Oct. 24-25: World Premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto PULSE – Performed by the Louisville Orchestra Featuring Violinist Tessa Lark Conducted by Music Director Teddy Abrams
Photo of Tessa Lark by Lauren Desberg available here & Lisa Bielawa by Shawn Poynter available here.
World Premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto PULSE
on October 24 & 25, 2025
Performed by the Louisville Orchestra
Conducted by Music Director Teddy Abrams
Featuring Violin Soloist Tessa Lark
Friday, October 24, 2025 at 11am and Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 7:30pm
Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center | 501 W. Main St. | Louisville, KY
Tickets & Information
Lisa Bielawa: www.lisabielawa.net | Tessa Lark: www.tessalark.com
Louisville, KY – Composer Lisa Bielawa’s new work, a violin concerto titled PULSE, will be given its world premiere performances by the Louisville Orchestra led by Music Director Teddy Abrams with violin soloist and Kentucky native Tessa Lark, on Friday, October 24, at 11am and Saturday, October 25, at 7:30pm at Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center. Lisa Bielawa is a familiar face to Louisville audiences – she lived in Louisville as an inaugural member of the Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps during the 2022-23 season. In addition to writing several works for the orchestra and touring throughout the state, Bielawa also composed and produced Louisville Broadcast with the Louisville Orchestra – a spatial symphony featuring hundreds of Louisville musicians performed outdoors at Shelby Park and the Big Four Bridge in spring 2023.
Of her new violin concerto, 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.”
Lark, for whom Bielawa wrote this concerto, is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. Increasingly in demand in the classical realm, in 2020 she was nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. She is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky, delighting audiences with programming that includes Appalachian and bluegrass music and inspiring composers to write for her.
PULSE was 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 also been provided by James Rosenfield, Justus Schlichting, Kari and Jon Ullman, New Music USA's Amplifying Voices Program, and the Loghaven Artist Residency. Tessa 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.
In addition to PULSE, Lisa Bielawa’s 2025-2026 season features more 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. On February 26, 2026, Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York 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. She is also 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.
Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, American Antiquarian Society, Loghaven Artist Residency, and was part of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps. She received a Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ROCO, and the Orlando Philharmonic. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall in Armenia, the Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, the INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, and more. Bielawa consistently incorporates 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. During the pandemic, Bielawa cultivated a virtual community using submitted testimonies and recorded voices from six continents through her work Broadcast from Home, now archived by the Library of Congress.