During her lifetime, composer Julia Perry wrote more than 100 pieces of music, conducted some of the best orchestras in Europe and became the first Black woman to have a composition performed by the New York Philharmonic.
However, by the time she died in 1979, Perry’s once-promising career had diminished. As a Black woman in the 1960s and ’70s, she struggled to find the same level of success that she had in Europe in her home country of the United States. In the decades after her death, her works were rarely performed and her name fell into obscurity.
“It’s a typical story of exceptionally gifted Black artists who found that doors were open to them [in Europe], and in Europe that presenters and audiences were welcoming — whereas they couldn’t establish careers in the United States,” said Christopher Wilkins, music director for the Akron Symphony Orchestra.
In recent years, Wilkins and others have worked to change that by highlighting Perry’s work through performances, recordings and a festival for her 100th birthday. Two years ago, the Akron Symphony Orchestra launched the Julia Perry Project in an effort to distribute Perry’s previously unpublished work.
In December, the project reached a major milestone. The Akron Symphony Orchestra released the world premiere recording of Perry’s “Three Spirituals” and announced plans to release her entire unpublished catalog. The worldwide distribution is a collaboration between the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Videmus, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting underrepresented composers, and Boosey & Hawkes, a classical music publisher.
“I think she’s the most important composer ever to emerge from this area,” Wilkins said.
‘There is a fire in her work’
Perry was born in 1924 in Kentucky and moved to Akron as a child. She attended Central High School. Her early years as a musician were full of achievements. She graduated from Westminster Choir College, studied at Juilliard, trained under composer Luigi Dallapiccola and received two Guggenheim Fellowships. Throughout her life, she continued composing orchestral, vocal and instrumental pieces. When she lost the use of her dominant hand from a stroke in 1970, she taught herself to write with her left hand.
Perry was a post-modernist composer. Videmus Director Louise Toppin said Perry’s work is “just as strong” as other composers of her time, such as Aaron Copland.
“It’s well crafted,” Toppin said. “When she wrote pieces, she quite often revised them more than once. She wasn’t a composer that wrote and said, ‘I’m done.’ She took her time.”
Composer and conductor Roger Zahab discovered Perry’s work in 1974 when he was a music student at the University of Akron. He became a champion of Perry, arranging and performing several of her pieces, including “Prelude for Strings.”
“There is a fire in her work. She is going to go her own way,” Zahab said. “Sometimes it’s like being in a boxing match. Like that violin concerto. … There are moments of extreme tenderness and beauty, and then there are moments where you feel you’re in a fight between those sections of the orchestra, for them to keep their place in the ring.”
Zahab introduced Wilkins to Perry’s work about five years ago. By then, Wilkins had been leading the Akron Symphony Orchestra for a decade.
“As soon as I started to look into Julia Perry more closely, I realized that the vast majority of her catalog was unpublished,” Wilkins said. “And then the question is, ‘Can it get published?’ And I soon realized that there was a major legal problem to doing that.”
The search for Perry’s heir
Attorney Kevin Davis didn’t know who Julia Perry was when the Summit County Probate Court appointed him as the guardian of Perry’s niece, Rhoda Bigby. She had dementia, and Davis was appointed because there wasn’t a family member able to serve as guardian.
In July 2022, Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer reached out to Davis. Wilkins, Toppin and others had contacted Stormer after learning about Bigby’s existence through Angela Hammond, a musicologist studying Perry’s life and work.
“It was unusual,” Davis said of the situation. “And my first thought was, how many other hidden stories are there in Akron, Ohio?”
By that point, Bigby — the only heir of Perry the group was aware of — had died. Eventually, they came up with a plan that took two years to complete. In 2022, an estate for Julia Perry was set up with Davis serving as the administrator. In September, the estate transferred the copyrights for Perry’s unpublished music to Videmus. Royalties go to Perry’s estate and will be transferred to Perry’s heirs once they are located. Davis is focused on that now.
Davis enlisted the help of an heir search firm in his mission. Perry didn’t have any children, and her four sisters are dead. (A brother died in infancy.) Davis said he suspects Perry’s nieces and nephews are deceased too. He’ll know for sure once he receives a chart of her heirs with proof documents. In a follow-up email Wednesday, he said he expects to have those results in the next few days.
“So we’re down to the next generation and trying to determine who the heirs are,” he said. “Until we understand who all the heirs are, we can’t take any final steps towards assigning the rights of the publishing contract to them.”
Another major component of the project is locating the rest of Perry’s unpublished works. Wilkins said she wrote between 100 and 150 pieces.
“So of the remaining 80 to over 100 that are unpublished, about half we either have or hope or believe we can find,” he said.
The Julia Perry Project looks to the future
What the Akron Symphony Orchestra and others have accomplished in a few years is impressive. Six of Perry’s previously unpublished works are now available thanks to the Videmus and Boosey & Hawkes collaboration. There are plans to release “dozens more” in the coming years, Wilkins said. In Akron, the orchestra has performed and recorded several of Perry’s works.
“I just pinch myself that we’ve gotten to this point,” Wilkins said.
In a 1954 discussion between Perry, Copland and composer George Antheil, Copland asked Perry if she “is planning to teach.”
“Well, if I can get around it, no,” was her cheeky response. The audience laughed and applauded.
“She just wanted people to play, to record, to publish [her music],” Wilkins said. “And that’s what she was after her whole life.”