Like Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Dawn Upshaw before her, the soprano Julia Bullock is a luminous maverick, a muse to contemporaries, a medium for voices from the past. Patrons of the Adelaide Festival may test this proposition in her solo show Perle Noise: Meditations for Joséphine (as in La Baker, pronounced bah-CARE), as well as in El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered, her exquisite distillation of the John Adams Christmas oratorio. Between gigs in Oz, there’s a runout to Aotearoa (as we’re learning to call New Zealand) for a one-off with the Auckland Philharmonia. The program includes songs by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and Margaret Bonds as well as symphonic Bernstein and Kurt Weill. Bullock’s husband and frequent artistic partner Christian Rief conducts. —Matthew Gurewitsch