Julia Bullock’s debut album “Walking in the Dark” featured in The Guardian
The American soprano Julia Bullock ranges from John Adams to Sandy Denny on her lyrical debut. (Photograph credit: Dan Nickells)
Classical home listening: Julia Bullock’s Walking in the Dark; the Dudok Quartet’s Reflections
By Fiona Maddocks
The Guardian
November 26, 2022
In her first solo album, Walking in the Dark (Nonesuch Records), Julia Bullock – a memorable Theodora in Handel’s opera, staged at the Royal Opera House earlier this year – is described not by voice type but as a “classical singer”, influenced early on by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. If this hints at range and versatility, as well as emotional power, a Bullock hallmark, her choice of repertoire confirms that impression. An American, now based in Germany, Bullock is joined by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Christian Reif, in Samuel Barber’s wistful James Agee setting, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and an aria from John Adams’s El Niño.
Reif (also Bullock’s husband) is her pianist in a traditional spiritual as well as songs by Oscar Brown Jr and Billy Taylor. The album’s title comes from the haunting opening line of One By One by Connie Converse, a singer-songwriter who disappeared in 1974, her fate never known. Sandy Denny‘s Who Knows Where the Time Goes? ends this stirring and lyrical debut.
Watch Julia Bullock and Christian Reif performing One By One by Connie Converse.
