Artist in Residence Julia Bullock in Conversation with Jeremy Geffen
“With fractures in our consciousness, part of the joy at least I feel as a musician… I’m healing some of those fractures, or at least trying to rebuild some things.”
Cal Performances welcomes soprano Julia Bullock as 2024–25 season artist in residence, with two performances that showcase her radiant voice, keen interpretive intelligence, and boundless artistic imagination. Her first performance in American Modern Opera Company’s staging of Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle Harawi opens Cal Performances’ season and is a core program in Cal Performances’ season-long Illuminations theme of “Fractured History.” Her second performance, alongside Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, explores some of the most iconic Baroque works performed today.
In this video, Cal Performances executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen interviews the soon-to-be artist in residence about her connection to the programs she is bringing, her philosophy on “Fractured History,” and her excitement around engaging the UC Berkeley campus community.
Transcript
Jeremy Geffen:
Hello, everyone. I’m Jeremy Geffen, executive and artistic director for Cal Performances. It is my great pleasure to have with me today in Cal Performances 2024–25 season, artist in residence, soprano Julia Bullock. Hi, Julia.
Julia Bullock:
Hello!
Jeremy Geffen:
I’m so happy to be able to see more of you next season. You’re bringing two unusual projects, or one project that is certainly more off the beaten track than the other. So I wanted to start out by talking about these two projects, one of which will open our season, and that is the staged version of Messiaen’s song cycle, Harawi, and what exactly that will entail and what it means.
Julia Bullock:
Sure. Well, I’m just happy, always thrilled to come back to Cal Performances. It’s just a wonderfully warm environment and a welcoming audience. So Harawi is a piece that I fell in love with… It was over ten years ago, I guess, now. I just spent a day going through the poetry and also all of the various recordings that I could find of this 50-minute song cycle that Messiaen wrote for voice and piano. Initially, I had the idea of performing this work with another singer and also with two pianists because the piece deals with duality and actually dichotomies in pretty extreme ways—so, the love relationship, life and loss, it deals with the embodiment of man and woman.
I guess as I grew a little bit as a singer and also as I started to perform more one-woman shows and also give a lot more recitals, it was getting harder and harder for me to imagine splitting the piece apart just as a vocalist. But then, I met some wonderful dancers who are a part of the American Modern Opera Company, of which I’m also a founding member. Because the arts practice, the performance arts practice of harawi also incorporates dance, I thought, “Okay. Well, what if we added dancers into the mix?” So to balance it, to still honor the original idea of four people, there are two dancers, myself, and then also a pianist. That includes: Conor Hanick is the pianist, Bobbi Jene Smith also worked on the choreography and will be dancing in the piece, alongside Or, who is her husband. Anyway, so we’re all… We’re just a happy quartet up there going through this incredibly intense material.
When I first was looking at Harawi and the title… Honestly, I did not know anything about the arts practice of harawi at all, which is music and movement that originated in the Andes Mountains. Messiaen was first exposed to this art form through an anthology that was published by some French musicologists. They went and just hand transcribed some songs. Actually, if you look through this anthology, some of the lyrics and also the melodies, Messiaen directly quoted.
Jeremy Geffen:
There are two things that I wanted to pick up on from what you just said, which is our Illuminations theme for next season is “Fractured History,” which is about really how we examine history, how history is not static; and our understanding of ourselves, the culture in which we live, grows based on new information or influences that come to us. As you were speaking about Harawi, I thought about the fact that, here is this composer writing on the other side of the planet from where some of the source material or the inspiration came from. Want to see what your thoughts about that.
Julia Bullock:
Well, questions of appropriation are big and important. I think as long as those of us who are re-engaging with work over and over again—and we’re re-engaging with history constantly… I’m dealing with classic art and the classics. All that means really is that we are returning to the material again and again, hoping that it will become more illuminated or we will somehow become more illuminated in the process and learn something.
So I think as long as we are responsibly engaging with material—and then, therefore that means looking at history really closely, then the question of appropriation and then the erasure that sometimes or often accompanies that—that cycle can be stopped. So when we started as a group in American Modern Opera Company, when we started to talk about how to stage this work, and how we even wanted to begin the research process collectively, I said it was really important for me to at least engage in some conversations with practitioners of harawi. And so, I found two women who danced and sang. They lived in Germany and we just had a bunch of conversations. With fractures in our consciousness, part of the joy, at least I feel as a musician, and I guess an anthropologist in some maybe amateur way, I’m healing some of those fractures, or at least trying to rebuild some things.
Jeremy Geffen:
Your other performance, for many of us who have watched you on the opera stage in the United States, we haven’t had the opportunity to see you in Baroque repertoire, which I know has been a healthy part of your diet, especially in Europe. So I wanted to ask you about this project with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and finding that repertoire.
Julia Bullock:
Well, I mean, they just reached out to me saying, “We wanted to put a tour together in United States. What do you think?” …After just some conversations where they said the main focus is to say that the greatest hits, like these Baroque greatest hits—which are almost turned into clichés in one way or another— that they are really worthy, wonderful pieces of music. And to… I hate to use the word exploit in this context, but to just lay them out boldly and without apology side by side, let audiences enjoy them.
And so, I perform a lot of Baroque material outside of the United States. And really, it has been as active, I guess, as a lot of my contemporary singing when it comes to the opera field. But yeah, this is a chance to do it in concert with a really, really great ensemble.
Jeremy Geffen:
I wanted to ask you about the things that you will be doing on campus that actually don’t relate to that or that are in addition to the performance elements. I know that you had wanted to focus on a better experience of a masterclass essentially, or a better way of engaging with young singers around repertoire, and wanted to see if you could speak a little bit to that.
Julia Bullock:
Well, sure. Well, I don’t use the word masterclass ever when I’m working. And so, I just describe these opportunities as public work sessions. I just put out a call, an open invitation to whomever is interested. And so, the students themselves who are going to participate, they’re self-selecting. I just ask them to maybe reflect on the overall theme from Cal Performances for this coming season. And if there’s repertoire that comes up in it—it could really be from anywhere featuring any writer, composer, and singer-songwriter, just whomever they’re feeling called to lend their voice to—to just bring it into a public space for us to explore together. And hopefully, I can just share some tools, or we can share tools. Maybe they’ll teach me something as well. I hope so. Usually, that’s the case.
Jeremy Geffen:
And I think we all benefit from your curiosity.
Julia Bullock:
You’re sweet. Thank you.
Jeremy Geffen:
So looking forward to having you around next season. I thank you for your time and your generosity. And yeah, can’t wait to see you more often.
Julia Bullock:
Same. Well, always a pleasure, Jeremy. Thank you.
