Meet the Composer: Julia Perry

“Music is an all-embracing, universal language. Music has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it. In music they find common meeting ground. And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another… Music has a great role to play in establishing the brotherhood of man.”

Julia Perry

Julia Perry was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships, a student of Lugia Dallapiccola and Nadia Boulanger, a winner of the Boulanger Grand Prix, and was awarded accolades by the National Association of Negro Musicians, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and many, many more.

Despite her talents, much of Perry’s work was lost upon her death, as she had no partner or organization that cared for her manuscripts after her passing.

Our Voices of the African Diaspora concert is an effort to bring voices like Perry’s more prominently to the stage, and to better acknowledge the enormous talents of composers of color, who have been historically excluded from the classical music canon.

A Biography in Brief

  • Julia Perry was born in Lexington, KY, in 1924.

    She spent most of her early years in Akron, Ohio, where her father was a doctor and amateur pianist. Perry's grandfather, Abraham Perry, was a highly successful thoroughbred trainer in Kentucky.

  • She received a bachelors and masters degree in music from Westminster Choir College, in Princeton, NJ.

    Perry’s master's thesis was Chicago, a secular cantata based on a Carl Sandburg poem.

  • Perry studied in Florence, Italy, and in Fontainebleau, France.

    Perry studied under the serialist composer Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy, and with Nadia Boulanger in France. Her works received growing international attention during this time, with additional performances and accolades, including her now lost Viola Sonata winning the Prix Fontainebleau.

  • She learned to write left-handed after a stroke in 1970.

    Even with her right hand paralyzed, Perry continued to composer, writing her final five symphonies, a marching band symphony, an opera about the Salem witch trials, and more.

  • She died in Akron, Ohio, in 1979.

    After prolonged battles with illness, Julia Perry passed away in the city where she spent most of her childhood.

    Many of Perry’s works were lost upon her death. as no library or organization had care of her manuscripts, and publishers often had difficulty reading her writing after her stroke.