Meet The Composer Spotlight

Lisa Bielawa

"My ambition? I would like there to be more music being written in the world, by more people, because of me," says composer Lisa Bielawa.

An advocate for the field and for the development of new music and young composers, Ms. Bielawa began her Music Alive Extended residency with Boston Modern Orchestra Project this fall. "The opportunity to develop new work with the players and immerse myself in the community will undoubtedly ensure a vital, richly fulfilling three years of music-making."

BMOP kicked off the three-year partnership (2006-2009), and their 10th season, with a program featuring some of her work, including roam; a work inspired by an excerpt from Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

Ms. Bielawa, an ardent reader who holds a degree in Literature from Yale, is often inspired by the works of great writers. She says, "I feel that reading sharpens my emotional acuity, and when I write music I am usually trying to make vivid, in a sound world, a response I had to something I read."

In addition to her life as a composer, she is also an accomplished vocalist (performing her own work and with the Philip Glass ensemble, among others), and the artistic director of the annual MATA (Music at the Anthology) Festival in NYC.

During the residency, she will write two new works for BMOP, including a double violin concerto, host BMOP's pre-concert talks, curate the popular Club Concerts series, and mentor young composers in local high schools and colleges.

Listen:
Lisa Bielawa's "Roam"
(mp3)

MTC: Much of your work is inspired by literature. When you're inspired by a certain passage from a classic, how does it find its way to the page as music?

LB: I find reading a very rich emotional experience, and it's true that most of my music (even those pieces that have no actual sung or spoken text) is inspired by a reading experience of some sort. I feel that reading sharpens my emotional acuity, and when I write music I am usually trying to make vivid, in a sound world, a response I had to something I read. This response can be just a second or two long when I feel it, but then I may explore that feeling over the course of many minutes. It's almost as if music is simply the medium I find best suited - both because of its own innately abstract aspects and because it's a language that I feel is native to me - to articulate these emotional tones that I feel when I am moved by beautiful language.

MTC: So, do you usually think of words or sounds when composing?

LB: I don't really think of the lingual aspects of language when I am composing, unless I am actually setting text to be sung. It is more that I find my response to words - whether they are written by Shakespeare or Pasternak or overheard on the Houston metro - is often in the form of a vibrant sound world, with its own unique harmonic colors and textural expressivity.

MTC: How did you become involved with Philip Glass?

LB: I auditioned for Philip's music director Michael Riesman in 1992 and was hired immediately for a 4-week tour of early concert repertoire and 'Music in Twelve Parts' in Europe. A choral contractor I had auditioned for two weeks earlier, Jacqueline Pierce, recommended me to Michael. It was pretty straightforward, actually. I went in the front door.

MTC: When and how did MATA come about?

LB: Philip Glass, Eleanor Sandresky (a fellow young composer and member of Philip Glass's ensemble) and I cooked up the idea in 1996, as a way for Philip to form an organized vehicle for his advocacy of younger generations of composers and musicians, and a way for Eleanor and myself to create community around our generation. Actually, there is a long narrative history that I wrote about MATA on our spanking new website. (http://www.matafestival.org/Mhistory.html)

MTC: It's obvious that nurturing young minds is vital to you. Just how important is mentorship?

LB: Mentorship is the cornerstone of musical community. I've never been comfortable in more formally hierarchical contexts - ranks of professorships, levels of student status, etc. In universities, for example, I've always benefited much more, on both sides of the dynamic, from inter-generational relationships with other creative musicians. These kinds of supportive friendships across generations knit together the fabric of our community, and act as an antidote to the competitiveness that can sometimes separate and divide people in our woefully under-supported field. Mentorship is a refusal to behave in a competitive manner. It is an affirmation of self-renewal and revitalization within the field. We need to nurture each other and each other's work.

MTC: As part of the residency, you'll be writing a double violin concerto that will feature soloists Carla Kihlstedt and Colin Jacobsen. Have you started writing it yet?

BMOP in rehearsal

LB: I haven't started it
yet, but I do know that it
is going to be for a Bach-style chamber orchestra (double winds but no clarinets, some high brass, sections strings) with accordion instead of keyboard continuo (harpsichord etc).

I also know that the unique expressive qualities of these two very different soloists will be a primary focus - I remarked to someone recently that whereas Carla Kihlstedt can make 12 different sounds on any one note, Colin Jacobsen can make any note in the universe sound like himself. It's like pairing Renee Fleming with Sarah Vaughn. I also plan to celebrate (BMOP Artistic Director) Gil Rose's own wonderful, rich engagement with musical ideas. He is a conductor who partners gesture. He dances with gesture. The piece will probably be in several movements, each of which will have as its starting-point some kind of trialogue between these three remarkable friends and extraordinary colleagues.

Links:
·Lisa Bielawa
·Boston Modern Orchestra Project
·Music Alive Extended Residencies Round II
·MATA