American soprano Julia Bullock is not your standard-issue, rising young operatic diva.
Yes, her credentials are suitably impressive: Teenaged artist in training with her hometown opera company, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Bachelor’s degree from the prestigious Eastman School of Music, master’s degree from Bard College’s highly regarded vocal-arts program, an Artist’s Diploma from The Juilliard School. Appearances with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, leading roles in operas by John Adams (including the world premiere of Girls of the Golden West), artist in residence on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s performance series. On July 22, Bullock makes her Ravinia and Chicago Symphony debuts with conductor Marin Alsop in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.
But Bullock, now 34, has never envisioned a conventional classical-music career for herself. A mixed-race child whose parents were active in the civil rights movement, she absorbed her parents’ focus on social justice and Black empowerment. She also has wide-ranging musical tastes.
Asked during a recent phone interview about singers she admires, Bullock, who lists herself as “classical singer” rather than “soprano,” let out a hearty laugh. Lively and engaging, she was speaking from Munich, where she moved last year and lives with her husband, German conductor Christian Reif.
“We’re going to run the full gamut here,” she said. “Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Laura Nyro. Oh my gosh, Tina Turner.
“There’s clearly a lot of pain and frustration and passion and rage in [Joplin’s] singing,” she said of the pop star whose raspy, full-throttle wails made listeners worry about shredded vocal cords. “It’s not a voice I mimic in any way, but thinking about the power of her delivery of a song, her interpretive gifts—that is something I certainly learned from.”
When she was young, Bullock’s father introduced her to recordings of Régine Crespin, the esteemed French soprano of the mid-20th century. Crespin heads a list of Bullock’s favorite classical artists, a lineup that includes Frederica von Stade, Kiri Te Kanawa, Shirley Verrett, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. “I feel their voices with me all the time,” she said, “but the thing that’s intrinsic about them is their interpretive ability and the inimitable sounds they make.”
The sound of Bullock’s voice—rich and warm with a smoky undercurrent and glints of steel—is also inimitable. She could easily spend her career traveling the world singing standard operatic repertoire. Since graduating from Juilliard in 2015, however, she has put her voice in service to programs that go far beyond the classical repertoire’s usual boundaries.
“It’s good to be passionate about your work, but your profession should not be a vanity project,” she said in a profile accompanying her award as a 2021 Musical America magazine Artist of the Year: Agent of Change. She has kept in mind advice her mother offered as she started her career: “Make sure your work is making a difference for the betterment of the world.”
Music by Black composers and artists, including blues and songs developed by enslaved people, have long been part of Bullock’s recital programs. Several years before her Metropolitan Museum residency in 2018–19, she was experimenting with an evening-length piece built around Josephine Baker, the legendary Black American singer and dancer whose witty and risqué performances in the music halls of Paris in the 1920s brought her worldwide fame. Baker, who died in 1975, was an agent for the French Resistance during World War II and also a high-profile civil rights activist.
“I’m always leaning toward a
full integration of my voice.”
Bullock performed Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, with music by Tyshawn Sorey and spoken monologues by poet Claudia Rankine, on the museum’s grand staircase in January 2019. The New York Times called it “a darkly captivating show offering a haunting investigation into the psychological shadows and public constructions” that shaped Baker’s career. Among the other programs Bullock curated for her Met residency were new versions of traditional Black spirituals, commissions from Black composers, a focus on poet Langston Hughes, and a performance of El Cimarrón, an oratorio about a runaway slave by Hans Werner Henze.
The mood will be lighter but probably no less compelling when Bullock comes onstage at Ravinia for the fourth movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Drawn from a collection of German folk poems, Mahler’s text is a mostly merry description of saints enjoying the good life in heaven. They dance and sing, drink wine, and enjoy tasty food cooked by St. Martha, all under the beneficent eye of St. Peter.
“It’s a child’s vision of heaven in one way,” said Bullock. “But it’s not naïve, and it’s all-encompassing as well. Yes, there is the joy of abundance and peace and pleasure, but there’s also an element of danger there. Death is present in heaven as well. There’s violence [a butchered lamb, a slaughtered ox]. These are all just undercurrents that metabolize very quickly over the course of the piece. Mahler doesn’t leave a lot of time to just sit in an emotion, but l feel it’s an acknowledgement of all states of being and of life.”
When the coronavirus pandemic hit in mid-March 2020, Bullock’s state of being drastically changed, as it did for all of us. Like artists across the globe, she and Reif found their performance calendars suddenly empty. Eventually, to keep in musical shape and get the creative juices flowing, they began making short videos at home. Reif accompanied Bullock on the piano in repertoire ranging from Schubert lieder to new settings of traditional Black spirituals.
“My husband and I were just playing things,” she said, “and we decided to start recording and releasing songs almost weekly for a period.”
During the pandemic, NPR Music has asked dozens of artists to record short videos at home for its ongoing series Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts. So far, the lineup ranges from American rapper Fat Joe to classical pianist Lang Lang. The 17-minute video with Bullock and Reif, which aired last December, displays her extraordinary flair for thoughtful programming. Opening with a gentle Schubert lied, it moves on to Kurt Weill’s Wie lange noch (How Much Longer), a fierce, bitter love song written during World War II. The video closes with the spiritual City Called Heaven, and I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free by Billy Taylor. Taylor wrote the song during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, and Bullock’s performance was arranged by jazz pianist Jeremy Siskind. Each song expresses some aspect of longing for deliverance and yearning for peace.
“I get inspiration from a lot of different places,” said Bullock. “Sometimes it takes years to come up with a recital program. There’s always some sort of through line to themes that arise, the material I’m drawn to. [I’m not] siphoning it off into a program solely focused on folk music or blues tunes or jazz. Through my classical training, I’m always leaning toward a full integration of my voice. So, whatever I’m imagining or how I’m wanting a phrase to unfold, it can happen in whatever context. My musical interests are really wide. I like sharing the variety of material. I’m excited to share it.”
As the pandemic starts to recede, Bullock’s live performance calendar is filling up once again. This summer, in addition to Ravinia, she will be appearing at music festivals in Aspen, CO; Bregenz, Austria; Sun Valley, ID; and the Grant Teton Festival in Wyoming. In January and February, she sings the title role in a new production of Handel’s Theodora at London’s Royal Opera House.
“I’ve had a few performances in Europe for reduced audiences,” Bullock said, “but I can’t wait for the physical sensation of being surrounded by so many people. There’s nothing like that in the world.”
Wynne Delacoma was classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1991 to 2006 and has been an adjunct journalism faculty member at Northwestern University. She is a freelance music critic, writ