User:Rhjenkins/Lisa bielawa

Lisa Bielawa is a composer and vocalist based in New York City. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and is currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (www.wqxr.org/blogs/q2-blog/)

Biography “Bielawa, who lives in New York and circles the globe for performances of her own compositions, was born in San Francisco. Her father is composer and retired San Francisco State music professor Herbert Bielawa” (San Francisco Classical Voice, Feb 10, 2009). Having been raised in a musical environment, Lisa Biewala has been musically active since early childhood, learning piano, voice, and violin in addition to writing music. “She moved to New York two weeks after receiving her B.A. in Literature in 1990 from Yale University, and became an active participant in New York musical life. She began touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers” (instantencore.org).

Work Ms. Bielawa’s chamber music in has been performed in New York at Judson Memorial Church, The Brooklyn Museum, and Symphony Space. She curated the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s Club Concerts. Other performances include Chance Encounters, a piece comprising songs and arias constructed of speech overheard in transient public spaces, by soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights at the Whitney Museum of American Art; unfinish’d, sent by the Yerevan Ensemble of Soloists in Armenia; and "Topos Nostalgia" from Chance Encounter with Ms. Bielawa as the soprano in Salzburg. World premieres in 2009 included Portrait-Elegy, written for pianist Bruce Levingston, in New York; The Project of Collecting Clouds at Town Hall in Seattle by cellist Joshua Roman and chamber ensemble; and In medias res, a concerto for orchestra commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the culmination of Ms. Bielawa’s three-year residency with that orchestra.

Discography

Hildegurls: Electric Ordo Virtutum (Innova 712, 2009) A Handful of World (Tzadik 8039, 2007) First Takes (Albany Records TROY941, 2007)