Description:
Julia Rachel Cumming (born January 16, 1996) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, model and activist who is currently the frontwoman and bass player of the Brooklyn-based band Sunflower Bean.
Julia grew up in the East Village, Manhattan, attended New York City public schools, and started a band - Supercute! - along with neighborhood friends June Lei and Rachel Trachtenburg (of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players) in 2009. Supercute!, a bubblegum-girl-group-psychedelic-pop amalgam, created (in Cumming's words) "ukelele rock operas", and lasted through 2013 with Cumming and Trachtenburg serving as their c
Julia Rachel Cumming (born January 16, 1996) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, model and activist who is currently the frontwoman and bass player of the Brooklyn-based band Sunflower Bean.
Julia grew up in the East Village, Manhattan, attended New York City public schools, and started a band - Supercute! - along with neighborhood friends June Lei and Rachel Trachtenburg (of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players) in 2009. Supercute!, a bubblegum-girl-group-psychedelic-pop amalgam, created (in Cumming's words) "ukelele rock operas", and lasted through 2013 with Cumming and Trachtenburg serving as their creative core. “It was almost an art project about not letting your age or being a girl stop you from trying anything,” Julia told the New Musical Express in 2016. Cumming and Trachtenburg also co-hosted a talk show (Pure Imagination, 2011-2013) on the Progressive Radio Network aimed at encouraging fellow teens to become involved in art and political action.
In 2014, Cumming graduated as a vocal music student at Professional Performing Arts School, made her acting debut in the movie short People Who Don't Know Me, and performed solo gigs with original musical material at local clubs (often with her father accompanying her on bass). She also interned at the Museum of Modern Art where she curated an off-site show about instagram art, and where she first met acclaimed choreographer Dean Moss - who promptly cast her for a leading role in his dance piece johnbrown, which debuted at The Kitchen on October 16, 2014.
In late 2013, Cumming joined guitarist Nick Kivlen and drummer Jacob Faber in Sunflower Bean, a power trio initially based in Glen Cove, New York that had started off a spin-off of the band Turnip King. The band soon moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn and became a part of the boro's thriving "DIY" scene, playing over eighty shows that year and earning themselves title of New York City's "hardest-working band of 2014". The band's appearance at the 2014 CMJ Music Marathon received good notices from All Songs Considered's Bob Boilen and from The New York Times's Jon Pareles, who wrote "New York is still home to bands as varied as Sunflower Bean, whose music suggests what might have happened if psychedelia had emerged after punk and the Police rather than before."
The band recorded their debut EP Show Me Your Seven Secrets (initially self-released on January 27, 2015) and was signed to Fat Possum Records later that year. The album Human Ceremony was released on February 5, 2016, garnering largely positive reviews; Billboard (magazine)'s Joe Lynch wrote "Even though no one in Sunflower Bean is of legal drinking age, the Brooklyn indie trio's Human Ceremony is one of the most fully realized, sonically eclectic debut albums (everything from psych pop to stoner metal gets touched upon) in a minute". The band tours relentlessly, both as headliners and as openers for bands like Pixies, Wolf Alice, DIIV, Foxygen, Best Coast and Sleigh Bells (band).
"I Was a Fool", the first single released from Sunflower Bean's upcoming second album, debuted on NPR's "Songs We Love" series on November 3, 2017. The band is now signed to Mom + Pop Music. When asked about the new album at the NME Awards 2017 ceremony (where Sunflower Bean was nominated for "Best New Artist"), Julia responded: “I think we’re always growing as musicians and growing together, getting better, moving forward, messing shit up, we’re living life, we’re a rock band. We’re finding ourselves and growing up a little bit. That’s what I hope for us.”
Although Cumming had done occasional modeling jobs in the Supercute! era, her fashion career really took off in February 2014, when she was asked to walk in Yves Saint Laurent’s Ready To Wear Fall Winter 2014 show in Paris. "As with everything in the fashion world, it happened very quickly and it seemed really insane,” Julia told The New York Times. “Three weeks later, I was walking in their show in Paris. It was really special and supersurreal.” Saint Laurent's creative director Hedi Slimane, attracted to Julia's uncompromisingly stylish rock 'n' roll look, signed the musician to an exclusive modeling contract, using her in three campaigns and in six shows for Saint Laurent; Cumming was frequently referred to as “Hedi Slimane’s muse” in the press at the time.
Since then, she has modeled for Elsa Schiaparelli, Max Mara, Rochas and Fausto Puglisi, appeared in global campaigns for H&M and Diesel (brand), and was seen on the cover of Harper's Bazaar Kazakhstan and in many fashion editorials, most notably in many of Vogue (magazine)’s international editions (US, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Austrailia, Japan). In March 2017, Cumming appeared with Madonna for Vogue Germany in the news-making film and photo spread “Her Story”, released on International Women’s Day 2017.
“I think everyone wants to make you a musician and a model, like, ‘Oh, you are a model and a musician,’ and in my mind I’m just trying to make art," Cumming told Vogue in 2015. "When I’m making a picture, I feel really great about that, and sometimes less and sometimes more, but with a great team and wonderful artists, it feels really authentic. When I’m making music, it is really what I love to do. It is always the first love of my life and what I’ll probably be doing till I’m dead.”
Julia Cumming interviewing candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at an "Anger Can Be Power" event, 2017.
The turbulent American political election of 2016 and its aftermath - along with Cumming's growing visibility in the public arena - inspired Julia to increase her commitment to political activism. "It feels like right now that everyday something massive, something horrible is happening," Cumming said in Interview magazine. "I definitely think as someone who’s out there and has a platform, big or small, it’s important to be educated, to know what’s going on, to have an opinion about it and speak about it." In 2017, she founded "Anger Can Be Power", a project that “endeavors to invoke the DIY spirit to inspire people to integrate political involvement in their lives”; she has hosted several public events dedicated to the topic of young people, particularly women, moving into concrete political action. Cumming, active in the Model Alliance, also directed and produced a video featuring fellow models that encourages young people to directly call their political representatives, and interviewed Iranian-American singer Rahill about her experiences as a Farsi translator during the Protests against Executive Order 13769 at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
... (more)
(less)
My tags:
Add tags
Login
United States
1 comment
