EIF: Julia Bullock and Bretton Brown
Queen’s Hall - 16/08/23
In an unashamedly political programme, Julia Bullock and Bretton Brown present works from the 19th to the 21st century, reimagining Lieder and cabaret songs by male composers for the female persona in the first half and focusing mainly on songs written and popularised by African American women in the second. Sadly the hall has many empty seats, as it proves a rewarding concert, with some ravishing accounts of unfamiliar works.
Julia Bullock, born in St Louis and now living on Germany, is described in the printed programme as a soprano and a classical singer, and indeed she has an excellent classical CV, but today she’s at her best in the mezzo range, especially in non-classical works. I am underwhelmed by the angsty delivery of four opening Schubert and Wolf Lieder (though in an interval conversation I heard a strong case for women’s justifiable anger being heard in this almost entirely male territory!) Then songs by composer/singer, Connie Converse (1924-circa 1974) and Kurt Weill changed my mind completely about the flexibility and power of Bullock’s voice. Converse’s ‘One by One’ demonstrates the beauty of Bullock’s lower notes, and her unsentimental focus on the words. The Weill numbers in German are delivered in atmospheric cabaret style, with lots of gutsy feeling in ‘Wie Lange Noch?’ (How Much Longer?), while ‘The Princess of Pure Delight,’ in English, is a masterpiece of perfectly-timed comic acting and playing for singer and pianist.
“Too many fairy tales take agency away from women,” says Bullock in a commentary on microphone, one of several ways in which she breaks with the norms of recital practice. She sings with a mic too in the second half, after both musicians return early from the interval to work on the innards of the Steinway for John Cage’s ‘She is Asleep: II Duet’ (Version for voice and prepared piano.) The longest work in the concert is experimental music in which piano keys sound like wooden blocks, or mysteriously like drops of water, as Bullock hums and sings various syllables. Strange and surprisingly lovely. ‘Driftin’ Tide’ and ‘Down-hearted Blues’, fall firmly into jazz territory in arrangements by Jeremy Siskind, who also creates a catchy piano stomp as a solo for Brown. Billie Holiday’s ‘Our Love is Different’ is chosen as an affirmation of happiness, unlike many of her songs in which the woman is a victim. Nina Simone’s ‘Revolution’ is sung unaccompanied as a slow anthem and her ‘Four Women,’ after further piano surgery, becomes a complex work about black female identity, with voice and piano producing reverberant sounds. ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free’ is the final number in a constantly thought-provoking concert, which receives well-deserved enthusiastic applause.
You can hear part of it on Radio3 at 1pm on 24th August. If, like me, you’re unhappy that the BBC no longer broadcasts carefully programmed Queen’s Hall concerts like this live and in full, you may like to register your complaint on the BBC phoneline!
Cover photo: Allison Michael Orenstein
