2024 marks Julia Perry’s 100th birth year with today, March 25th being her actual birthdate. Already, there have been a host of celebrations in her honor. Last month in England, a weeklong celebration of Perry’s life and music took place at the Royal Northern College of Music. And just last week in New York City, COOS’ Artistic Director & Violist Ashleigh Gordon had the pleasure of witnessing several world premieres, engaging lectures, and even joined a stellar line up of musicians onstage to perform Julia Perry’s chamber work “Pastoral” for flute and string sextet.
While Julia fell into obscurity in her later life before she passed in 1979, there has been a wealth of continued scholarship and advocacy focused on her music, her life, and her family. Eileen Southern, a scholar of Renaissance and Black American music, and the first African American woman tenured in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, wrote of her and countless other Black musical figures in her 1971 book: “The Music of Black Americans: A History.” Dr. Mildred Denby Green has a chapter on Perry in her 1983 text: “Black Women Composers: A Genesis”. Julia Perry’s most extensive biography and insight into her life and scores can be found in Helen Walker-Hill’s seminal book from 2007: “From Spirituals to Symphonies: African American women composers and their music.”
There is also work happening today to diligently bring Julia Perry’s music to the forefront. Dr. Kendra Leonard, for instance, has created a free-to-use digital hub on Humanities Commons to assist with the exchange of manuscripts, published works, and scholarship on Perry. Julia's scores, many of which were thought to be orphaned manuscripts, and a number of them being illegible, are being engraved for publication due to efforts of a small but mighty team that includes:
Dr. Louise Toppin: coloratura soprano, professor at University of Michigan, and director of Videmus;
Christopher Wilkins: conductor of the Akron Symphony in Ohio and Boston Landmarks Orchestra;
James Blachly: conductor of the Experimental Orchestra in NYC which just released a new album featuring Perry’s violin concerto among other of her works.
And numerous other scholars and academics around the country
So. You may be asking: "Who was Julia Perry and why are so many people interested in her?"
Well, we're glad you asked!
Julia Perry was born in Lexington, Kentucky on March 25, 1924, the fourth of five sisters, to an upper middle class and musically-enthusiastic Black family. At the age of 10, she moved to Akron, OH, where she studied voice (she was a mezzo-soprano), piano and violin, and was known as an “outgoing, cheerful, aggressive tomboy” by her childhood friend and cellist Kermit Moore.
She received her training at Westminster Choir College in New Jersey, studying composition, voice, piano, violin, drama and conducting. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1947; the same year Carl Fischer published her first work: a choral piece entitled Carillon High-Ho.
She spent two summers in the Berkshires studying choral singing, conducting and composition at Tanglewood and many years living in Europe writing, performing, and studying with Nadia Boulanger and Luigi Dallapiccola among others.
Julia was a conductor, and the only Black female conductor active during the mid-century years as noted by Eileen Southern, having "conducted a series of orchestral concerts in Europe under the auspices of the U.S. Information Service" in 1957. She was known to many as “Maestra” and prided herself on her “Toscanini precision” and “Stokowskian grace.”
She wrote dramatic works including a three-act play, an epic poem entitled Graves of Untold Africans, and three (complete) operas including:
The Cask of Amontillado which was staged at Columbia University in 1954 and adapted from a story by Edgar Allen Poe;
Symplegades which was based on the Salem witch trials; and
The Selfish Giant which was subtitled A Sacred Musical Fable and based on a story by Oscar Wilde.
Beyond opera, she wrote about 100 works ranging from solo instrumental, sacred and secular songs, and chamber works with all sorts of creative instrumentation, to symphonies, works for band and concertos. About half of those works were lost due to lack of preservation or cataloging efforts. Of those that survived, only about a dozen or so are published. The rest are actively being sought after to engrave and bring back into concert rotation.
A two-time Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, Julia’s health went south in her late 30’s. She suffered from Acromegaly, a hormonal disorder that causes the bones in one’s body to enlarge. In her 40’s, she suffered a series of strokes that left her paralyzed on her right side. Determined to continue to compose, Perry taught herself how to write with her left hand. By this point, her scores were so illegible that she needed to write the note names in her manuscript and often send messages of apology for their condition. Yet, for years, she determinedly sent her scores to colleagues, publishers, composers, and conductors for their consideration to program and record. She, who was celebrated and reached international success in her 30’s with her career-launching work Stabat Mater, was met with a slew of “no’s” in her 40’s and 50’s. She died from cardiac arrest in 1979 at the age of 55: a Black, disabled woman who had fallen into obscurity and severe economic hardships.
So what makes her so interesting? Musicologist Helen Walker-Hill said it best:
“Her remarkable career began before the civil rights era, while de facto segregation was still the norm in the North as well as the law in the South, and black performers had difficulty gaining access to opera houses or concert stages. By midcentury she was acknowledged as one of a handful of significant American composers, whether black or female, whose music not only was performed frequently in Europe and the United States, but also was published and recorded. She drew on the strengths and musical traditions of her African-American heritage, competed successfully in the white mainstream musical world, and gained an international reputation as a composer of undisputed talent and skill in an eclectic twentieth-century musical language. This achievement was not only impressive but also subversive; a challenge to the status quo without being intentionally political…Her tenacity and perseverance in continuing to compose and to pursue performances and publication, despite ill health, social and political upheaval, public ignorance, and rejection, is deeply moving and inspiring.”
Happy 100th, Julia Perry!
- Ashleigh Gordon
Artistic Director
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