JULIANA HALL | AMERICAN ART SONG COMPOSER

NEWS  regarding  UNIQUE PRODUCTIONS

SUMMER, 2023    —    ECHO : A 12-MINUTE MUSICAL FILM BASED ON SENTIMENT

 

The film ECHO is being developed by a truly international production team based in Europe. In ECHO, soprano Ema Katrovas asks “What is a performer without an audience?”

Check out ECHO: a short musical film based on the monodrama Sentiment

OCTOBER 7, 2020    —    SONGS WITHOUT WORDS | PAUSE ANIMATIONS

 

Guildhall School of Music & Drama  (London, England)

Piano performance by Bretton Brown  (Guildhall Vocal Studies tutor)
Animation by Lucy Harper

 

This project is about the desire to connect during a crisis when we were asked to be alone during the pandemic, and was composed at the start of the 2020 lockdown. The 25-minute animated sound work includes sound recordings made during the first months of the lockdown period and aims to encourage listeners to take a pause with meditative sounds and visuals,

The piece is built from a chain of classical songs — each begun by a pianist as expected, each breaking off the moment the singer should come in. The pauses that follow have been recorded by friends and family in 17 international cities, including Amsterdam, Hobart, Madrid, New York, Paris, and Sarajevo. These pauses symbolise the physical absence of others from our lives during lockdown, the unanswered questions of the piano like the one-sided conversations we imagine having with those unreachably far away.

 

Music was used from the following composers:

  1. Claude Debussy, Soupir (Sigh) from 3 poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
  2. Hugo Wolf, Seufzer (Sigh) and Gebet (Prayer) from Mörike Lieder
  3. Franz Schubert, Ave Maria
  4. Joaquín Turina, Por mayo era, por mayo (May, it was in May)
  5. Ottorino Respighi, Egle (Aegle) from Deità silvane
  6. Émile Paladihe, Psyché
  7. Clara Schumann, Geheimes Flüstern (Secret Whisperings), Op. 23/3
  8. Hector Berlioz, Le spectre de la rose (The Spectre of the Rose) from Les nuits d’été
  9. Giacomo Puccini, Storiella d’amore (Love Story)
  10. Johannes Brahms, Sind es Schmerzen, sind es Freuden (Are they sorrows, are they joys?) from Die schöne Magalone
  11. Franz Liszt, Pace non trovo (I find no peace)
  12. Shen Yiwen, I had no time to hate from Three Emily Dickinson Songs
  13. Richard Strauss, Ruhe, meine Seele (Be still, my soul) Op. 27/1
  14. Gustav Mahler, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world) from Rückert Lieder
  15. Joaquín Turina, Nunca olvida (Never forget) from Poema en forma de canciones
  16. Bernard Foccroulle, Your sweet smell of jasmine from Zauberland
  17. Joaquín Turina, El Pescador (The Fisherman), Op. 26/2
  18. Franz Schubert, Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-gurdy Man) from Winterreise
  19. Gabriel Fauré, L’hiver a cessé (Winter is over) from La bonne chanson
     
  20. Juliana Hall, The cricket sang from Night Dances
    Excerpt from “The cricket sang,” from Night Dances by Juliana Hall. Music © Copyright 1987 Juliana Hall Music, and transferred 2017 to E. C. Schirmer Music Company, Inc. www.ecspublishing.com. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
     
  21. Franz Schubert, Nachtstück (Night Song), D672
  22. Claude Debussy, Recueillement (Meditation) from 5 poèmes de Baudelaire
  23. Richard Strauss, Morgen! (Tomorrow!), Op. 27/4

AUGUST 30, 2020    —    BITESIZE PROMS : GODIVA

 

During the first summer of the worldwide pandemic, when concerts were almost uniformly cancelled, a group in the UK organized a project called the BITESIZE PROMS as a fundraiser to provide funds for musicians to get through the period during which their work had evaporated. There were over 100 short performances by many of Britain’s top musicians, a real feast of expert music-making.

For her contribution to the series of digital presentations, mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately – along with pianist Joseph Middleton, sound engineer Jan Capinski, and animations by Jamie Hall and nwfrntiers – performed Juliana Hall’s monodrama GODIVA, and her video was shown online beginning in August 2020 and again in December 2020.