Juliana Hall

Juliana Hall specializes in composing works for the voice: “glistening, poignant music” (Gramophone), “complex in conception and construction” (Planet Hugill), with “graceful, nuanced vocal lines” (Opera News). Hall’s more than 60 song cycles, monodramas, and vocal chamber works have been described as “brilliant” (Washington Post), “beguiling” (The Times), and “the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon” (Boston Globe).

Hall studied privately with composers Frederic Rzewski, Leon Kirchner, and Martin Bresnick while enrolled as a graduate piano student at the Yale School of Music, and all three faculty teachers encouraged her to become a composer, so when she received her masters degree in 1987 it was as a composer. Hall traveled to Minneapolis mid-year to begin studies with Dominick Argento. Shortly after her arrival she received her first commission, from the Schubert Club, for a song cycle for soprano Dawn Upshaw, and a couple years later in 1989 she received her second commission, again from the Schubert Club and this time for baritone David Malis. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 as well.

Since then more than 700 musicians have performed Hall’s music around the world, among them dozens of singers for whom she has written music, including Brian Asawa, Stephanie Blythe, Molly Fillmore, Maggie Finnegan, Martha Guth, Zachary James, Richard Lalli, Amy Petrongelli, Randall Scarlata, Laura Dixon Strickling, and Kitty Whately, as well as tonight’s guest tenor, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Source Song Festival Artistic Director Clara Osowski. Hall’s music has been presented at the 92nd Street Y, Ambassador Auditorium, Bargemusic, Concertgebouw Recital Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Herbst Theatre, the Library of Congress, Morgan Library & Museum, Ordway Music Theater, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Wigmore Hall, as well as the Beverley, Buxton, Carmel Bach, Norfolk, Ojai, and Salisbury Festivals; the London Festival of American Music, and the Oxford International Song Festival.

Hall’s music has also served educational purposes, having been studied, researched, and performed at more than 200 schools, including the Bard, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Eastman, Hartt, Jacobs (IU), Juilliard, Longy, Manhattan, Mannes, New England, and Peabody music schools and, abroad, London’s Guildhall School, Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, as well as universities in Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Taiwan, and training programs including the Collaborative Piano Institute, Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, Orvieto Musica Festival, SongFest, the University of North Texas’ CollabFest program, and the Tanglewood Music Center.

The BBC and NPR radio networks have broadcast Hall’s compositions, and the Albany, Arsis Audio, Blue Griffin, Bright Shiny Things, MSR Classics, Navona, Shokat Projects, Solo Musica, Stone Records, and Vienna Modern Masters labels have issued recordings of her music. The E. C. Schirmer Music Company has published more than fifty of her vocal works.

Highlights of Hall’s upcoming season include recitals in Belgium and Berlin, a program of Walter de la Mare songs at the London Song Festival, and premieres of twelve new Emily Dickinson songs at Vanderbilt University, a new song cycle with poet Antigoni Gaitana in Greece, and a new monodrama with longtime collaborator, librettist Caitlin Vincent.