Reviews

VAF: Soprano Julia Bullock, VSO Five Freedom Songs for Orchestra
June 14, 2023, Attucks Theatre, Norfolk
Review by John Campbell

This Virginia Arts Festival concert felt like a celebration and featured music by three composers of color led by Eric Jacobson, Virginia Symphony Orchestra conductor. The composers were George Walker, Curtis Stewart and Jessie Montgomery.

On this special night the acoustically excellent Attucks Theatre was filled by all colors of people celebrating how far we have come in my lifetime (b.1942). Not denying the past, the pain of slavery, or the built-in inequalities that are still with us today, we can still celebrate this coming together. The historic Attucks Theatre was completed in 1919. Today the 600 seat theater stands as a monument to black culture. It is the oldest remaining theater in the United States that was financed, designed and built by African Americans as a place of free, creative expression for all of the top black singers and musicians in the Jim Crow era of segregation. After integration the venue fell into disrepair, only to be resurrected by citizens who cared, reopening in 1984.

The first piece on the program was Lyric for Strings by George Walker (1922-2018). We first became aware of George Walker when two of his art songs were published in Willis C. Patterson's book Anthology of Arts Songs by Black Composers. Walker was educated at Oberlin Conservatory, Curtis Institute and Eastman School of Music. In 1945 he made his Town Hall debut and toured extensively as a concert pianist. Like his white counterparts he went to France to study with Nadia Boulanger, taught in universities and had his orchestral music performed and recorded with major orchestras.

Lyric for Strings had a soft beginning, enfolding and then more energetic to a mysterious point, a climax, and then it began again with a beautiful flow of the string orchestra. An urgency developed that soon gave way to a lyrical passage as it ended. This ten minute piece originated as a movement in his first string quartet, Lament. Walker dedicated the work to his grandmother who was born into slavery. In 1990 he expanded the music for string orchestra and titled it Lyric for Strings. It is his most performed work. He also set spirituals for solo voice. He subsequently received a Pulitzer Prize (1996) for his art song Lilacs. In this work you will find his mature style, including serialism with classical form, rhythmic complexity and melodic expressiveness (think Berg or Webern), and jazz and folk influences. When we listened to the work on YouTube we were most impressed with his ability as a composer.

In the background of this program stands Antonin Dvorák as a huge presence over all. Dvorák spent three years (1892-95) as director of the newly founded National Conservatory of Music in New York. It took a European composer who stood outside of American bigotry to help Harry T. Burleigh to fully treasure the music that he inherited from his enslaved ancestors. Dvorák encouraged Burleigh to set these songs in a European art song format which he did. A host of other composers, most of them black, have done the same.

By scaling up from a string quartet of four instrumental artists, violinist, composer and arranger Curtis Stewart (b.1986) has created an expanded piece for orchestra titled Toward America – Symphonic Rhapsody based on Antonin Dvorák's String Quartet No.12 in F Major, Op. 96. Stewart has greatly expanded the instrumental colors. Dvorák spent the summer of 1893 in rural Iowa where he composed his much beloved quartet. While composing, Dvorák's writing was so quick and satisfying that he scrawled a sentence of gratitude to God at the end of his first draft.

In Curtis Stewart's Symphonic Rhapsody the familiar tunes waft through but with twenty-first century energy and with more anxiety expressed. In I. “en route," the march introduced by the percussion is there but subdued, with birdsong and hand-clapped rhythms adding to the complexity.

In II. “inlets” the themes are edgier. Woodwinds speak of beauty and pathos. The intensity of the rollicking underlying melodrama is exciting, with colors, some of which were disturbing. Movement III. “the games we play” brightly hints at a hoedown. It ends where it began, offering a nice ride between. IV. “prayer by train” was a lively, folk-like tune with a variety of instrumental colors woven together in a fun tapestry of themes. There were shades of jazz and body percussion by string players. Patting parts of one's body for percussion has a long history in African music. Here the musicians patted their instruments. There were quick changes from lyrical to magical intensity.

The pivotal piece of the evening followed: Jessie's Montgomery's Five Freedom Songs (2021) written in collaboration with soprano Julia Bullock. The two women came together and using a 1867 historical anthology Slave Songs of the United States, chose five songs to carry their message that reached the stage within six months. The songs: I. My Lord, What a Morning, II. I Want to Go Home, III. Lay dis Body Down, IV. My Father, How Long?, V. The Day of Judgement.

In the Talk Back following the performance Ms. Bullock said that the goal was not to create a showpiece but “to drive home the desired message.” Here was a black, female composer working with a black opera singer to bring into our time the deepest meaning and emotion from that history. The current struggle is informed by the rich, deep, heritage from the past. She mentioned that this was the first time she had performed the piece before an audience that was not primarily white and how magical it was to perform it at the Attucks.

Ms. Bullock's vocal range and powers of expression are stunning. Phrases were sometimes shouts, others were laser clear and calm, and others were delicate pleas. She was communicating directly from her heart to ours. The freedom in her singing blew by the classical restraint of Marian Anderson and the pathos of both Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Her pallet of musical colors contained all of these as needed. Ms. Montgomery's orchestral writing offered excellent support to understand the emotional content. Lead by Conductor Jacobson, the Virginia Symphony players were in top form.

If you missed the evening, you might want to check out Ms. Bullock's first CD Walking in the Dark, which was reviewed in Opera News, February 2023: “Julia Bullock makes a spectacular debut as a solo recording artist.” The album features five songs with her pianist husband Eric Reif and orchestral works by Samuel Barber and John Adams.