She has been described by the NATS Journal of Singing as "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers for almost three decades" and, in discussing her 1989 song cycle Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, the Journal went on to assert that "Even at this very early stage in her life and career, Hall knew something about crafting music whose beauty could enhance the text at hand without drawing attention away from that text.
Upon graduation, she moved to New York City to study piano (with Seymour Lipkin), sing in the choir of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and usher at Carnegie Hall.
[3][4][5] While a student of Argento, Hall received her first commission in 1987 (from the Schubert Club of Saint Paul, Minnesota) for a song cycle – Night Dances – for soprano Dawn Upshaw, who with pianist Margo Garrett, premiered the work in December of that year.
[6] After a performance of the cycle at the Library of Congress in 1988, Joseph McLellan of The Washington Post wrote that, "Juliana Hall used every trick in the book – melodic and half-spoken, tonal and nontonal.
She did this to enliven the words by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Emily Bronte , Edna St. Vincent Millay and Elizabeth Bishop, to deepen the impact of the texts dealing with night and sleep, to explore the implicit emotions in sounds that ranged from a whisper to a scream, with the piano supplying illustrations and comment and engaging in vivid dialogue.
[8] Since that time Hall has composed works for many singers, among them acclaimed countertenors Brian Asawa and Charles Humphries; mezzo-sopranos Stephanie Blythe and Kitty Whately; sopranos Nadine Benjamin and Molly Fillmore; tenor Anthony Dean Griffey; baritones Richard Lalli, David Malis and Randall Scarlata; and bass baritone Zachary James.