This March, Julia Bullock brought two of her deeply personal projects to Australia’s Adelaide Festival. First, she performed with husband Christian Reif a chamber arrangement that Reif made for AMOC* of John Adams’s Christmas oratorio, El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered. The work celebrates Latin American poets and the voices of women, and in Bullock’s words “ruminates on the notion that with the promise of new life, there is the equal threat of inexplicable violence and sacrifice.” Read more about Nativity Reconsidered here.

Storied opera director Peter Sellars collaborated with Adams on the libretto for El Niño and likewise collaborated with Bullock and composer Tyshawn Sorey to develop another work she performed at the Adelaide Festival, Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, inspired by the life and art of Joséphine Baker; In a review from Limelight Magazine, Jansson Antmann said “Cabaret in format but operatic in scope, Julia Bullock’s gloriously terrifying ‘reincarnation’ of Joséphine Baker will shake you to your core.”

During their stay in Australia, Bullock and Reif also collaborated with New Zealand’s Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Arts Festival for a program that continues a series of performances for Bullock this season – following fall performances with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra – of orchestrated songs by Margaret Bonds, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein, as well as songs made famous by Joséphine Baker.