Expanding her relationship with the San Francisco Symphony, Julia Bullock has been named a Collaborative Partner for the 2020-21 concert season. This role is a part of the symphony’s new leadership model, in which the artistic planning is shared between new artistic director Esa-Pekka Salonen and eight younger visionaries from music and related fields. Fellow collaborative partners for this season include flutist Claire Chase, composer Nico Muhly, roboticist Carol Reiley, and bassist-vocalist-composer Esperanza Spalding.

Kicking off her 2020 engagements with the orchestra, Julia joined the SFS and Esa-Pekka Salonen for a concert featuring Britten’s Les Illuminations and Ravel’s Three Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé on February 20-23. Critics praised her performance, saying that “Her rendition…of song cycles by Britten and Ravel revealed a new and thrilling skill in her repertoire — the ability to plunge unnervingly deep into this music and then surface, like some kind of musical pearl diver, with great glistening strands of expressive jewels” (San Francisco Chronicle). Adding further praises, the Chronicle continued, “singing from memory and with a theatrical directness that is rare on a concert stage, Bullock gave the illusion of making the piece up as she went along — there was a vivid, edge-of-the-seat propulsiveness to even the most rhapsodic songs that lent them an air of vibrancy and danger.” OperaWire hailed Julia’s voice as, “substantial and luxurious,” continuing on to say that, “her voice moved thoughtfully up and down the substantial part of the register in full arpeggios, clear, sometimes bell-like, always reverberating.”

Julia’s next engagement with the orchestra is on April 24-25, where she performs as part of the SFS’s Soundbox series in a recital titled “Lineage.” Performing as the soloist and curator, Julia presents a century-spanning recital with a diverse program that draws surprising connections and illuminating comparisons. Click here for tickets.