SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Alison Russell. I'm a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and activist. I've been inspired by artists like Nina Simone and Tracey Chapman, who turned their faces into the blade of storm and roared back dignity and hope. This month, I'm your guest host on Wamanica. Today we're talking about a prolific American composer. Her music combined a career's worth of study in European classical training with her own African-American heritage. The result was an eclectic and powerful repertoire of operas, symphonies, and choral works that continue to astound audiences today. Let's talk about Julia Perry. Julia was born Julia Amanda Perry in Lexington, Kentucky on March 25, 1924. Her father, Dr. Abe Perry, was a doctor and amateur pianist. Her mother, America Perry, encouraged all her children to learn music. Julia and her sisters grew up training on various instruments. Julia herself began on violin and piano. Soon after Julia's birth, the Perrys moved to Akron, Ohio, which Julia called home. She graduated high school there and traveled to Princeton, New Jersey. There she studied piano, voice, and composition at Westminster Choir College. She graduated in 1948 with a bachelor's and a master's in music. From there, she studied conducting at Juilliard and spent summers learning about composition in Tanglewood, Massachusetts at the Berkshire Music Center. At this first stage in her career as a composer, Julia's works focused on vocal arrangements and choral music. They were heavily influenced by spirituals and many were arrangements of well-known songs like Free at Last or Song of Our Savior. Some pieces also incorporated aspects of the blues. She wrote her first major composition called the Stabbat Mater in 1951. It showed signs of what was to come in her music. Though it was strictly defined as a tonal piece, it incorporated dissonance and many modern compositional techniques. That same year, Julia won her first Guggenheim Fellowship to continue her composition studies with composer Luigi Gallapicola in Florence. She received a second fellowship in 1954 to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She was also sponsored by the U.S. Information Service to conduct a series of concerts across Europe. While in Europe, Julia continued to experiment with and refine her style. Her music increasingly included dissonant harmonies, shifting rhythms, and layered textures. Her subject material was equally as unique. Her operatic ballet, The Selfish Giant, was based on Oscar Wilde's short story of the same name. Her vocal work, The Simpligaris, was based on the panic surrounding the seventh-century Salem witch trials. And her groundbreaking, homunculus piece, A Piece for Ten Percussionists, was named after a test tube creature brought to life in Goethe's Faust. Julia also described this last piece as pantonal, since it was neither major nor minor and used all available tones. Julia returned to the U.S. in 1959. She spent time teaching at Florida A&E College and Atlanta University before returning to Akron. There, she lived in an apartment above her father's medical office and continued to compose. She would later write that America had changed since she'd been gone. Julia was deeply invested in the civil rights movement taking place in the country, and her art shifted to reflect this long-held influence in more pronounced ways. Her A Sweet Symphony from 1976 drew on rock and roll and rhythm and blues, for example. And her 10th symphony, titled Soul Symphony, was a direct response to ongoing unrest and protest. Julia's work also became widely known in the 1960s. Her pieces were played by the New York Philharmonic and other major orchestras. She received countless awards and accolades, including a National Institutes of Arts and Letters Award in 1964. In 1971, Julia suffered the first of a series of strokes. They left her paralyzed on her right side, but Julia taught herself to write with her left hand and continued to compose. She died on April 24, 1979, at 55 years old. Before her death, she wrote an incredible repertoire of experimental music melding her greatest influences into her own style. Twelve symphonies, two concertos, three operas, and a number of smaller vocal and instrumental arrangements. All month long, we're highlighting Black musicians. Wamanaka is a Wonder Media Network production. Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan, who invited me to guest host this month. Talk to you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast from Wonder Media Network that I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics. Hosted by Ashanti Gholar, BGG is the one-stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of politics. In honor of Black History Month and Women's History Month, they're spotlighting Black, Brown, and Indigenous women of color who are blazing trails in politics. Tune in as Ashanti speaks with guests like LaFonza Butler, the president of Emily's List, and Michelle Wu, the first woman of color to serve as mayor of Boston. Listen to new episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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