Tiny Desk Live performance : NPR

Many months in the past, when Julia Bullock was mapping out her Tiny Desk look, the emails about repertoire began flying forwards and backwards. She was meticulously stitching collectively seemingly disparate songs: some blues, people, classical, some far off-the-beaten-path singer-songwriter materials and a music she’d by no means sung in public, written for her wedding ceremony.

I’ve realized to not anticipate a tidy bouquet of German lieder when Bullock provides a recital. Sure, she ideas her hat right here to Schubert with a feisty rendition of “Rastlose Liebe,” a two-minute tribute to stressed love. But this live performance spans 350 years, from Barbara Strozzi’s seventeenth century lament “Che si può fare,” sung with palpable foreboding, to the general public premiere of “Love Liberates,” by Nathaniel Stookey, to phrases by Maya Angelou.

Bullock has an affinity for Connie Converse, the enigmatic, mid-century singer-songwriter who mysteriously disappeared in 1974. “Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains)” celebrates independence, whereas an abbreviated model of “I Have Thought-about the Lilies,” turns a perky paean into a non-public supplication.

Bullock’s meditative mixtape ends in secure haven, with Odetta‘s bluesy association of “Going Residence,” a music rooted in Dvořák‘s “New World” Symphony. Bullock reaches into her burgundy decrease register, and pianist Christian Reif depresses the smooth pedal, to realize most consolation.

These songs refract love in numerous tints, and additional illustrate why Bullock is certainly one of at this time’s most discerning and expressive singers. Up to date composers are significantly enamored, together with John Adams, whose new opera Antony and Cleopatra Bullock will debut on the Metropolitan Opera in Could.

If you wish to know how one can program and ship a vocal recital, that is your masterclass.

SET LIST

• Lovie Austin & Alberta Hunter: “Downhearted Blues”                 
• Barbara Strozzi: “Che si può fare”
• Nathaniel Stookey: “Love Liberates”                                   
• Franz Schubert: “Rastlose Liebe”                                  
• Connie Converse (arr. Bretton Brown): “Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains)”
• Connie Converse (arr. Bretton Brown): “I Have Thought-about the Lilies”                  
• Antonín Dvořák (arr. Odetta/Bretton Brown): “Going Residence”    

MUSICIANS

• Julia Bullock: vocals
• Christian Reif: piano

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Tom Huizenga 
• Director/Editor: Joshua Bryant
• Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell
• Host/Collection Producer: Bobby Carter
• Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Maia Stern, Sofia Seidel
• Audio Engineer: Hannah Gluvna
• Manufacturing Assistant: Ashley Pointer
• Photographer: Zayrha Rodriguez
• Tiny Desk Group: Lars Gotrich, Kara Body, Dora Levite
• Govt Producer: Suraya Mohamed
• Collection Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins