Lisa Bielawa
(Liz Linder)
Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She is currently spending a year composing at the American Academy in Rome, situated on the Janiculum, Rome's highest hill. The New York Times describes her music as, "ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart."
Bielawa joins 14 other artists as well as 15 scholars in the Academy’s multi-disciplinary, collegial environment. While there, she will compose an extended, modular work inspired by Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse for the Brooklyn Rider string quartet and herself as vocalist.
Born in San Francisco to a musical family, Bielawa played the violin and piano, sang, and wrote music from early childhood. She moved to New York in 1990--just two weeks after receiving her B.A. in Literature in from Yale University--and became an active participant in New York musical life. She began performing with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992 and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers.
In addition, she tours and records with John Zorn and has premiered and recorded works by numerous composer colleagues.
Lisa Bielawa appears in the following:
Monday, July 26, 2010
By
Lisa Bielawa
Greetings from hot and sticky Rome, where--in stark contrast to equally hot and sticky New York City--air conditioning is deemed bad for the human organism and therefore largely avoided. But the thick air gives the city a slow pace, so there is time now to reflect and report on what turned out to be a very busy spring of music-making.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
By
Lisa Bielawa
Greetings after a grand hiatus in my blogging activity, due to a healthy-sized sojourn back on home soil (East and West coasts of the U.S.), and some adventures within Italy too, including a recent visit to nearby Palestrina, birthplace of Giovanni Pierluigi da... (Palestrina), memorialized here as the Prince of Music:
Monday, January 25, 2010
By
Lisa Bielawa
American artists, writers, and musicians have been crossing the Atlantic for centuries now to find inspiration and international camaraderie. Since the moment I stepped off the plane, I was aware that I am in a city whose architectural and artistic treasures would be a lasting and life-changing source of inspiration for me.
Friday, December 18, 2009
By
Lisa Bielawa
As I spend more time in the community here at the American Academy in Rome, I realize that being a performer as well as a composer brings so many more ways to integrate into community life, and to open myself up more completely to the various influences of Rome on my musical imagination.
Monday, November 30, 2009
By
Lisa Bielawa
An eventful two weeks here, including the first public performance of Don Byron’s and my work last Saturday as part of the 46th annual Nuova Consonanza Festival marathon concert and concluding with Thanksgiving dinner at the Academy.
Monday, November 16, 2009
By
Lisa Bielawa
It seems strange to introduce myself as your blogger in Rome, seeing as how I'm currently in CDG airport in Paris. But I’m on my way back to Rome now, where I’ve been living for the past two months as a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
