凭优雅，美丽和表现力的深度唱歌是一回事，设计一个晚上的节目是另一回事，将这些音乐礼物置于迫切有意义的背景下。
女高音朱莉娅·布洛克（Julia Bullock）can do both.
“History’s Persistent Voice,” the dazzlingly multifarious recital program that Bullock unveiled on Tuesday, May 17, with the San Francisco Symphony, marshaled new works composed by five Black women to present a taut musical symposium on an array of subjects: race, freedom, art, language, motherhood and more.
And with her husband and collaborator, German conductorChristian Reif，在表演中，戴维斯交响乐大厅的交响乐团的主要成员给诉讼带来了雄辩。这是同时运作的音乐作为探索社会评论和纯粹的感性喜悦。
Which is to say that Bullock, the American artist who is one of the eightCollaborative Partnersthat Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen has gathered around him torevitalize and rethinkthe possibilities of a symphony orchestra in the 21st century, is very much on the job. There was nothing about this 90-minute intermission-free program that felt like business as usual.
Two thematic strands infused the program. One was the historical continuity of the Black experience in America, a malevolent thread running without interruption from the institution of slavery — an ostensible relic that is neither forgotten nor gone — through the horrors of Jim Crow to the reality of mass incarceration in our own day and age.
为this first segment, Bullock and composer Jessie Montgomery drew on “Slave Songs of the United States,” an anthology released in 1867 that documented the lyrics and melodies with which enslaved African Americans sought solace — spirituals, work songs, hymns of hope and desolation.
Montgomery’s magnificent cycle “Five Freedom Songs” takes five of those historical curios and creates a web of edgy, evocative musical ornamentation around each one. The basic melodies and rhythms are recognizably intact, but Montgomery’s creative commentary breathes potent new life into each one.
例如，在令人心碎的“我想回家”中，她在整个过程中都保持了沉闷，颤抖的谐波失调，摇摇欲坠的和弦不断地处于解决方面的边缘，但从来没有做过 - 甚至在歌曲的结尾都没有。
“放下这个身体”在精致的光谱散发中占据了高贵的旋律，而在“我的父亲，多久？”中，蒙哥马利隔离了这首歌的有力的Herky-jerky节奏。
Bullock将这些歌曲与当代监狱囚犯，Craig Anthony Ross和Joe Sullivan的诗歌摘录交织在一起，他们都在死囚牢房里度过了数十年（一个在圣昆汀州监狱中，另一个在佛罗里达州监狱中被判处死亡，该监狱在13岁被判处死亡。）。只有一个沉闷的人可能无法感受到这两种形式的身体和精神束缚之间的不间断联系。
The remainder of the program was devoted to music inspired by the visual art of Black creators, most of them women. If the relationship between these two segments was never clear — the evening registered more as two separate undertakings than a single integrated whole — the musical rewards were no less resplendent.
They included “I Came Up the Hard Way,” California composer Carolyn Yarnell’s hard-driving vocal treatment of a reminiscence by the artist and quilt maker Sue Willie Seltzer, and an extended setting by Cuban-born American composer Tania León of an interview with the American painter Thornton Dial. In “Mama’s Little Precious Thing,” New Jersey composer Allison Loggins-Hull rewrote Brahms’ Lullaby into a bluesy, melancholic version that tugged at a listener’s emotions.
Most potent of all, though, was “Quilt,” by the dexterous San Francisco composer and performer Pamela Z. Using sound samples from the film “While I Yet Live,” a documentary about the quilters of the predominantly Black community of Gee’s Bend, Ala., the piece transmutes the cadences of spoken language into delicate, irresistible melodic arabesques. Bullock’s delivery, here and throughout, was at once evocative and richly sweet.
Along with the musical and spoken components, “History’s Persistent Voice” also featured video projections by Los Angeles set designer Hana S. Kim, an assortment of largely abstract colors and patterns that didn’t distract from the proceedings but didn’t add much either. (Musicians keep insisting that visuals are a helpful addition to their art, but they never seem to be able to make the case.)
In a particularly raw and impactful moment, Bullock noted that the practices of discrimination and racial oppression extend everywhere, including the history of the San Francisco Symphony itself. Reckoning with that history is an urgent task for all artistic organizations, and “History’s Persistent Voice” marks a step in that direction.