Julia Bullock & Friends in Recital

Julia Bullock brings a recital to the Morrison Theater at Brockman Hall for Opera on Friday, October 9, at 7:30 PM. She's the Shepherd School's 2026-27 Aleko Endowed Artist, and she's not taking the stage alone: she'll be joined by pianist Lyndsi Maus and a group of Shepherd School students, including sopranos Dejah Watts and Shikta Mukherjee, baritone Christopher Gray, violinist Fiona Shea, and clarinetist Eliza Reimold.

The program is built around the writing of Langston Hughes and the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, weaving together song, instrumental chamber music, and spoken poetry. Bullock first put this together during her 2018-19 residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she came across Harlem on My Mind, a 1969 Met exhibition that drew protests before it even opened. That discovery seems to be the thread that ties the whole evening together.

Bullock is a Grammy winner—her 2024 album Walking in the Dark took home Best Classical Solo Vocal Album—and she sang the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin's Song of the Reappeared. She's held residencies at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Berkeley's Cal Performances, and the San Francisco Symphony, and she co-curated the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Rock My Soul Festival with Ava DuVernay's Array.

The recital is part of a Shepherd School season that follows the school's 50th anniversary and includes six world premieres. It's free, though you'll need tickets to get in. The performance is at the Morrison Theater at Brockman Hall for Opera, within the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, on Friday, October 9, at 7:30 PM.