Large photo: Boston Landmarks Orchestra at the Hatch Shell. Photo by Michael Dwyer. Inset: Composer Julia Perry. Photo courtesy of Julia A. Perry Collection. Talbott Music Library, Westminster Choir College of Rider University.
In the July 31 Bay State Banner (Dorchester, Massachusetts), Celina Colby writes, “Christopher Wilkins, music director of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, has been working to get Black female composer Julia Perry’s work onto stages for years. Legal challenges and Perry’s lack of heirs and a will have kept her intellectual property, including published and unpublished compositions, tied up. But the advocacy has paid off and one of Perry’s compositions will debut for the first time this weekend, right here in Boston…. Perry was a composer, pianist and conductor who began working in the 1940s and continued to do so until her passing in 1979. Her compositions combined her classical training with influences from her African American heritage. Her studies included time at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood here in Massachusetts and at Juilliard … Among many accolades she was awarded multiple Guggenheim fellowships … Unfortunately, Perry died without a will…. Thanks to the work of Wilkins and others, an estate is being established so the world can once again enjoy and celebrate Perry’s musical prowess. On August 3, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra will perform Perry’s ‘Three Spirituals,’ a previously unpublished work, during a free public concert at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade.”
