Eleven years before jazz great Donald Byrd studied with the renowned teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris, her student was Julia Amanda Perry in 1952. While Byrd, who died in 2013, was an established icon, Perry was a relatively obscure but no less gifted musician. Born March 25, 1924, in Lexington, Kentucky, she was a child when her family moved to Akron, Ohio. There she began her musical journey before attending the Westminster Choir College from 1943 to 1948. Her concentration was in piano, voice, and composition.
After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music, she continued her graduate studies at Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, where she studied under Luigi Dallapiccola. Later she studied at the Juilliard School of Music, and shortly thereafter was the recipient of her first Guggenheim Fellowship.
In 1952, she began studying under Nadia Boulanger and was subsequently awarded the Boulanger Grand Prix for her Viola Sonata. This was followed by her second Guggenheim Fellowship, which she used to return to Italy and resume her studies with Dallapiccola.
Through the mid-1950s, she studied conducting at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, and in 1957 was sponsored by the U.S. Information Service to conduct a series of concerts in Europe. On her return to the U.S., Perry began teaching in Florida at the Tallahassee Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1967 and was also a visiting artist at Atlanta College.
Central to many of her early compositions was the influence of the African American musical heritage, with a special focus on voice. Indicative of this are her compositions “Free at Last” and “I’m a Poor Li’l Orphan,” both published in 1951. “Song of Our Savior,” composed for the Hampton Institute Choir, was typical of her delve into Black spiritual music, though in this instance a Dorian mode and a hummed ostinato with call and response were pervasive.
RELATED: Memphis Slim, blues singer, guitarist, and pianist
Always an experimenter, she soon branched out to include elements of dissonance in her compositions, most notably “Stabat Mater” (1951) and for solo contralto and string orchestra. While the dissonance was a dominant concept, the composition retained tonal aspects. Her interests at that time included modern techniques, such as quartal harmony—using chords in fourths, rather than thirds and fifths. The song was recorded on CRI by the Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and conducted by William Strickland.
A prolific composer, her “Requiem for Orchestra” or “Homage to Vivaldi” is considered among her most enduring creations. Her compositions varied in size, sometimes from small chamber ensembles to violin concertos and symphonic operas. Perry’s “The Symplegades,” based on the Salem witchcraft panic, is a three-act opera. She worked on this composition for more than a decade; it remained unfinished until her death on April 24, 1979. She was 55.
There were other completed pieces, including an operatic ballet with her own libretto, and based on Oscar Wilde’s fable, “The Selfish Giant.” A few years before her death she composed “Quinary Quixotic” Songs for bass-baritone and “Bicentennial Reflections” for tenor solo.
Her compositions were mainly conceived for vocal arrangements, though her repertoire featured a number of instrumental songs. By the time she suffered a stroke in 1971, she had written twelve symphonies.
Unfortunately, much of her work was not recorded but her short piece for orchestra was recorded by the New York Philharmonic in Lincoln Center in 1965 and can be heard online with Joseph Young conducting in 2022 at Bard College’s Fisher Center. There are lovely passages in this nearly ten-minute composition, featuring flutes, oboes, and clarinets.