New Music USA Selects Lisa Bielawa and Mary Kouyoumdjian for its Amplifying Voices Program
L-R: Lisa Bielawa & Mary Kouyoumdjian, both by Desmond White. Available in high resolution here.
New Music USA Announces Two Composers Newly Selected for its Amplifying Voices Program
Lisa Bielawa: 2025-2026 Season
Mary Kouyoumdjian: 2026-2027 Season
Information: www.newmusicusa.org/program/amplifying-voices
New York, NY – New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program, which launched in 2020 to foster collaboration and collective action between U.S. orchestras and composers through a network of co-commissions, announces its next participating composers – Lisa Bielawa for the 2025-2026 season and Mary Kouyoumdjian for the 2026-2027 season. Fifty orchestras and 13 composers across the country have been part of the program.
Amplifying Voices facilitates the co-commissioning and performance of new orchestral works by living composers, enabling orchestras nationwide to extend their work with the composers of our time. Established through commissioning consortia involving leading orchestras across the US and internationally, the program increases the support and promotion of living composers, empowers composers by involving them directly in orchestras' artistic planning processes and guaranteeing multiple performances of their works, and makes major strides toward transforming the classical canon for future generations. The program also purposefully fosters deep collaboration by funding multiple visits to the orchestra by the composer over the course of the season, and by encouraging orchestras to include community experiences such as local school visits and education programs as part of their partnerships.
Previous participants in Amplifying Voices are a who’s who of leading composers of our time, and include Clarice Assad, Katherine Balch, Valerie Coleman, Juan Pablo Contreras, Vijay Iyer, Tania León, Jessie Montgomery, Brian Raphael Nabors, Nina Shekhar, Tyshawn Sorey, and Shelley Washington.
Lisa Bielawa: Amplifying Voices 2025-2026
Lisa Bielawa’s new work supported by Amplifying Voices is her Violin Concerto No. 2: PULSE, composed for violinist Tessa Lark. The lead orchestra for the Amplifying Voices co-commissioning consortium is the Louisville Orchestra, which will give the world premiere performances of the concerto on October 24-25, 2025, led by Music Director Teddy Abrams. Additional consortium members are the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (to be scheduled, led by Artistic Director Gil Rose), Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (November 29-30, 2025, led by Music Director Cristian Măcelaru), and Santa Fe Pro Musica (to be scheduled). PULSE is co-commissioned by The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and additional support was provided by James Rosenfeld, Justus Schlichting, Kari and Jon Ullman, 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.”
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, and 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. Her next large-scale public work is Knoxville Broadcast, presented by the Big Ears Festival on October 17-18, 2025.
Mary Kouyoumdjian: Amplifying Voices 2026-2027
The lead orchestra for the Amplifying Voices co-commissioning consortium for Mary Kouyoumdjian’s new work is the Fresno Philharmonic led by Music Director Rei Hotoda, with co-commissioners the California Symphony led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra led by Music Director and Principal Conductor Matthew Kraemer, and Knoxville Symphony Orchestra led by Music Director Aram Demirjian. The Fresno Philharmonic will premiere the new work during the 2026-2027 season, with subsequent performances by the co-commissioners to follow in 2027-2028.
For the Fresno Philharmonic, the commission project with Kouyoumdjian will be part of a multi-season series of commissions called Cultural Crossroads which focus on the many diverse ethnic communities which make up California’s Central Valley. Kouyoumdjian says, "Much more will be solidified after my initial research visit to Fresno when I will have the opportunity to engage directly with the community, but our early brainstorming sessions about the piece have inspired me to work with the Armenian immigrant community of Fresno, which has historically been home to much of the Armenian diaspora. I am also drawn to the writings of Armenian-American author William Saroyan, whose work beautifully honored his local immigrant community in all of its vibrancy and humor through difficult circumstances. The work will bring these themes into a resonant and universal perspective that aims to connect with the local communities of the collaborating consortium orchestras, and will committedly strive to pull urgently needed focus on immigrant communities who are the very heart and soul of our country."
Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict. A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her live music-documentary Paper Pianos, Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects/OPERA America, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Roomful of Teeth among others. Her work has been featured internationally at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, the Barbican Centre, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Millennium Park, Benaroya Hall, Prototype Festival, Cabrillo Festival, Big Ears Festival, Cal Performances, SF Jazz, Tribeca Film Festival, and PBS. Recently her opera Adoration, adapted from Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film, received its west coast premiere at LA Opera, and her debut portrait album, WITNESS with the Kronos Quartet, was released through Phenotypic Recordings. Kouyoumdjian holds a D.M.A. and M.A. in Composition at Columbia University, an M.A. in Scoring for Film & Multimedia from New York University, and a B.A. in Composition from UC San Diego. She is on composition faculty at The New School.
About New Music USA
New Music USA is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing new music in all its forms. Its mission is to nurture a vibrant and inclusive community for artists and listeners by supporting the creation, performance, and appreciation of new music throughout the United States. Through responsive grant-making; skill-building; mentorship and convenings for creators from all backgrounds; and platforms designed to connect music-makers with organizations and their audiences, New Music USA works to ensure a thriving, connected, and equitable ecosystem for the music of our time.
The Amplifying Voices program continues New Music USA’s legacy of meaningfully connecting living composers and orchestras in the U.S. to collaborate and create new works. From 2011-2019, New Music USA ran the Music Alive Composer in Residence program with support from the Mellon Foundation. This built on the work of one of New Music USA’s founding organizations, Meet The Composer (MTC), which launched its breakthrough Composer In Residence program in 1982 and Music Alive in 1999. In its 20-year span, Music Alive, which was run in partnership with the League of American Orchestras, supported 116 composers, 81 orchestras, and 121 distinct residencies. New Music USA was awarded the Gold Baton from The League of American Orchestras, its highest honor, in 2020 for its outstanding work in the sector. www.newmusicusa.org
Amplifying Voices is powered by the Sphinx Organization, with additional support from ASCAP, the Sorel Organization, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the Wise Music Charitable Foundation, and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trust.