THE TROJAN WOMEN to be Performed by String Orchestra of New York City, 4/24

On Monday, April 24, 2017 at 7:30pm, composer Lisa Bielawa's The Trojan Women will be performed by the conductor-less chamber orchestra String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC) as part of Victoria Bond's Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival at Symphony Space in Leonard Nimoy Thalia hall. In addition to Bielawa's piece, the concert will also include SONYC performing Victoria Bond's Frescoes and Ash, plus Taka Kigawa performing works by Richard Carrick, Sean Sheppard, and Zosha Di Castri.

Lisa Bielawa's The Trojan Women was commissioned by SONYC in 2003, and was premiered as part of the MATA Festival that year. The piece is based on text by Euripides, on the various types of loss experienced by three Trojan women, explored in three movements - "Hecuba," "Cassandra" and "Andromache." Bielawa says, "Euripides' eulogy to the fallen Troy takes its place alongside the picture of Jerusalem in the Lamentations of Jeremiah,W.G. Sebald's searching inquiries into the rubble of Dresden, or the jarring pictures we see daily in the media from troubled cities around the world."

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. The New York Times describes her music as, "ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart."

Bielawa began touring as the vocalist with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992 and has premiered and toured works by John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, and Michael Gordon. In 1997, she co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers. Bielawa was appointed Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco Girls Chorus in 2013 and is an artist-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California.

Her music is frequently performed throughout the US and Europe, with recent and upcoming highlights including two world premieres at the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Wait premiered by pianist Jon Nakamatsu and the San Francisco Girl's Chorus, Neumark Dances performed at the American Guild of Organists 2014 National Convention, Vireo Canons and Chorale commissioned for the finalists of the American Pianists Association International Competition, Drama/Self Pity premiered by the Orlando Philharmonic, performances as both composer and soloist at the Kennedy Center's KC Jukebox series and SHIFT Festival, and a concert of her works at National Sawdust.

Bielawa's latest works for performance in public places include Chance Encounter, a piece comprising songs and arias constructed of speech overheard in transient public spaces, which was premiered by soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights in Lower Manhattan's Seward Park, and Airfield Broadcasts, a 60-minute work for hundreds of musicians that premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin in May 2013 and at Crissy Field in San Francisco in October 2013.

Bielawa is currently at work on Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser, an opera composed on a libretto by Erik Ehn and directed by Charles Otte, which is unprecedented in that it is being created expressly for episodic release via broadcast and online media. Vireo won the 2015 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Multimedia Award. In May 2017, KCET will release the entire season of Vireo at once for free, on-demand streaming, which is a first for the network.

Bielawa's latest album, The Lay of the Love, was released on Innova in June 2015. Her discography also includes albums on the Tzadik, TROY, Innova, BMOP/sound, Orange Mountain Music and Sono Luminus labels. For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net.

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