Juliana Hall facts for kids

Juliana Hall (born in 1958) is an American composer. She writes many different kinds of music, especially for voices. This includes "art songs," which are like short musical stories for a singer and piano, and "monodramas," which are like mini-operas for one singer. People who study music have called her "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers." This means she is very skilled and has written a lot of music for singers for almost 30 years.

Early Life and Education

Juliana Hall was born in Huntington, West Virginia, in 1958. She grew up nearby in Chesapeake, Ohio. Her mother was a pianist and started teaching Juliana piano when she was six years old. Juliana was very active in her family's church. She played music, sang, and even wrote her first song there. 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. However, a class where she learned to compose music showed she was very good at writing her own pieces. After her piano teacher passed away, Juliana finished her bachelor's degree at the University of Louisville.

After college, she moved to New York City. There, she continued to study piano and sang in a church choir. She also worked as an usher at Carnegie Hall, a famous concert venue.

Later, Juliana went to graduate school at the Yale School of Music. She studied piano there, but also began taking formal lessons in composition. Her teachers encouraged her to focus on writing music. In 1987, she earned her master's degree in composition. She then went to Minneapolis to finish her studies with another famous composer, Dominick Argento.

Professional Music Career

While she was still a student, Juliana Hall received her first special request to write music in 1987. This request was for a "song cycle" called Night Dances. A song cycle is a group of songs that are connected, often by a theme or story. A famous singer named Dawn Upshaw performed this new work for the first time.

After one performance of Night Dances in 1988, a newspaper reviewer wrote that Juliana Hall used many musical ideas to bring the poems to life. He said her music made the words deeper and explored emotions, with the piano adding illustrations and dialogue.

In 1989, Juliana Hall received a special award called a Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition. This award helps talented people in different fields continue their important work. Since then, she has written music for many well-known singers. These include sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, tenors, baritones, and countertenors. She also composed pieces for a vocal duo called Feminine Musique.

In 2017, Hall received another special request, called the Sorel Commission, for a soprano song cycle named When the South Wind Sings. She was also invited to be a guest composer at several 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 concert halls and art galleries. She has also been featured at many music festivals, from the Carmel Bach Festival to the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Many different music groups have performed Hall's compositions. These include ensembles like ÆPEX Contemporary Performance and The Song Company. Various art song organizations and opera companies have also included her music in their programs.

Hall's works have been played on radio stations like BBC and NPR in the United States. They have also been broadcast on classical music stations in other countries, including France, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland. Her music is available on several commercial recordings.

In 2017, a major music publisher, E. C. Schirmer, began publishing Juliana Hall's art songs. Another one of her song cycles, Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, was published earlier in 1995.

Vocal Works

Juliana Hall has written many pieces for singers. These are called vocal works. Here are some of them:

Instrumental Works

Juliana Hall also writes music for instruments only. These are called instrumental works. Here are some examples:

• A Certain Tune (2009) – 5 pieces for English horn solo, based on poems.
• A Certain Tune (2021) – 5 pieces for flute solo, based on poems.
• Crucifixus (2010) – a piece for cello and piano, based on a story from the Gospels.
• Ding Dong Bell (2007) – 8 short pieces for cello solo, based on epitaphs.
• Dream of the Rood (2012) – a piece for cello and piano, based on an old poem.
• Evening Sun (2015) – a short piece for piano solo.
• Orpheus Singing (2010) – 5 pieces for alto saxophone and piano, based on sonnets.
• Rilke Song (2013) – a piece for English horn and piano, based on a sonnet.
• The Ballad of Barnaby (2010) – a ballad for cello solo, based on a poem.
• The Ballad of Barnaby (2021) – a ballad for viola solo, based on a poem.
• Two-Bit Variations (2010) – variations for piano solo on a well-known tune.