Julia Bullock and Bretton Brown

A musical journey between two worlds, Europe and the United States, meeting and reflecting one another in a program rich in contrasts, affinities, and resonances. Soprano Julia Bullock, renowned for her visionary and groundbreaking projects, and pianist Bretton Brown guide the audience through a path that traverses genres, eras, and identities.

The program unfolds as a continuous interweaving. In the opening section, Samuel Barber’s songs enter into dialogue with those of Connie Converse, an American singer-songwriter and activist who disappeared in 1974 and was never found, whose work—remarkable for its originality and depth—has only recently been rediscovered. Converse is the first of many female figures featured in the program and gives way to the Baroque world of Barbara Strozzi, which introduces an Italian section spanning from Berio to Rossini. Kurt Weill forms the keystone of the program, opening the doors to Broadway with some of his greatest successes, alongside South Pacific by Richard Rodgers and the timeless Summertime from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Gershwin’s great “American folk opera” in turn leads into an African American focus through the music of two groundbreaking figures, Margaret Bonds and Nina Simone. This journey sheds light on the contributions of great Black women composers, long marginalized, and finds in Julia Bullock a sensitive and deeply aware interpreter.

It is precisely the sensitivity of the Bullock–Brown duo that makes possible this seamless transition between languages so close yet so distinct—from art song to musical theatre, from cultivated song to popular music - while maintaining a strong narrative coherence. The result is a concert that is at once an exploration and a story, bringing distant worlds together into a single, intense listening experience.