Nearly a decade ago, I watched Julia Bullock crawl around the floor of the Juilliard stage in the title role of Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen.” A great talent had arrived. I kept listening: First, to her Joséphine Baker-inspired “Perle Noire” in a penthouse at Lincoln Center (and the tweaked version that followed on the main stairway of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In San Francisco, I saw her in the world premiere of John Adams’s “Girls of the Golden West,” directed by her artistic soulmate, Peter Sellars. For musicians like Bullock, listening seems an innate skill. Her debut solo recording, “Walking in the Dark,” will be released on December 9 on Nonesuch Records. It includes orchestral songs by Adams and Samuel Barber, alongside voice-and-piano pieces by Oscar Brown Jr., Billy Taylor, Sandy Denny, and Connie Converse—and a traditional Black spiritual arranged by Hall Johnson.
Unlimited access to our
