The old-fashioned song (or Lieder ) recital — a singer in formal attire stoically standing next to a grand piano delivering art songs in foreign languages, unamplified in a concert hall far too large for intimacy — has obviously long needed refreshing. Indeed, it has all but disappeared from American stages. But enter Julia Bullock and Davóne Tines.
Each came through town recently with a highly personal and revealing recital program of intense intimacy and theatrical originality, boldly proclaiming a new generation’s profound rebirth of the medium. Bullock took a spectacular deep dive into a seldom-heard song cycle by Olivier Messiaen, an hour of agony and ecstasy full of obscurities about the European Tristan myth, using a French text peppered with Quechua, an indigenous South American language. Tines’ spectacular deep dive was into the magnificent 20th century Black singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson.
Bullock and Tines are names that easily pair. They are the same age. They are Juilliard trained.
They both came under director Peter Sellars’ wing early, and he gave them their first major exposure, particularly when he was music director of the 2016 Ojai Music Festival. About to turn 30, they displayed such a sense of life-force that they seemed certain to become the leading singers of their generation . And so they are.
Sellars brought them to John Adams’ attention, and they starred together, with brilliant theatrical verve, in his 2018 opera, “Girls of .
