Nonesuch Releases Julia Bullock’s Solo Recording Debut, Walking in the Dark, on December 9

“It is rare to find a classical singer who can truly project an aura onstage… [Julia Bullock] is a musician who delights in making her own rules.” —New Yorker

(September 2022)—Classical singer Julia Bullock – declared by the New York Times to be “one of the singular artists of her generation — a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history” – makes her solo recording debut on December 9 with the release of Walking in the Dark on Nonesuch Records. Anchoring the album are two large orchestral works – Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and the aria “Memorial de Tlatelolco” from John Adams’s El Niño – both featuring London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Christian Reif. With Reif as pianist, Bullock also performs the traditional spiritual “City Called Heaven” and songs by Oscar Brown, Jr., Billy Taylor, Sandy Denny, and Connie Converse. The album, as well as a single of the Converse song “One by One,” whose lyrics are the source of the album’s title, can be preordered here. The single was recently featured on NPR’s #NowPlaying, praised as an “intimate interpretation” with “exquisitely sculpted phrases.”

Of the varied repertoire on Walking in the Dark, Bullock says:

“This music and poetry have contributed to my development as a classical singer. Over the years, I’ve returned to this material with reconsideration, revision, and review, and that makes me undoubtedly call these songs ‘classics’—classics, which are inclusive of traditions across cultures, and celebrate a diversity of thought, expression, and experience.”

Bullock curates a series of programs for the Los Angeles Philharmonic this November, before joining the same orchestra in January for performances of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West. She has additional engagements in Hamburg, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and more in the coming months. A complete list of dates may be found here.

About Julia Bullock

Julia Bullock is an American classical singer who “communicates intense, authentic feeling, as if she were singing right from her soul” (Opera News). Combining versatile artistry with a probing intellect and commanding stage presence, she has headlined productions and concerts at preeminent arts institutions around the world. An innovative curator in high demand from a diverse group of arts presenters, museums and schools, her notable positions have included collaborative partner of Esa-Pekka Salonen at the San Francisco Symphony, 2020–22 artist-in-residence of London’s Guildhall School, 2019-20 artist-in-residence of the San Francisco Symphony, and 2018-19 artist-in-residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She is also a prominent voice of social consciousness and activism. As Vanity Fair notes, Bullock is “young, highly successful, [and] politically engaged,” with the “ability to inject each note she sings with a sense of grace and urgency, lending her performances the feel of being both of the moment and incredibly timeless.” Honored as a 2021 Artist of the Year and “agent of change” by Musical America, Bullock gave a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert as part of NPR Music’s special quarantine edition of the series in December 2020; NPR’s Tom Huizenga characterized it as “among the most transcendent musical moments I’ve experienced.”

Bullock was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where she joined the artist-in-training program at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis while in high school. She went on to earn her bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music, her master’s degree in Bard College’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and her artist diploma at New York’s Juilliard School. It was there that she first met her husband, conductor Christian Reif, with whom she now lives in Munich. The couple expects their first child this fall.

To download high-resolution photos, click here.

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Julia Bullock: Walking in the Dark

Release date: Dec 9

Track List:
1. BROWN BABY
(first released 1960, rearranged 2013)
Poetry and Music by Oscar Brown Jr. (1926–2005)
Arr. by Jeremy Siskind & Julia Bullock; inspired by Nina Simone

2. ONE BY ONE
(first recorded 1954, rearranged 2017)
Poetry and Music by Connie Converse (b. 1924, disappeared 1974)
Arr. by Jeremy Siskind

3. MEMORIAL DE TLATELOLCO
From El Niño (composed 2000)
Poetry by Rosario Castellanos (1925–1974)
Music by John Adams (b. 1947)

4. CITY CALLED HEAVEN
(arranged c. 1930)
Poetry and Music developed by enslaved person/s in the United States
Traditional Black Spiritual
Arr. by Hall Johnson (1888–1970)

5. I WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE
(first released 1963, rearranged 2013)
Poetry and Music by Dick Dallas (1937–2004) and Billy Taylor (1921–2010)
Arr. by Jeremy Siskind

6. KNOXVILLE: SUMMER OF 1915, OP. 24
(composed 1947)
Text by James Agee (1909–1955) (published 1938)
Music by Samuel Barber (1910–1981)

7. WHO KNOWS WHERE THE TIME GOES
(first recorded 1967, released 1973, rearranged 2021)
Poetry and Music by Sandy Denny (1947–1978)
Arr. by Jeremy Siskind, Christian Reif, Julia Bullock

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© 21C Media Group, September 2022