Juliana Hall

Juliana Hall's compositions have been called "brilliant" (Washington Post), "beguiling" (Times of London), "strikingly original" (Austin Chronicle), and "the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon" (Boston Globe). Hall began formal composition studies as a 26-year-old graduate piano performance major at the Yale School of Music, enrolling in private lessons there "for fun" as an elective. Her composition teachers - Martin Bresnick, Leon Kirchner, and Frederic Rzewski - urged her to make a career change, resulting in Hall receiving a master's degree in composition from Yale in 1987. Hall next went to the University of Minnesota to work under renowned vocal composer Dominick Argento. Within a couple months of arriving in Minneapolis, she received her first commission - a request from the Schubert Club of Saint Paul to compose a song cycle for then up-and-coming soprano Dawn Upshaw. In 1989, Hall received another Schubert Club commission, this time for a song cycle for Metropolitan Opera baritone David Malis, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that year as well. Among the many other singers for whom Juliana Hall has composed song cycles and other works of vocal chamber music since those early days are Brian Asawa, Stephanie Blythe, Molly Fillmore, Richard Lalli, Randall Scarlata, and Kitty Whately. She also received the 2017 Sorel Commission from SongFest, and was invited by Artistic Director Stephanie Blythe to serve as Guest Composer for the 2018 Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar. Hall's music has been performed by more than 500 musicians in 30 countries on six continents, at the 92nd Street Y, Ambassador Auditorium, Blackheath Halls, Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Herbst Theater, Holywell Music Room, the Library of Congress, Ordway Theater, Snape Maltings, the Warehouse Waterloo, and Wigmore Hall. Festival performances of Hall's works include concerts at the Beverley Chamber Music, Buxton International, Norfolk Chamber Music, Ojai, Orvieto Musica, Oxford Lieder, Salisbury International Arts, and Sparks & Wiry Cries' songSLAM festivals, as well as the London Festival of American Music, Northern Ireland Opera Festival of Voice, Rhonefestival für Liedkunst, Schumannfest Düsseldorf, and Tanglewood. Recitals dedicated to Hall's work have been presented by Calliope's Call in Boston, New York's Sparks & Wiry Cries, Princeton's Contemporary Undercurrent of Song Project, the Re-Sung art song series in London, and the University of North Texas' CollabFest program, where she served as the 2018 Resident Composer. Other special concerts include performances in the Joy in Singing's 'Edward T. Cone Composers Concert' at New York's Lincoln Center, a Holy Week meditation service at London's St. Paul's Cathedral, and Dawn Upshaw's 'First Songs Project' at New York's Morgan Library & Museum.