The idea for soprano Julia Bullock’s project “History’s Persistent Voice” came eight years ago when composer Jessie Montgomery asked if she would be interested in collaborating on new arrangements of songs that were transcribed in the 19th century. After the Civil War, a group of musicologists visited newly freed communities of Black people across the United States and published the songs they collected in an anthology. Together, Bullock and Montgomery poured over these 136 melodies and lyrics about rebellion and resistance and carefully studied their performance practice annotations.
The result of this research, Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs, opened the Feb. 11 performance of “History’s Persistent Voice” at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Linking the past to the present, the project aims to present a movement through “slavery, convict leasing, sharecropping, the Jim Crow era, and the New Jim Crow era of mass incarceration,” the program stated.
The vision Bullock had for this concert wasn’t for show, but to persist in giving voice to the voiceless. She explicitly stated from the stage that Lincoln Center’s “own history of discrimination, prejudice, and bias” isn’t excluded from the storytelling — and truth telling — of “History’s Persistent Voices,” which confronts the “normalized exploitation, dismissal, and dehumanizing of Black people [in] social, cultural, or educational institutions.”
The multimedia program featured new music by Montgomery, Cassie Kinoshi, Allison Loggins-Hull, Carolyn Yarnell, Pamela Z, and Tania León. Interspersed were readings of texts written by formerly enslaved, incarcerated, rebellious, and broken free poets. LA-based projection and set designer Hana S. Kim provided stunning, in-depth graphic designs that morphed in layers, embodying an artist painting a canvas.
After Bullock finished speaking (“Enslavement of the body can be inescapable for some individuals, so liberation of the mind sometimes becomes the only thing that a person can fight for”), the musicians from the New Haven Symphony Orchestra jolted our attention with chromatic, sforzando jabs, like those heard in the climax of gospel choir music. Led by conductor Christian Reif, the strings melted into lush sliding chords, massaging the dissonant into the melodic, and a twinkling overlay of glockenspiel lent a fluorescent freshness. The drums somewhat bombarded, creating a drag and heaviness that Bullock had to temper with her swaying, bright clarity.
Issues in the percussion section consistently overshadowed the execution of the program. The orchestration of the compositions overextended the two percussionists across multiple parts when these arrangements and styles depend on more musicians. Sometimes that means hiring specific specialties, like a drummer. In new music, this oversight of what functions in the percussion section can breed contempt, getting in the way of deeply engaging with the music, or making the difference—depending on who you are—between feeling burdened by these difficult stories rather than moved, or healed.
The second movement of Five Freedom Songs, “I Want to Go Home,” grabbed at an internal nostalgia with deep tones from the basses and cellos that trembled in the torso. Bullock’s voice channeled and rested in this gorgeousness and refused to let it go, with a rounded, thick sound that echoed the slithering motions in the strings. The last three freedom songs were interspersed with readings of poetry by Craig Anthony Ross, an advocate for prison reform and eradicating gang violence, and Joe Sullivan, a 13-year-old sentenced to die in a Florida prison for a non-homicidal event.
Cassie Kinoshi’s ravishing and turbulent blue skies, bluer seas is inspired by the words and work of Jamaican poet Una Marson, the first Black woman hired as a radio producer by the BBC. Vibraphone and plucked basses pecked away with short tones on top of the orchestra, zig-zagging the beat while strings remained in a hushed, low register bubble pierced by Bullock’s voice in her highest register.
Loggins-Hull’s Mama’s Little Precious Thing wrapped Brahms’ ubiquitous children’s lullaby in the blues. Concertmaster Stephan Tieszen opened with a technically beautiful violin solo that was precise in intonation and sound, yet failed to capture the slight lag and sliding style of the blues.
The orchestra never did seem to connect to the music, to Bullock, or to each other throughout the evening. The double basses, with the only Black member of the orchestra (principal bassist Chris Johnson), carried the strings, but the percussion struggled to anchor and guide the ensemble — characteristic of Black Music — instead being tugged along. Bullock was often left to carry the whole stage — and she did with her searing and commanding stage presence.
Two pieces by Carolyn Yarnell, I Come Up The Hard Way and ain’t my home, performed without pause, explored a more blistering dissonance, darker in tenor drums and harsh string articulations. Bullock’s opening solo jumped in dramatic and chromatic directions, her tone wilted in grief even when moving through diatonic sections.
Pamela Z’s Quilt features the voices of renowned quilters in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The Black women who preserve this tradition weave stories, culture, and history that have been on exhibit at the Smithsonian and featured on U.S. stamps. With an impressive overlap of spoken words and Bullock’s singing voice, the vibraphone patterned the natural intonation of the quilters’ voices while strings branched out, but always fell back in line.
Tania León’s Green Pastures closed the program and evoked mystery, strings plucking without an easily detectable meter as if popping out from hiding spots before instantly vanishing again. Strings filled in spaces where Bullock’s obscure melodies abruptly broke, plucked cellos and basses pitted against frenetic lines in violins and violas.
Bullock easily textures and colors her voice without sacrificing her unique and true control over her sound. And despite any disconnects between her artistry and the orchestra, the overall message — the narratives, research, and performance practices — that Bullock has entered into the lexicon never wavered. This revived and arranged music is already canon — even if unfamiliar to the Eurocentric Western art music canon.
Before the final piece on the program, Bullock said that she was grateful to be performing at Lincoln Center because “it is a place where people acknowledge that truth [of past discrimination, prejudice, and bias], and have devoted steps to take responsibility for it, and to heal from it.” However, she continued, “Healing is a process; it’s a long process when it comes to deep wounds.”
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