Lisa Bielawa's violin concerto Sanctuary given World Premiere by Jennifer Koh and Orlando Philharmonic

World Premiere of Composer Lisa Bielawa’s Sanctuary

Performed by violinist Jennifer Koh with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra

Eric Jacobsen, Music Director

Part of RESONATE at The Plaza Live

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

7pm – Orchestral Concert: Koh performs Bielawa’s violin concerto Sanctuary

9pm – Late Night Program: Bielawa & Koh perform Bielawa’s Sanctuary Songs

The Plaza Live | 425 N Bumby Ave. | Orlando, FL

Tickets: $25-$35 at www.orlandophil.org 

Lisa Bielawa: www.lisabielawa.net

Orlando, FL – On Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 7pm, the world premiere of composer, vocalist and producer Lisa Bielawa’s new violin concerto Sanctuary will be performed by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra led by Music Director Eric Jacobsen. This new concerto is composed by Bielawa expressly for violinist Jennifer Koh, who gives the world premiere. The concert takes place at The Plaza Live in Orlando, and pairs Bielawa’s new work with Mozart’s Symphony No. 36. A late night program at 9pm in the Palmer Room follows the orchestra concert, and will feature Bielawa and Koh performing Bielawa’s related piece Sanctuary Songs together.

Lisa Bielawa’s violin concerto Sanctuary, her forthcoming concerto for cellist Joshua Roman, and her recent orchestral song cycle for mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin, form a trilogy of works inspired by the American voices she discovered during her time as the 2018 William Randolph Hearst Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society.

The new piece explores the meaning of the word “sanctuary” in various contexts, found throughout the numerous writings that Bielawa explored in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society. She writes, “The word ‘sanctuary’ has new prominence and resonance in our current cultural climate. Inspired by the role of sanctuary in the lives of American people, including people I know and love, and in Jennifer Koh’s life as well as my own, I undertook a large-scale research project around this powerful word. My task was simple: find instances of the use of ‘sanctuary’ in a broad range of American writings, in order to reach a greater understanding of its layered meaning within American consciousness. I explored broadsides, poetry, political tracts and speeches, novels and children’s literature – vernacular as well as statesmanlike works – discovering writings that capture the off-hand use of the word in different eras of American history. In all cases, ‘sanctuary’ carries a sense of the inviolable. It is used to appeal to a sense of the absolute. It appears in the rhetoric of both sides of every important American struggle: Abolition, Suffrage, Secession, Manifest Destiny, Temperance, Marriage Rights, Civil Rights, and the foundational thinking of the Founding Fathers. It aims to bypass rational argument and addresses itself directly to sentiment, justice, moral rightness, piety, bigotry, romantic feeling or patriotism.” 

Bielawa’s Sanctuary Songs, which she will perform with Jennifer Koh during the 9pm late night program that follows the orchestra concert, also explore this concept. Bielawa chose texts for Sanctuary Songs by American women poets who wrote between the wars in the 1920s: “Broken” by Virginia Stait; “Speak Softly” by Elise M. Baker; and “My Marvelous Wall” by Elinor Wylie. Each includes the word “sanctuary.” Sanctuary Songs is recorded on Koh’s 2019 album, Limitless (Cedille). 

Sanctuary is co-commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Carnegie Hall, for violinist Jennifer Koh. The work is realized as part of Bielawa’s Who is America orchestral trilogy by her commissioning and production company Ganesa Music, and as part of Jennifer Koh’s The New American Concerto Project by Koh’s 501(c)3 commissioning non-profit ARCO Collaborative.

About Lisa Bielawa: Composer, vocalist, and producer Lisa Bielawa is a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition, and takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Her music has been described as “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” by The New York Times. She is the recipient of the 2017 Music Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and was named a William Randolph Hearst Visiting Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society for 2018.

Bielawa received a 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser, created with librettist Erik Ehn and director Charles Otte. Vireo was filmed in twelve parts in locations across the country and features over 350 musicians. The Los Angeles Times called Vireo an opera, “unlike any you have seen before, in content and in form.” Vireo was produced as part of Bielawa’s artist residency at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California and in partnership with KCETLink and Single Cel. In February 2019, Vireo was released as a two CD DVD box set on Orange Mountain Music, featuring all of the music and episodes. 

Bielawa became the inaugural Composer-in-Residence and Chief Curator at the Philip Glass Institute (PGI) at The New School’s College of the Performing Arts in 2019. The PGI is a landmark partnership between The New School, the Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE), and Bielawa, who has been the vocalist with the Ensemble since 1992. She recently made her orchestral conducting debut leading the Mannes String Orchestra in a special presentation by the PGI. In addition to performing as the vocalist in the PGE, Bielawa performs in many of her own works as well as the music of John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Michael Gordon, and others.

Bielawa’s recent and current works include concertos for violinist Jennifer Koh and cellist Joshua Roman; an orchestral song cycle for mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin; and a commission from the Cathedral Choral Society. 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, National Sawdust, and Le Poisson Rouge, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include the The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, and the Orlando Philharmonic. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by 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, and more. 

Bielawa’s music can be found outside the concert hall as well. Chance Encounter was premiered by soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights in Lower Manhattan's Seward Park. Airfield Broadcasts is a 60-minute work for hundreds of musicians, which was premiered on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin and at Crissy Field in San Francisco. Her work Mauer Broadcast, a series of pop-up choral performances for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, was hosted by Kulturprojekte Berlin in November 2019. The piece, written for an unlimited number of voices, was performed outdoors at Brandenburg Gate, Alexanderplatz, and Marx-Engels Forum. Bielawa is recorded on the Tzadik, TROY, Innova, BMOP/ sound, Orange Mountain Music and Sono Luminus labels.

In 1997 she co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers, and Bielawa served as Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco Girls Chorus from 2013-2018. Born in San Francisco into a musical family, she played the violin and piano, sang, and wrote music from early childhood. She moved to New York two weeks after receiving her B.A. in Literature in 1990 from Yale University, and became an active participant in New York musical life. For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net.

About Jennifer Koh: Jennifer Koh is recognized for intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. A forward-thinking artist, she is dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire, while promoting diversity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects, and has premiered more than 70 works written especially for her. Her quest for the new and unusual, sense of endless curiosity, and ability to lead and inspire a host of multidisciplinary collaborators, truly set her apart.

Koh’s series include The New American Concerto, an ongoing, multi-season commissioning project that explores the form of the violin concerto and its potential for artistic engagement with contemporary societal concerns through commissions from a diverse collective of composers. This season, as part of the project, she performs world premieres of new concertos by Lisa Bielawa with the Orlando Philharmonic and Courtney Bryan with the Chicago Sinfonietta, as well as the New York premiere of Vijay Iyer’s Trouble with The Knights at Miller Theatre. Also this season, she and baritone Davóne Tines join together for Everything That Rises Must Converge, a new work conceived by the two artists inspired by their Korean- and African-American heritage, incorporating classical music, traditional Korean music, African-American spirituals, and a story told through their family members’ voices. Everything that Rises will be premiered at UCSB and UCLA in the spring of 2020. Koh’s other projects are  Limitless (recently released on recording by Cedille Records) which explores the relationship between composer and performer through duo works played by Koh and the composers themselves; Bridge to Beethoven, in which she joins pianist Shai Wosner in pairing Beethoven’s violin sonatas with new works inspired by them; Bach and Beyond, which traces the history of the solo violin repertoire from Bach’s sonatas and partitas to pieces by 20^th- and 21^st-century composers; and Shared Madness, comprising short works that explore virtuosity in the 21^st century, commissioned from over 30 composers.

Koh has been heard with leading orchestras around the world including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; the Cleveland, Mariinsky Theatre, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Philharmonia (London)  Orchestras; the Atlanta, Baltimore, BBC, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Montreal, Nashville, National, New Jersey, New World, NHK (Tokyo), Pittsburgh, RAI National (Torino), St. Louis, Seattle, and Singapore Symphony Orchestras; and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among other ensembles. She played the role of Einstein in the revival of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach—where she met Lisa Bielawa—from 2012 to 2014; and a particular highlight of her career was performing with Bielawa, St Vincent (Annie Clark), and S. Epatha Merkerson at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to Glass. 

Named Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a BA in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, where she worked extensively with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. She is an active lecturer, teacher, and recording artist for Cedille Records; and is the Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that fosters a better understanding of our world through a musical dialogue inspired by ideas and the communities around us. For more information visit www.jenniferkoh.com.