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Phyllis Bryn-Julson

Known for her lustrous voice and pitch-perfect three octave range, Phyllis Bryn-Julson commands a remarkable repertoire of vocal literature that spans many centuries.

Her engagements during the past several seasons included performances in Los Angeles during the 1996 Boulez Festival and the 1997 Ligeti Festival with Esa-Pekka Salonen, five performances including a celebrated unaccompanied recital at the Tel Aviv New Music Festival, performances in Stockholm, Sweden on two separate occasions, touring with the Peabody Trio in the United States and overseas, and recitals throughout the United States, some of which were with her husband, Donald S. Sutherland.

Ms. Bryn-Julson recently received an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. In the spring of 1997, she was awarded the Dickenson College Arts Award, which in the past has been granted to the Philadelphia Orchestra, W.H. Auden, and Robert Frost, to name a few. She was the first musician to receive the United States – United Kingdom Bicentennial Exchange Arts Fellowship. She has also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Syracuse University, the Paul Hume Award, the Amphion Award, the Catherine Filene Shouse Award, the Peabody Conservatory Faculty Award for excellence in teaching, and the Peabody Student Council Award for outstanding contribution to the Peabody community.

Ms. Bryn-Julson’s many recordings continue to win awards and prizes. She was nominated for a Grammy in 1997 for her performance in Dallapicolla’s opera “Il Prigioniero”, which also won the Prix du Monde. Her performance of “Erwartung” by Arnold Schoenberg, won the 1995 best opera Gramaphone Award. Released on the Arabesque label was her first recording with Leon Fleisher, pianist, of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und Leben.” She received a second Grammy nomination in 1998 as the best vocalist in the classical music category. She has recorded for CBS Masterworks, CRI, Decca, Edici, Erato, London, Louisville, New World, Nonesuch, Orion, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA, Gothic, Collins, EMI and Music and Arts.

Ms. Bryn-Julson has appeared extensively in Europe in every major city, and at every major festival. With the Ensemble InterContemporaine under the direction of Pierre Boulez, she has traveled to Canada, Spain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and all of continental Europe and England. She has performed with dozens of major orchestras such as the BBC Symphony, the London Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Baden-Baden Radio Orchestra, the Basle Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic. She performed the opening concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic of Claudio Abbado’s tenure. She also did the dedicatory opening concerts of the new hall with the Cologne Philharmonic. In America, she has performed with the major symphony orchestras of New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Her unaccompanied recital has received standing ovations in Paris, at the Warsaw Festival, in Israel, and in the United States. She is particularly known for her interpretation of works of this century, including those of Schoenberg, Boulez, Webern, Berg, Bernstein, Carter, Wuorinen, Stravinsky, and Britten. Two seasons ago, she premiered compositions by Matthew Burtner, Elliot Carter, Mark Schultz, Henri Lazaroff, William Albright, Gyorgy Kurtag and David Conte.

Ms. Bryn-Julson is a member of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University faculty, and serves as Chair of the Voice Department. In 1987, she performed with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Moscow, and became the first American ever to give a master class at the Moscow Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Bryn-Julson made her opera debut in the 1976 world premiere of Roger Sessions’ “Montezuma” in the lead role of Malinche. Later at Covent Garden, she performed in both “Le Rossignol” by Stravinsky, and “L’Enfant et les Sortileges”, by Ravel. She has performed the role of Vitellia in “La Clemenza di Tito” several times in Germany as well as at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York with conductor Raymond Leppard. At Peabody, she performed the role of Ariadne in “Ariadne auf Naxos” by Strauss.

Ms. Bryn-Julson is a regular guest artist/teacher at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England, where she has developed her “20th Century Music for the Voice” course. Besides teaching this course over a two-year span at Peabody, she has been invited to teach the same at the summer programs at Yale, Cincinnati, Aix-en Provence in France, the Royaumont School in Paris, and Tanglewood.

This season, Ms. Bryn-Julson performed Kurtag’s “Kafka Fragments” with Violaine Melancon, violinist, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Other performances include engagements in Philadelphia and York, Pennsylvania; Louisville Kentucky; Los Angeles in celebrations of the works of Milton Babbitt and John Cage; as well as televised and staged performances of Dallapicolla’s opera “Il Progioniero” in Tokyo, Japan with Charles Dutoit, conductor.

Concerts

Saturday, December 4, 1999