Composer Julia Perry.
In Thursday’s (3/21) Van (Berlin), Julia Conrad reports on the Julia Perry Centenary Festival and Celebration, which began on March 13 in NYC and featured several performances, including “one of the first-ever concerts dedicated entirely to Julia Perry’s music. The concert featured PUBLIQuartet, Samantha Ege, and Laquita Mitchell, and began with a toast to the elusive Black modernist composer…. [In 1965] she became the first woman of color to have a piece performed by the New York Philharmonic, at a time when the orchestra had no Black or female players…. Born in segregated Lexington, Kentucky in 1924, Perry was a two-time Guggenheim recipient and Tanglewood fellow who studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Luigi Dallapiccola.” Her works were subsequently ignored and neglected. The article reports on performances of Perry’s work at the festival as well as lectures, discussions, and “the new Experiential Orchestra album ‘American Counterpoints,’ conducted by James Blachly, which features gripping and desperately needed recordings of Perry’s work. While listening, I was struck by how much Perry’s music inspires an active response in her listeners—from arranging, to researching, to confronting … copyright issues, to composing new works. … Silent barriers, lack of support, and costs keep some of the best American musicians from being heard.”
