Julia Perry enjoyed astonishing success both in the USA and in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s after receiving a good education as a musician. She conducted her works with the Vienna Philharmonic and the BBC Orchestra. She became one of the first African-American composers to have her orchestral works performed by the New York Philharmonic and other major American orchestras. Although she had a promising career in her early life, it was tragically cut short by a series of strokes that left her partially paralysed and eventually led to her death at the age of 55 in 1979. Her works disappeared from the public eye. As a result, Julia Perry is one of the unusually quickly forgotten composers because she was not only a woman and ill, but also belonged to the disadvantaged US population of colour in the 20th century.

Julia Perry was a violinist, conductor and composer who first studied with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood in 1951, where she completed her Stabat Mater for soprano and string orchestra and performed it with great success. Dallapiccola supported her, she came to Europe and later also studied with Nadia Boulanger. The Stabat mater dedicated to her mother, in particular, launched Perry's career and became the most frequently performed work of her life.

Julia Perry enjoyed astonishing success both in the USA and in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s after receiving a good education as a musician. She conducted her works with the Vienna Philharmonic and the BBC Orchestra. She became one of the first African-American composers to have her orchestral works performed by the New York Philharmonic and other major American orchestras. Although she had a promising career in her early life, it was tragically cut short by a series of strokes that left her partially paralysed and eventually led to her death at the age of 55 in 1979. Her works disappeared from the public eye. As a result, Julia Perry is one of the unusually quickly forgotten composers because she was not only a woman and ill, but also belonged to the disadvantaged US population of colour in the 20th century.

Julia Perry was a violinist, conductor and composer who first studied with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood in 1951, where she completed her Stabat Mater for soprano and string orchestra and performed it with great success. Dallapiccola supported her, she came to Europe and later also studied with Nadia Boulanger. The Stabat mater dedicated to her mother, in particular, launched Perry's career and became the most frequently performed work of her life.

Composed between 1963-68, the violin concerto, which was never performed during her lifetime due to her illness, represented a compositionally independent contribution to the serial and atonal music of her time. Even the formal structure of the concerto defies the tradition of three movements and creates a varied sequence of changing tempo, motif and formal sections. In order to immerse oneself in Perry's musical language, it helps to visualise the context of the time, both politically and in terms of music history. In addition to Dallapiccola, his musical role models include composers such as Schönberg, Bartok, Berg and others, who sought new harmonies, forms and orchestration for solo and orchestra in their concertos. New political upheavals also characterised contemporary events in the USA: the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the fight for the abolition of racial segregation, Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, the protests against the Vietnam War, the student movement at universities and the emergence of the feminist movement. Julia Perry lived through this era of upheaval in the USA. Breaking out into new musical and tonal dimensions was also the programme for composing her own violin concerto. Perry completed her violin concerto in 1968, but it took more than four decades for the composer Roger Zahab to reconstruct the final score. The work was not premiered until 2022.

 The following listening guide will help you to pay attention when listening to this unusual violin concerto. It is based less on the compositional technique of the work (I refer to the dissertation by Clara Nicole Fuhrman, available here), but is orientated towards the timing of the immediate listening experience. This remains subjective, but follows the sound and form of this 23-minute violin concerto as closely and attentively as possible, from the opening cadenza to the vehemently ending final cadenza. It is fascinating to listen to how consonant and dissonant sounds mingle, even reconcile, to create a lyrical style that is very special to Perry and unusual for the violin.


Formally, the concerto is composed without sections; individual sections differ according to the three fixed tempi, which alternate 13 times: Slow (slow crotchet = 60), Moderate (crotchet = 84), Fast (crotchet = 120).

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