American art song composer Juliana Hall was our January Composer of the Month, and is maintaining a very busy schedule of performances and new compositions. Among her most recent activities, she was asked by famed mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe, Artistic Director of the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar (which she founded), to be this year’s Guest Composer at the Seminar. Hall is only the third composer to be so honored, following Ricky Ian Gordon and Tom Cipullo.
This year’s Seminar featured a special interview-concert on May 23, 2018. Each of the six invited singers and three invited pianists–seminar Fellows–performed a song of Hall’s in between conversation with Blythe, Music Director Alan Louis Smith, and Hall. The evening was capped off with a gorgeous performance of a song by Blythe and Smith from Hall’s new song cycle “Of That So Sweet Imprisonment” for contralto and piano, which Hall composed especially for Stephanie Blythe.
The event, “An Evening with American Composer Juliana Hall,” is available below and on YouTube.
Stephanie Blythe and Alan Louis Smith will be performing the World Premiere of Hall’s “Of That So Sweet Imprisonment” on January 19, 2019 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City. More details of that concert will be available here as details are announced.
In Tune blog 