Composer, Vocalist, and Producer Lisa Bielawa – 2025-2026 Season Highlights
Photo of Lisa Bielawa by Shawn Poynter available in high resolution here.
Composer, Vocalist, Producer Lisa Bielawa
2025-2026 Season Highlights
Knoxville Broadcast Presented by Big Ears
A Spatial Symphony for Hundreds of Musicians at World’s Fair Park in Knoxville, TN
October 17-18, 2025
Premiere Performances of Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE, by Tessa Lark
Louisville Orchestra Conducted by Teddy Abrams: October 24 & 25, 2025
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Music Director Cristian Mӑcelaru:
November 29 & 30, 2025
Composer Portrait Concert Presented by Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Performed by Contemporaneous & Lisa Bielawa Conducted by David Bloom
February 26, 2025
Appointed Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the
Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester for 2025-2026
Currently at Work on Guggenheim Fellowship Project
La Ballonniste or Balloon: A Hot Air Opera
“the formal sophistication and lyrical richness of Bielawa’s music go deep” – The New Yorker
Complete Schedule: www.lisabielawa.net/calendar
Composer, producer, 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.
Lisa Bielawa is established as one of today’s leading composers and performers, consistently incorporating community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, 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 twelve-episode, made-for-TV opera that features over 350 musicians and was filmed in locations across the country.
Lisa Bielawa’s 2025-2026 season features bold programming, new collaborations, and world premieres of several new works. Knoxville Broadcast, a new installment in Bielawa’s Broadcast series, will premiere on October 17 and 18, 2025 in Knoxville, TN in three site-specific performances at Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park presented by Big Ears. Violinist Tessa Lark will give the first two premiere performances of Bielawa’s Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE with two of the co-commissioning orchestras – the world premiere performances with the Louisville Orchestra, conducted by Teddy Abrams on October 24 and 25, 2025; and the Cincinnati premiere with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Cristian Mӑcelaru, on November 29 and 30, 2025. On February 26, 2026, Miller Theatre at Columbia University will present a Composer Portrait concert dedicated exclusively to Bielawa’s music, including the world premiere of a new work, all performed by Contemporaneous led by David Bloom, with Bielawa singing. Bielawa also serves as Howard Hanson Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY for 2025-2026, where she will work with students who will be performing her music throughout the academic year.
On October 17 and 18, 2025, Knoxville Broadcast will be presented by Big Ears as part of its ongoing expansion beyond the festival stage with year-round engagement throughout Knoxville, TN. A large-scale, site-specific “spatial symphony,” created by Lisa Bielawa, Knoxville Broadcast will unite hundreds of musicians from across Knoxville in three free public performances at World’s Fair Park on Friday, October 17 at 6pm and Saturday, October 18 at 11am and 2pm. Knoxville Broadcast continues Bielawa’s celebrated series of Broadcast performances in Berlin, San Francisco, and Louisville, each rooted in the history and community of its location. The San Francisco Chronicle called her Crissy Broadcast “one of the most moving performances of the year … where all the boundaries we take for granted in musical life … are casually obliterated.”
For Knoxville, Bielawa has composed a new score inspired by the city’s landscape, voices, and musical traditions. More than 600 local musicians of all ages and backgrounds will take part, including the Appalachian Equality Chorus, Knoxville Community Band, Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, Halls Middle School Bands, L&N Stem Academy Concert Band and Orchestra, Drums Up Guns Down, members of Nief-Norf, Hardin Valley Academy Guitar Ensemble, Roane State Community College Choir, and the University of Tennessee Gospel Choir. Three all-ages “pickup” groups—Sterchi String Band (old-time), Found Forte (youth percussion), and the Sunsphere Singers (intergenerational choir)—are also open to the public. Bielawa will weave in spoken and sung texts contributed by Knoxville residents, embedding their words and stories directly into the music.
"The abundance of musical cultures here makes Knoxville Broadcast unique among my large-scale urban celebrations,” says Bielawa. “From Appalachian traditional music and folk guitar to found object percussion and West African drumming, plus a vital tradition of school and community bands, orchestras, and choruses – it’s been an exciting adventure collaborating with this vibrant city!"
Following Knoxville Broadcast, Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto No. 2, PULSE, will have its world premiere performances by the Louisville Orchestra on October 24 and 25, 2025. The concerto will be premiered by the captivating violinist Tessa Lark, for whom Bielawa wrote the piece, and conducted by Louisville Orchestra Music Director Teddy Abrams. Lark will give the Cincinnati premiere of PULSE with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra later this fall on November 29 and 30, 2025, in concerts led by CSO Music Director Cristian Măcelaru. PULSE is 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.
Bielawa writes, “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.”
On February 26, 2026, Lisa Bielawa will be featured in a Composer Portrait concert at Miller Theatre at Columbia University, with performances of her music by Contemporaneous conducted by Music and Co-Artistic Director David Bloom. The program includes Bielawa’s pieces Graffiti dell’amante (2010) and Incessabili Voce (2013) performed by Bielawa with Contemporaneous, plus the world premiere of a new work commissioned for the occasion by Miller Theatre. The new piece, written for seven instruments, will showcase the unique virtuosity of Contemporaneous and its conductor David Bloom, exploring the meeting ground between comedy and expansiveness. Bielawa’s Graffiti dell’amante is an open-ended musical-dramatic exploration of the multi-faceted predicament of the Lover inspired by Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Of Incessabili Voce, Bielawa writes: “In designing material for the voice, I thought about singing in church, the ecstatic singing of angels, the roar of soldiers, the mannerisms of Greek storytelling in the great oral tradition, the traditions of Gregorian and Anglican chant. The vocal part coaxes cries of various sorts out of the instruments. . . It is more of a dreamscape than a story, more cry than word.”
Lisa Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. She 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 18th century French opera singer Élisabeth Tible, the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon. Bielawa’s music 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, 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. Bielawa’s music has been recorded on the Tzadik, Orange Mountain, Supertrain, Cedille, TROY, Innova, BMOP/sound, and Sono Luminus labels.
Bielawa is the recipient of the Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an OPERA America Grant for Female Composers, a 2025 commission from The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and 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 Kaufman Music Center in New York for the 2020-2021 season. During the 2022-23 season, she was a member of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps.
For more information about Lisa Bielawa: LisaBielawa.net