What is perhaps most extraordinary about Julia Perry’s musical career was the astonishing success she attained in her early years. In her youth she studied piano, voice, violin and cello. She began to compose in her teenage years, her first publication being a choral work titled Carillon Heigh-Ho by Carl Fischer Music in 1947. She graduated with her Bachelor's Degree from Westminster Choir College that year, and continued to earn her Master's. In 1953 she was awarded her first Guggenheim fellowship to study with the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola, initially at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, later in Florence, Italy. During this time, she also pursued studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and was awarded a second Guggenheim fellowship. She studied conducting at this time, touring Europe in 1957 to conduct her own works with the Vienna Philharmonic and the BBC Orchestra. During her European sojourns, she learned and mastered French, German and Italian. She became the first African American female composer to have an orchestral work performed by the New York Philharmonic in 1965, following in the trailblazing footsteps of her teacher Boulanger, who had become the first woman to conduct a full program with the orchestra just three years earlier.
Perry’s circumstances would change dramatically once she reached forty years of age, having returned permanently to the United States. At some point in the spring of 1970, she suffered the first of two strokes that would paralyze her right side and confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Nonetheless, she continued to compose and to promote her works with publishers and conductors. A second stroke contributed to her death in 1979 at age 55. She likely endured harsh ethnic and gender discrimination in the course of her career, and her later years would witness a period of extreme civil unrest. These matters and the significance of music in her life are undoubtedly what led her to say, “Music has a great role to play in establishing the brotherhood of man.”
Perry’s catalog is widely varied, featuring thirteen symphonies, numerous chamber and solo works, pieces for band, choral and vocal music, and four operas. Perry's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra received its long-anticipated premiere by University of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Cullyn D. Murphy and soloist Roger Zahab on February 23, 2022. The Julia Perry Violin Concerto has since soared to international acclaim, with the critical success of its first recording released in 2024 with soloist Curtis Stewart and the Experiential Orchestra from Bright Shiny Things. It was performed in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in March of 2024 as the culmination of the Julia Perry Centenary Festival in New York City celebrating her 100th birthday.
