{"id":2241168,"date":"2026-01-19T19:06:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T19:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2241168"},"modified":"2026-01-19T19:06:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T19:06:06","slug":"julia-bullocks-from-ordinary-things-is-anything-but-ordinary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/julia-bullocks-from-ordinary-things-is-anything-but-ordinary\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Bullock’s ‘From Ordinary Things’ is anything but ordinary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The art of the so-called art song is a thriving business. Singers galore are monthly recording songs from the rich 19th century classical repertory, while composers are busy making new ones. But what was once known as the Lieder <\/i>recital \u2014 the German title for songs in a genre once dominated by Schubert, Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss \u2014 has approached its sell-by date.<\/p>\n

The smart shopper will already note signs of staleness and mold in the old practice of a singer in stiff white tie and tails or gaudy gown, standing, arm propped on piano, of the second banana accompanist. Attention here was meant to be drawn not to the singer but the marvels of song, as you followed the text in your program book. The recital acted like a religious experience in which a rarefied atmosphere befits radiance.<\/p>\n

A new generation of singers, however, has been strikingly upending the song recital, turning to songs from a wide variety of sources old, new and genre fluid. Singers think thematically and theatrically. Pianists become welcoming creative partners. Other musicians, stage directors, choreographers and dancers may be invited in.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Ordinary Things,\u201d which had its premiere as part of CAP UCLA\u2019s series at the Nimoy Theater on Thursday night, is the latest project of one of the least ordinary and most compelling singers of this new generation, Julia Bullock<\/a>. A rivetingly theatrical soprano, Bullock, in collaboration with percussionist\/composer Tyshawn Sorey and director Peter Sellars, has developed a full-scale operatic evening, \u201cPerle Noir: Meditations for Jos\u00e9phine,\u201d about the chanteuse Josephine Baker and slated next for Australia\u2019s Adelaide Festival in March. Another project has been Bullock\u2019s riveting staging, with dance, of Olivier Messiaen\u2019s mystical, Amazonian, sex-love-death song cycle, \u201cHarawi,\u201d<\/a> which came to the Wallis in October 2024.<\/p>\n

Conor Hanick, a partner of Bullock\u2019s in the experimental collective American Modern Opera Company (AMOC<\/a>), was the pianist for \u201cHarawi\u201d and is again for \u201cFrom Ordinary Things.\u201d They are further joined by the equally versatile cellist, Seth Parker Woods. The title comes from the last line of \u201cShelter,\u201d a song by Andr\u00e9 Previn with a text by Toni Morrison. \u201cIn this soft place\/Under your wings\/I will find shelter\/From ordinary things.\u201d<\/p>\n

That leaves us Bullock with extraordinary things, and her program is surprising in all things. She begins in shock, singing unaccompanied, on a dark stage in a darkened hall, performers illuminated by powerful spotlights. <\/p>\n

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Julia Bullock performs at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Thursday in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Stark, discomforting amplification diminishes intimacy and the luxurious richness of Bullock\u2019s soprano, which easily fills a room on its own, suggests quiet terror, the lonely state of Nina Simone\u2019s \u201cImages.\u201d The unaccompanied solo about a woman who \u201cthinks her body has no glory\u201d gets it from Bullock. That progresses without a break into the first song, \u201cNahandove,\u201d from Ravel\u2019s \u201cSongs of Madagascar,\u201d with piano and cello but not the flute in Ravel\u2019s original setting. Here beauty is celebrated with voluptuous rapture, setting the mood for \u201cOh, Yemanja,\u201d a mythic, watery mother\u2019s prayer from Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s opera \u201cScourge of Hyacinths.\u201d <\/p>\n

A highlight was to have been a pair of songs by Le\u00f3n, with texts by Kevin Young, written for the recital, but they were apparently not yet ready. A line from one of them is \u201cAll light wrong?\u201d With the program and song texts only available to download <\/a>on the cellphone, the audience was left in the dark without texts and, with amplification obscuring diction, not knowing what\u2019s what. <\/p>\n

Another Young line \u2014 \u201care my chief complaints\u201d \u2014 suited the blowsy loudspeakers that messed up balances, which extended to a performance of George Walker\u2019s rarely heard Sonata for Cello, that ends the first half, for no apparent reason other than it gives the spotlight to the instrumentalists and it is a score that begs to be heard. <\/p>\n

Parker has been a glowing advocate of the early work, written in 1957, by the late composer whose music is only in the past few years beginning to find its way to the public thanks to the efforts of reviving neglected Black composers. The sonata does not have the vibrant complexity of Walker\u2019s commanding later works, but it is tight, strong, accessible and with an inspired slow movement that it would be hard to get enough of.<\/p>\n

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Cellist Seth Parker Woods and pianist Conor Hanick at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Thursday in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The strange second half brought fewer complaints. An intermission bought time to familiarize oneself with text squeezed onto the cellphone screen. Amplification proved less objectionable. Bullock announced that while putting the program together she had come across songs by Robert Owens, a little-known American composer who lived in Munich, Germany, and died in 2017 and who wrote songs in the style of Richard Strauss to texts by the 19th<\/sup> century poet Joseph von Eichendorff. If not a find, a curiosity.<\/p>\n

From there to the avant-garde. \u201cUltimate Rose\u201d from Salvatore Sciarrino\u2019s 1981 opera, \u201cVanitas,\u201d turns early music, along with vocal and cello production, marvelously inside out. More Nina Simone, the harsh \u201cFour Women,\u201d then Previn. Along with \u201cShelter,\u201d Bullock sang a song he wrote with Dory Previn (\u201cIt\u2019s Good to Have You Near Again\u201d) and arrangements he made of standards (The Gershwins\u2019 \u201cLove Walked In\u201d and Rogers\u2019 and Hart\u2019s \u201cNobody\u2019s Heart Belongs to Me\u201d) for his album with Leontyne Price. The encore was Massenet\u2019s \u201cEl\u00e9gie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each song seems to exist for reasons of its own. Each song creates a different dynamic among the three performers. You listen, left in the dark, wondering but also in wonder, as Bullock asks you a question why each song mattered as much as it did. <\/p>\n

You go home and read the texts and find there are<\/i> no ordinary things.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The art of the so-called art song is a thriving business. Singers galore are monthly recording songs from the rich 19th century classical repertory, while composers are busy making new ones. But what was once known as the Lieder recital \u2014 the German title for songs in a genre once dominated by Schubert, Schumann, Hugo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2241169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2241168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Julia-Bullocks-From-Ordinary-Things-is-anything-but-ordinary.com2Fe52Faf2F207c1b774e2eb77f95557635.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2241170,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241168\/revisions\/2241170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}