Composer Lisa Bielawa & Violinist Tessa Lark: Violin Concerto No. 2: Pulse
Photo of Tessa Lark by Lauren Desberg, photo of Lisa Bielawa by Desmond White
LINKS & ASSETS
Lisa Bielawa & Tessa Lark: Violin Concerto No. 2 Brochure
BOOKING INQUIRIES
Christina Jensen, christina@jensenartists.com
Gina Meola, gina@jensenartists.com
646.536.7864
“Tessa brings forth a ‘humankind’ in her playing that envelops you in the warmth of her Kentucky roots...She exudes a graciousness that welcomes you to join her in the exploration of the music. Her sound is rich, yet always maintains an underlying purity”
“[Bielawa’s] music boasts a distinctive blend of Romantic effusion and steely, almost austere contemporaneity...a fluid and arresting creation that is at once dramatic and probing.”
2023 Guggenheim Fellow, Rome Prize and American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning composer Lisa Bielawa is pleased to offer a new violin concerto, written for GRAMMY-nominated violinist Tessa Lark, with lead co-commissioners the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Louisville Orchestra and additional consortium members to be announced.
Pulse (noun)
1: the regular expansion of an artery caused by the ejection of blood into the arterial system by the contractions of the heart
2: rhythmical beating, vibrating, or sounding
3a: underlying sentiment or opinion or an indication of it
b: vitality
A “pulse” in the musical sense is not always out front and audible like a groove. It is the rhythmic heartbeat way beneath a phrase, the deeply anchored contractions and expansions of time that drive the music forward. We also use the word to refer to the “underlying sentiment” of a place. Composer Lisa Bielawa has a long history of making work inspired by her encounters with music-making communities that have a strong sense of belonging, from Appalachia to Armenia to Serbia to former East Germany. In this way she goes to a place in order to “take its pulse,” to behold its vitality and let it sit alongside her own musical voice, not seeking to integrate, mimic or appropriate, but rather preserving the integrity of both.
In 2023, Lisa immersed herself in the musical traditions of Appalachia, touring alongside violinist Tessa Lark and the Louisville Orchestra. They talked, they jammed, they dreamed of a new concerto that could bring some of the musical ideas they heard just beginning to come to life in their short collaboration into a whole new form: a virtuoso concerto written expressly for an artist who can explore the technical and expressive underpinnings of multiple discrete musical worlds, built through her lifetime of music-making in all of them.
As we approach the 250th anniversary year of the United States in 2026, we are all taking the pulse of the country we call our own. America is so many different organisms to different people in different places. San Francisco, Boston, New York, Kentucky, Knoxville, and beyond – as Americans and as musicians, we are listening to the contractions of our country’s heart, seeking to encounter its underlying sentiment. The shared experiences that inspired this collaboration were deeply joyful ones, and so the piece will be expansive and full of vitality. It is, at its, core, a response to the sense of belonging that pulses through so many diverse American communities.
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Background
Tessa Lark grew up in Kentucky, playing both classical violin and Appalachian traditional music from a young age in a musical family. Lisa Bielawa grew up in San Francisco, also playing violin from a young age in a musical family. As adults, they each embarked on a unique musical path that brought them through Boston for a few years, at different times, where both of them worked with conductor Gil Rose, Lisa as composer-in-residence with his orchestra and Tessa as concertmaster for his opera company. He told Lisa about Tessa and suggested they meet. Little did he know that they had ended up in New York, living down the hall from one another on the fifth floor of the same building in Upper Manhattan. Tessa recognized Lisa’s name on a package in the lobby and reached out. Lisa put two and two together. They were connected, and they could wave at each other through their windows, across the air shaft! Then, the pandemic. Their nascent collaboration had to be satisfied, for the moment, with a socially distanced glass of wine.
Fast forward three years: Lisa was invited to live in Louisville Kentucky for a year in residence with the Louisville Orchestra, where she immersed herself in the musical communities of Appalachia, and – much to her delight – shared the stage in concerts all over the state with Tessa, who had already been working for several years with LO conductor Teddy Abrams. Their paths were now inextricably linked through common colleagues and experiences.
It was a natural next step to want to create something new together that they could share with these conductors, and through which they could continue exploring new American musical communities together. Lisa began her work on PULSE in spring 2024 at the Loghaven Artist Residency in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she continued to connect with traditional music-making as she worked.
Duration: 20-25 minutes
Composer Lisa Bielawa
Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa (b. 1968) takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Bielawa was named a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, joining a diverse group of 171 exceptional individuals. 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. She is the recipient of the 2017 Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and a 2020 OPERA America Grant for Female Composers. 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.
Lisa Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her work 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, and MAXXI Museum in Rome, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers 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, 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.
Violinist Tessa Lark
Violinist Tessa Lark 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. In 2020 she was nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category and received one of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Emerging Artist Awards, the special Hunt Family Award. Other recent honors include a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Silver Medalist in the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition. A budding superstar in the classical realm, 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.
Tessa has been a featured soloist at numerous U.S. orchestras, recital venues, and festivals since making her concerto debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at age sixteen. She has appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; the Louisville Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic; the Albany, Indianapolis, Knoxville and Seattle symphonies; and has been presented by such venues as Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Music Center at Strathmore, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, San Francisco Performances, Ravinia, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Australia’s Musica Viva Festival, and the Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Bridgehampton, and La Jolla summer festivals.