Questions of Practice

Questions of Practice: Lisa Bielawa, Composer and Vocalist

Lisa Bielawa, composer and vocalist. Filmed at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage on March 20, 2013.

An award-winning composer-vocalist, Lisa Bielawa has worked with Anthony Braxton, Philip Glass Ensemble, John Zorn, and many others. Gramophone described her work as evoking “the layered precision of Vermeer and the conscious recklessness of Jackson Pollock.” During Bielawa’s visit to the Center in 2013, we asked her: How is technology impacting our expectations of live music?

Composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in musical composition. She began touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997, she co-founded the MATA Festival. Bielawa was appointed artistic director of the acclaimed San Francisco Girls Chorus in 2013. Recent highlights of Bielawa’s music include premieres of Rondolette by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and pianist Bruce Levingston and Double Duet by the Washington Saxophone Quartet. Bielawa recently completed Airfield Broadcasts, a massive 60-minute work for more than 600 musicians which was premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin (May 2013) and at Crissy Field in San Francisco (October 2013).