Primarily known as an American art song composer, Juliana Hall (born 1958) has written over 35 song cycles and her commissions include two for song cycles for Metropolitan Opera singers Dawn Upshaw (soprano) and David Malis (baritone). Her music has been performed by more than 100 different performers in major concert halls in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Uruguay.
Numerous performances across the United States include concerts at the 92nd Street Y, the Morgan Library & Museum, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York, NY); the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Singapore Embassy (Washington, DC); Ambassador Auditorium and The Colburn School (Los Angeles, CA); the French Library and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA); the Kemper Art Museum (Saint Louis, MO); the Strathmore Hall Arts Center (Bethesda, MD); the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and both the Shubert and McKnight Theaters (Saint Paul, MN).
Festival performances include the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar (Potsdam, NY); the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Norfolk, CT); the Ojai Music Festival (Ojai, CA); SongFest (Los Angeles, CA); and the Tanglewood Music Festival (Lenox, MA). Hall’s music has also been heard in live performances at dozens of American colleges, conservatories, and universities from coast to coast.
Hall’s song cycle Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush is published by Boosey & Hawkes; other song cycles and instrumental works are published by Juliana Hall Music. Several of Hall’s compositions have been recorded on the Albany and Vienna Modern Masters labels, and her music has been widely played on radio, including broadcasts by the BBC (London, UK); NPR (Washington, DC); Radio ArtsIndonesia (Jakarta, ID); Radio France (Paris, FR), Radio Horizon (Johannesburg, ZA); and Radio MonaLisa (Amsterdam, NL).
Juliana Hall studied with composers Martin Bresnick, Leon Kirchner, and Frederic Rzewski at the Yale School of Music (where she earned a Master’s degree in composition), completed her formal composition studies with Dominick Argento, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989.