Bielawa was born in San Francisco. Her father is composer and retired San Francisco State Universitymusic professor Herbert Bielawa. Having been raised in a musical environment, she has been musically active since early childhood, learning piano, voice, and violin in addition to writing music. Bielawa's beginnings as a composer were unintentional, "I'd write cabaret songs and pieces for the San Francisco Girls Chorus, but it never felt entirely serious." She continued to perform and write music, but studied English at Yale for her undergraduate degree, after receiving which, resumed her career in music.
Career
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. She counts Glass among her compositional influences. In 1997 she co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers. Bielawa is currently the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
Compositions
Bielawa’s chamber music 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 Encounter, 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; The Project of Collecting Clouds at Seattle Town Hall by cellist Joshua Roman and chamber ensemble; and in medias res, a concerto for orchestra commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the culmination of Bielawa’s three-year residency with that orchestra. Bielawa's latest project is a new opera called Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser, composed by Lisa Bielawa on a libretto by Erik Ehn and directed by Charles Otte. The opera is unprecedented in that it is being created expressly for episodic release via broadcast and online media.
Hypermelodia
Writing for The Boston Globe, David Weininger notes that her "Hypermelodia" is structured like a hypertext novel: during the piece two of the performers choose which section to play next. It was commissioned for and premiered at the 37th Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young on April 12, 2015 at the Rivers School Conservatory.
Chance Encounter
Bielawa's Chance Encounter is a 35-minute piece in, and about, transient public space with texts overheard in transient public space. Chance Encounter has been recorded by The Knights and Susan Narucki for Orange Mountain Music, and has been performed in Venice with Lisa Bielawa as the soprano soloist as part of the 12th International Venice Biennale of Architecture, in partnership with urban placemaker Robert Hammond, known for championing New York's High Line.
Airfield Broadcasts
Bielawa's Airfield Broadcasts is a massive 60-minute work for hundreds of musicians that premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin and at Crissy Field in San Francisco. The piece turns former airfields into vast musical canvases, calling on professional, amateur and student musicians to execute a spatial symphony.
Vireo
Bielawa is currently at work on Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser, a new opera composed on a libretto by Erik Ehn and directed by Charles Otte, which is unprecedented in that it is being created expressly for episodic release via broadcast and online media. Vireo won ASCAP's 47th Annual Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Multimedia Award in 2015. A complete list of compositions is available on her official web site.
Discography
Recordings include "Hildegurls: Electric Ordo Virtutum" ; "A Handful of World" ; "First Takes" ; "In medias res" ; "Chance Encounter" ; "The Lay of the Love".
