted that while the Gershwins had championed the music of Black Americans, they had often profited from it.
In the program notes Ms. Bullock expressed her belief that the symphony should be an “open place to congregate – one that leaves room for every single individual to have an experience.” The experience she allowed me was one of transcendence. I can’t wait for her return to the San Francisco stage.
[1] (I couldn’t find this version on iTunes, but I downloaded a wonderful version of ELLA Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong.)
BAALM 