Juliana Hall facts for kids

Juliana Hall (born in 1958) is an American composer who writes special kinds of music called art songs, monodramas, and vocal chamber music. She is known for creating beautiful music that helps tell the story of the words it's set to, without taking away from the text itself. One music journal even called her "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers for almost three decades." This means she has been writing a lot of great art songs for a long time!

Her Early Life and Musical Journey

Juliana Hall was born in Huntington, West Virginia, in 1958. She grew up nearby in Chesapeake, Ohio. Her mom was a pianist and started teaching Juliana piano when she was just six years old. Juliana was very active at her family's church, where she played music, sang, and even wrote her very first song! Her grandparents also helped inspire her by sharing folk music and poetry.

Juliana started college at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She planned to study piano, but a class about composing music for performers showed her hidden talent for writing music. After some changes in her studies, she earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville. Then, she moved to New York City. There, she continued to study piano, sang in a church choir, and even worked as an usher at Carnegie Hall, a famous concert venue.

After a few years in New York, Juliana went to Yale School of Music for graduate school. She studied piano there, but also started taking official lessons in music composition. Her composition teachers encouraged her to focus more on writing music than playing it. In 1987, she earned her master's degree in composition. She then went to Minneapolis to finish her advanced music studies.

Her Professional Music Career

While she was still a student, Juliana Hall got her first big opportunity in 1987. The Schubert Club of Saint Paul, Minnesota, asked her to write a "song cycle" called Night Dances. A song cycle is a group of songs that are connected by a theme or story. Famous singer Dawn Upshaw performed this new work for the first time. After another performance, a newspaper called The Washington Post praised Juliana's music. They said she used many different musical ideas to bring the poems to life, making the words even more powerful.

In 1989, Juliana Hall received a special award called a Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition. This award helps talented people focus on their creative work. Since then, Juliana has written music for many different singers. These include well-known countertenors (male singers with high voices), mezzo-sopranos (female singers with medium voices), sopranos (female singers with high voices), tenors (male singers with high voices), and baritones (male singers with medium-low voices). She has also written music for a vocal duo called Feminine Musique.

Juliana received another important award in 2017, the Sorel Commission, to write a song cycle for a soprano. She was also invited to be a special guest composer at music seminars and festivals in 2018.

Juliana Hall's music has been performed in many countries around the world. Her pieces have been played at famous places like the Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, and Wigmore Hall in London. Her music has also been featured at many music festivals, including the Oxford Lieder Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Many different music groups and organizations have performed Juliana's compositions. These include groups like the Mirror Visions Ensemble and The Song Company. Art song societies and opera companies have also featured her music in their programs.

You can also hear Juliana Hall's music on the radio! Her works have been broadcast on BBC and NPR in the United States, as well as on classical music stations in cities like Chicago, New York, and Boston. Her music has also been played on radio stations in Paris, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Madrid, and Zürich. You can find her music on many different commercial recordings too, released by various music labels.

In 2017, a major music publisher called E. C. Schirmer started publishing Juliana Hall's art songs. This means they help share her music with more performers and audiences. Another one of her early song cycles, Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, was published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1995.

What Kind of Music Does She Write?

Juliana Hall writes many different kinds of vocal and instrumental music. Her vocal works often include:

• Art Songs: These are songs for a singer and piano, usually based on poems or letters. She has written many of these, using words from famous writers like Emily Dickinson, Anne Frank, and William Shakespeare.
• Monodramas: These are like mini-operas for one singer and piano, telling a story.
• Vocal Chamber Music: This is music for a small group of singers, sometimes with instruments like cello or saxophone.

She also composes instrumental pieces, which means music just for instruments, without singing. These include pieces for:

• Solo Instruments: Like the English horn, flute, cello, or piano.
• Instrumental Duos: Such as cello and piano, or alto saxophone and piano.

Her music often tells stories or explores emotions inspired by poems, stories, or even historical events.