Lisa Bielawa

Born:  September 30, 1968, San Francisco, California

Composer, producer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa (b. 1968) is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Gramophone reports, “Bielawa is gaining gale force as a composer, churning out impeccably groomed works that at once evoke the layered precision of Vermeer and the conscious recklessness of Jackson Pollock.” Her music has been described as “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” by The New York Times, and “fluid and arresting ... at once dramatic and probing,” by the San Francisco Chronicle.  

Bielawa is the recipient of the Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an OPERA America Grant for Female Composers and a 2025 commission from The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and she is a 2025 New Music USA Amplifying Voices composer. She was named a William Randolph Hearst Visiting Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society for 2018 and was artist-in-residence at the Kaufman Music Center in New York for the 2020–21 season. During the 2022–23 season, she was a member of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps.  

Bielawa is established as one of today’s leading composers and performers, consistently incorporating community-making as part of her artistic vision. In an article which branded Bielawa a “fire starter,” New Music Box reported, “It’s difficult to stand anywhere near composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa and not feel energized by proximity …. An extrovert to the core, Bielawa acknowledges that her highly social nature has taken her in some specific directions both as a composer and as a musical citizen. Community building and close collaboration with performing artists is often central to her compositional process.” She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; she has composed and produced a 12-episode, made-for-TV opera that features over 350 musicians and was filmed in locations across the country. 

Lisa Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her work has recently been premiered at the NY Phil Biennial, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, Town Hall Seattle, Naumburg Orchestral Concerts Summer Series in New York’s Central Park, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, Rouen Opera, Helsinki Music Center, Arsenal de Metz, Japan Society and MAXXI Museum in Rome, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include the Louisville Orchestra, The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Orlando Philharmonic; she has also written for the combined forces of The Knights, San Francisco Girls Chorus and Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by leading ensembles and organizations, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre at Columbia University on a Composer Portrait concert, Big Ears, Miami String Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, American Guild of Organists, American Pianists Association, California Music Center, Akademiska Sångföreningen (Helsinki), Paul Dresher Ensemble, SOLI Chamber Ensemble, the Washington and PRISM saxophone quartets, Ensemble Variances (commissioned by Radio France) and more.  

The 2025–26 concert season features the world premiere of Bielawa’s Violin Concerto No. 2: PULSE, written for violinist Tessa Lark and commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Santa Fe Pro Musica. Bielawa conceived of the piece as a way to keep her finger on the pulse of American life during a period of seismic change and self-examination. PULSE is also inspired by Lark’s background in multiple musical traditions, from old-time to jazz to the classical avant-garde.  

Bielawa’s 2025–26 season also includes the world premiere in October 2025 of Knoxville Broadcast, the latest iteration of her Broadcast series of spatialized symphonies. Knoxville Broadcast brings hundreds of musicians of diverse ages and musical backgrounds to Knoxville’s historic World’s Fair Park in a performance that celebrates the vibrant musical culture and people of the region. Commissioned by the Big Ears Festival, the work draws inspiration from Knoxville’s rich history and from Bielawa’s time immersed in the community in the months leading up to the performance. Bielawa’s previous Broadcasts — large-scale, broadly inclusive works which she began creating in 2013 — have also included works for Tempelhof Airfield in Berlin; Crissy Field in San Francisco; marking the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; Broadcast from Home, developed remotely during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in 2020; Louisville Broadcast for two historic sites in Louisville, Kentucky; and more. In 2021, Broadcast from Home was inducted into the Library of Congress as part of its Performing Arts Covid-19 Response Collection.  

Actively composing for the stage as well, Bielawa is currently at work on her Guggenheim Fellowship project, a hybrid film and live action opera called La Ballonniste or Balloon (A Hot Air Opera) — a heartfelt comedy centering on 18^th-century French opera singer Élisabeth Tible, the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon. Previously, Bielawa received a 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser, created with librettist Erik Ehn and director Charles Otte. The groundbreaking opera was filmed in 12 parts at locations across the country — Alcatraz Island, a monastery on the Hudson River, a studio in Downtown LA, an abandoned train station in Oakland and the California Redwoods — and features leading soloists and ensembles in support of its core cast, including soprano Deborah Voigt, Kronos Quartet, violinist Jennifer Koh, San Francisco Girls Chorus, cellist Joshua Roman, Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and many others. All 12 episodes were broadcast on KCETLink’s Emmy Award-winning arts and culture series Artbound, as well as on-demand online. The Los Angeles Times called Vireo an opera, “unlike any you have seen before, in content and in form,” and San Francisco Classical Voice described it as “poetic and fantastical, visually stunning and relentlessly abstract.” Vireo was produced as part of Bielawa’s artist residency at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California and in partnership with KCETLink and Single Cel. In February 2019, Vireo was released as a two-CD + DVD box set on Orange Mountain Music, featuring all of the music and episodes.  

In addition to being a leading composer, Bielawa has performed as the vocalist in the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1992. She also performs in many of her own works as well as the music of John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Michael Gordon and others. She recently made her orchestral conducting debut leading the Mannes String Orchestra in a special presentation by the Philip Glass Institute featuring her music, music by Jon Gibson and David T. Little, and Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 3.  

A dedicated musical citizen, Lisa Bielawa was a co-founder in 1997 of the MATA Festival, which continues to support young composers. For five years, she served as the artistic director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, bringing the chorus to the NY Phil Biennial and introducing the young performers to the music of today through numerous premieres and commissions of leading composers. From 2019 to 2022, she was the founding composer-in-residence and chief curator of the Philip Glass Institute at The New School’s College of the Performing Arts. She is currently the Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music. 

Bielawa’s latest album is Blueprints I, which features music that would have premiered at her residency at John Zorn’s The Stone, scheduled for the week in March 2020 that New York City went into lockdown, recorded by the performers at home. In addition to the complete opera Vireo (Orange Mountain Music), Bielawa’s My Outstretched Hand for the San Francisco Girls Chorus and The Knights was also released in 2019 (Supertrain Records), as well as Sanctuary Songs, which she recorded with violinist Jennifer Koh on the album Limitless (Cedille Records). Her discography includes The Lay of the Love (Innova), “Opening: Forest” from Vireo on the album Final Answer performed by the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Kronos Quartet (Orange Mountain Music); A Handful of World (Tzadik); The Trojan Women on a disc titled First Takes (TROY); Hildegurls: Electric Ordo Virtutum, (Innova); The Trojan Women in a version for string quartet performed by the Miami String Quartet on The NYFA Collection (Innova); In medias res (BMOP/sound), a double-disc set of Bielawa’s solo and orchestral works; the world premiere recording of Chance Encounter (Orange Mountain Music); and Elegy-Portrait on pianist Bruce Levingston’s album, Heart Shadow (Sono Luminus).  

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. For more information, please visit lisabielawa.net.

Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE

• Composed: 2024, co-commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Library of Congress; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; and Louisville Orchestra; with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Santa Fe Pro Musica. Support has been provided by James Rosenfield, Justus Schlichting, Kari and Jon Ullman, New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices Program and the Loghaven Artist Residency. Dedicated to the memory of Jim Rosenfield. Composed for violinist Tessa Lark.
  
• Premiere: October 2025, Teddy Abrams conducting the Louisville Orchestra
  
• Instrumentation: solo violin, 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets (incl. bass), 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, bongo, crash cymbals, finger cymbals, glockenspiel, mark tree, sizzle cymbal, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambour de Basque, temple blocks, tenor drum, tom-toms, triangle, tubular bells, vibraphone, wind chimes, harp, strings
• CSO Notable Performances: These are the first CSO performances of PULSE.
• Duration: approx. 23 minutes

Bielawa writes the following about Pulse: 

The musical definition of “pulse” takes center stage in this work, composed expressly for a violinist with an impeccable inner metronome. But the word’s other meanings have guided its fascinations as well. This concerto was conceived as a way of keeping my finger on the pulse of American life during a period of seismic change and self-examination. Composed over a six-month period starting just before the 2024 presidential election, it is also informed by my immersion during this time in our sentimental history as told through our traditional musics.  

Tessa Lark’s artistry draws from multiple musical traditions, from old-time to jazz to the classical avant-garde. I have had the enviable opportunity to hear Tessa play in the Smoky Mountains with Appalachian traditional musicians, at the Blue Note in midtown Manhattan, and on concert stages in concertos and chamber music both new and old.  

I turned first to the surging popular song market of Tin Pan Alley, during the time just before, during and after the Great War. Composers and lyricists, many of them recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, churned out their songs all along 28^th Street in Manhattan. The same musical materials could be used to fan any flame — heart-rending refrains tailored to support the war effort one month and protest it the next. The songs kept women company in their parlors while their husbands and sons were away fighting, fueling their patriotism or soothing them with nostalgia. 

The first two orchestral sections of the Tin Pan Alley first movement, which are separated by a freely composed first cadenza, are actually mosaics, faithfully composed entirely of small fragments — from a couple of beats to a couple of measures — of 27 different songs published between 1914 and 1923. The remainder of the movement captures some of the rich sonorities created by the chromatic passing harmonies and stretches them out into “changes” over which the soloist dances virtuosically, eventually improvising over them as in a jazz chart. 

The second movement, The Shapes, takes its name from the directive “Sing the shapes,” which is what song leaders in the Old Harp tradition say when they are standing in the “hollow square” of a traditional shape-note Singing. This lyrical movement is a meditation on the traditional American hymn “Wondrous Love,” which was a favorite of mine when I was a child in my mother’s church choir. The verse that declaims “while millions join the theme, I will sing” evoked vivid scenes of collective musical joy in my childhood imagination, an image that helped shape my understanding of what music-making is actually for. I collected five separate harmonizations, in five different keys, from the shape-note harps and hymnals I encountered in my research and in my travels around the country, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Alabama: the Original Sacred Harp, Southern Harmony, the New Harp of Columbia, the Primitive Baptist Hymn & Tune Book and the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, and from my immersive experience leading this hymn at a Singing in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee earlier this year. The movement also derives some of its color from another deeply intimate meaning of “pulse” — lying awake with my ear on the pillow, hearing the sound of my own blood pumping. The movement ends with another musical quilt — phrases from all five harmonic realizations woven together, in their original keys, in a quiet but massive chorale. 

The last movement gives Tessa a chance to bring her old-time fiddling onto the orchestral stage. Three traditional American tunes are embedded wholesale in the score — “Blackberry Blossom” (Texas/Oklahoma), “Ducks on the Pond” (West Virginia) and “Dry & Dusty” (Southwest). Only the starting point and the number of verses is given in the score. While Tessa brings this whole other side of her virtuosity to her fiddle, changing eventually to an instrument in traditional “D” tuning, the orchestra partners her with its own enthusiasms and fragmentary looks back to the first two movements. In this movement, as in the other two to some degree, I liken my encounter with a musical tradition that is outside my own experience to the philosophy guiding traditional Japanese cuisine: different elements must balance each other perfectly but must never actually touch on the plate. Tessa’s own American voice comes through in its purest form, and the orchestra pulses along.