Julia Bullock, Steve Reich Win Opus Klassik Awards

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Congratulations to Julia Bullock and Steve Reich, who have each won an Opus Klassik award in Germany for their 2022 albums: Bullock as Nachwuchskünstler/in des Jahres (Breakout Artist of the Year) for her debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, and Reich in the Sinfonische Einspielung (Symphonic Recording of the Year) category for Runner / Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Susanna Mälkki (pictured above).

On Walking in the Dark, Julia Bullock and London's Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Christian Reif, perform Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and a song from John Adams's El Niño. She is joined by Reif, on piano, for a traditional spiritual and songs by Oscar Brown, Jr., Billy Taylor, Sandy Denny, and Connie Converse. Bullock is "one of the singular artists of her generation," says the New York Times, "a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history."

The new Steve Reich album includes the first recordings of Runner (2016) and Music for Ensemble and Orchestra (2018). The New York Times calls the former "a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich's music." The San Francisco Chronicle says the latter "is a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that."

The Opus Klassik awards ceremony will take place at the Konzerthaus in Berlin on October 8, televised in Germany by ZDF. For details and the complete list of winners, visit opusklassik.de.