Lisa Bielawa
June: Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa's music released on 2-CD set - In medias res - by BMOP/sound
June 03, 2010
Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa’s solo & orchestral music on 2-CD set
In medias res
Performed by Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP)
Gil Rose, Artistic Director & Conductor
Released by BMOP/sound in June 2010
Featuring soloists CarlaKihlstedt, violin & voice; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Lisa Bielawa, soprano
All music by Lisa Bielawa:
Roam (2001); Double Violin Concerto (2008); unfinish’d, sent (2000); In medias res, concerto for orchestra (2009); plus Synopses #1-15 (2006-2009), solo works for members of BMOP
Lisa Bielawa: www.lisabielawa.net | BMOP/sound: www.bmop.org
New York, NY—Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa’s solo and orchestral music will be released as a 2-CD set entitled In medias res by BMOP/sound in June 2010. Performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), conducted by Artistic Director Gil Rose, the first disc, an SACD, includes four orchestral works: Roam (2001);Double Violin Concerto (2008) featuring violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt and violinist Colin Jacobsen;unfinish’d, sent (2000) featuring the composer as soprano soloist;and In medias res, Concerto for Orchestra (2009). Disc two comprises fifteen short solo works, Synopses #1-15, written by Ms. Bielawa over the course of three years for individual members of BMOP. Ms. Bielawa was Composer in Residence with the orchestra from 2006 to 2009. The album was produced by Gil Rose, and engineered by Joel Gordon with David Corcoran.
Of the set, Ms. Bielawa comments:
“These two discs tell the story of a three-year journey undertaken by a whole community. We got to know each other through the performance and recording of two already existing works. The first, Roam, is the piece I was in the process of writing on September 11, 2001, at my home in New York City. It was during that difficult time when Gil Rose and I first met and worked together. unfinish’d, sent is an even earlier piece, written for my own voice and chamber orchestra. The intimate feeling of sharing the stage with Gil and the BMOP players in concert influenced everything I wrote for them afterwards.
I began the process of getting to know the individual musicians of BMOP in 2006 by writing solo Synopses for them. These little pieces – each with a whimsical six-word title – were each composed in just a few days and premiered in Boston over the course of three years at BMOP’s informal Club Concerts, which I curated. Audible connections exist between them and the two orchestral works I composed for the orchestra. My first new work for BMOP brought with it two of my most important collaborators, violinists Colin Jacobsen and Carla Kihlstedt. It was nothing short of exhilarating to write a piece that united all of these muses. By the time I wrote In medias res in 2009, my relationship with the BMOP players had deepened. Writing a large orchestral piece, usually such a lonely process, was suddenly a bustling affair. While I was writing In medias res, I remember looking at the enormous staff paper on my piano and seeing not instrument families on the page, but actual people.”
Lisa Bielawa is currently based in Rome at the American Academy, as a 2009-10 Rome Prize winner. With fellow Rome Prize-winner Robert Hammond (co-founder of The High Line in New York), she is staged her piece Chance Encounter on the Tiber River in Rome on May 31, with a preview performance during the opening weekend festivities of Rome’s celebrated new MAXXI museum on May 30. A recording of Chance Encounter will be released later this year on Philip Glass’ label, Orange Mountain Music. Ms. Bielawa’s music is also available on the Tzadik (A Handful of World), Albany Records (First Takes), and Innova (Hildegurls: Electric Ordo Virtutuum) labels.
Born in San Francisco into a musical family, Lisa Bielawa played the violin and piano, sang, and wrote music from early childhood. 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. In addition to her work with the Philip Glass Ensemble, she tours and records with John Zorn and has premiered and recorded works by many other composer colleagues.
Ms. Bielawa frequentlytakes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. The New York Times describes her music as, “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” and Time Out New York praised her “prodigious gift for mingling persuasive melodicism with organic experimentation.”
Recent performances of Ms. Bielawa’s work include the premiere of Double Violin Concerto,written for violinists Colin Jacobsen and Carla Kihlstedt and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP); the premiere of In medias res, a concerto for orchestra also written for BMOP; the premiere of Portrait-Elegy by pianist Bruce Levingston; and the premiere of The Project of Collecting Clouds at Town Hall in Seattle by cellist Joshua Roman and chamber ensemble. Other recent highlights include performances of unfinish’d, sent by the Yerevan Ensemble of Soloists in Armenia; of ToposNostalgia from Chance Encounter with Ms. Bielawa as the soprano in Salzburg; of Hurry at Carnegie Hall during Dawn Upshaw’s Perspectives series; the premiere of The Right Weather by the American Composers Orchestra and Van Cliburn prize-winning pianist Andrew Armstrong during Zankel Hall’s inaugural season; and the premiere of The Lay of the Love and Death at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
Ms. Bielawawas a Radcliffe Institute Fellowat Harvard in 2007-08. She has received fellowships and awards from the Alpert-Ucross Foundation, Creative Capital, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation, ASCAP, and the Fondation Royaumont in France. An enthusiastic advocate for the field, Ms. Bielawa now serves on the board of the MATA Festival. In addition, she has served on the board of the American Music Center and taught composition through the New York Youth Symphony Making Score program. For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net.
ABOUT GIL ROSE:Gil Rose is recognized as an important conductor helping to shape the future of classical music. Critics all over the world have praised his dynamic performances and many recordings. Under his leadership, BMOP’s unique programming and high performance standards have attracted critical acclaim and earned the orchestra eleven ASCAP awards for adventurous programming and the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music. Since 2003 Mr. Rose has also served as Music Director of Opera Boston, an innovative opera company in residence at the historic Cutler Majestic Theatre. His recordings have been cited among the “Best CDs” of the year by The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Downbeat Magazine, and National Public Radio, among many others. For more information, please visit www.gilrose.info.
ABOUT BMOP & BMOP/sound: The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is widely recognized as the leading orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to performing new music, and its two-time Grammy Award-nominated record label, BMOP/sound, is the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and solely devoted to new music recordings. Founded in 1996 by Artistic Director Gil Rose, BMOP’s mission is to illuminate the connections that exist naturally between contemporary music and contemporary society by reuniting composers and audiences in a shared concert experience. In its first twelve seasons, BMOP established a track record that includes more than 80 performances, over 70 world premieres (including 30 commissioned works), two Opera Unlimited Festivals with Opera Boston, the inaugural Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music with the ICA/Boston, and 32 commercial recordings, including 12 CDs from BMOP/sound.
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