A Singer with Consummate Sensitivity
BERKELEY—Julia Bullock doesn’t just sing the music. She has a unique knack for feeling the music in every pore. She prompts you to exclaim, “Drop everything, Julia’s on!”
In the surprisingly effective new format called the virtual recital, the Munich-based American mezzo is giving a 3-month-long display of German lieder and American show tunes, with that magnetic bi-national songwriter Kurt Weill linking in between. For this repertory, she is a stunning interpreter, with an enviable German pronunciation helped, no doubt, by her marriage to the German conductor Christian Reif.
Bullock embodies great vocal traditions ranging from Jessye Norman to the equally unforgettable passionate Berliner from nearly a century ago, Lotte Lenya.
Bullock’s lieder from Schumann and Wolf are sensitively and lyrically rendered in a voice that can even plumb down to the throaty contralto sphere. Closeups show, far better than in concert-hall recitals, her innate acting ability in pouring out her soul via tales of loves lost, heartbreak and “Schmerzendrang” (pressing pain).
But her theatrical bent comes to fruition in show tunes. Here she sits down, as if across from you in a cafe, and acts out anger, frustration and longing in the Lenya (German) songs by Kurt Weill, with rhythms reminiscent of “The Three-Penny Opera” on the piano reductions rendered by Laura Poe.
Reaching back to roots, she evokes the spirit of spirituals in a “Lost in the stars” selection, leading into the poetry of Langston Hughes in pieces by William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds. Going contemporary, she hurdles the ear-tickling resonances and multiple leaps in roles of women in John Adams’ “Girls of the Golden West,” which she had sung in the world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in 2017. There she had played the role of Dame Shirley in the early mining camps. Here Bullock adds the Latina Josefa, the first woman ever convicted and hanged in California in a miscarriage of justice, singing in a Spanish far more opaque than her German.
In the title song of Weill’s “Speak Low,” by way of sharp contrast, she becomes a nightclub chanteuse, lamenting wistfully “everything ends too soon, too soon…”
Dubious about the pre-recorded streaming format, I was dazzled by this version. Although you can’t tell if a voice goosed by audio engineers is a big enough one to fill a concert hall, you catch every nuance of a bona-fide soulful actress like Bullock with closeups and deft camera work far more keenly than in concert. Singing in a bare-bones stage, Bullock could wander about, audaciously singing even BEHIND the piano, and add emotional gazes when pianist Poe plays a challenging solo out of John Adams. In addition subtitles of texts are provided on screen. While all the presenters’ promotional material upfront on the streaming may daunt some, they can revel in tickets prices well below the live norm.
BIO NOTES—Bullock, a St. Louis product finishing up in Eastern conservatories, cites Nina Simone and Billie Holiday as early influences.
JULIA BULLOCK singing in recital, Laura Poe on piano, streaming on Cal Performances, Berkeley, through April 14. For info, contact tickets@calperformances.org or call (510) 642-9988.
