JULIA BULLOCK
Classical Singer
Grammy-winning American classical singer Julia Bullock combines versatile artistry with a probing intellect and commanding stage presence. As well as headlining productions and concerts at preeminent arts institutions around the world, she has held positions as Featured Artist of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Artist-in-Residence of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the San Francisco Symphony. A prominent voice of social consciousness and activism, she was named a 2021 Artist of the Year and “agent of change” by Musical America.
Bullock’s operatic career spans repertoire from the Baroque canon to contemporary works written expressly for her voice. This season, she makes title role appearances in both Handel’s Theodora at the Teatro Real Madrid and John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra, a work composed with her in mind, at the Metropolitan Opera, where she recently made her house debut in his El Niño. She has previously created important new roles in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Michel van der Aa’s Upload, and Adams’s Girls of the Golden West. In concert, she has performed with ensembles including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; the Baltimore, Boston, London, NHK, and San Francisco Symphonies; the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with which she gives a transatlantic tour this season. Past solo highlights include tours with the American Modern Opera Company, of which she is a founding core member; the American, British, Belgian, and Russian premieres of Zauberland; and recitals at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Boston’s Celebrity Series, Washington’s Kennedy Center, and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Bullock has developed and launched three signature projects, all flourishing nationally and beyond. Her multimedia ensemble program “History’s Persistent Voice” addresses the transatlantic slave trade through songs by people enslaved in the U.S. and through visual art, poetry, and new music by B/black female composers. Devised with her husband, Christian Reif, El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered is a chamber orchestral arrangement of El Niño that amplifies the voices of women and Latin American poets. Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, created with Tyshawn Sorey, Claudia Rankine, Michael Schumacher, and Peter Sellars, reexamines the life and legacy of Joséphine Baker. Recorded with Reif and the Philharmonia Orchestra for Nonesuch, Bullock’s solo album debut, Walking in the Dark, won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal, as well as Opus Klassik and Edison Klassiek awards. Her discography also includes Grammy-nominated recordings of Doctor Atomic and West Side Story, while other honors include the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, and First Prize at the Naumburg International Vocal Competition.