The Lay of the Love

At the heart of composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa’s new album The Lay of the Love is her 25-minute work based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s epic poem, “The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke.” Together the music and lyrics contemplate the loss of innocence and address the sobering notion that all die young. Bielawa completed The Lay of the Love and Death for baritone, violin and piano in 2006, and it was premiered at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall that year. She says of the work, “Perhaps the poet Rilke, suddenly aware of his own mortality, was also already aware that, although many of us continue living into more reflective, circumspect years, in a sense all of us die young, because the innocence of our young selves cannot survive the various awarenesses that are the inevitable result of a prolonged tender encounter with a troubled world.”

The album also includes Wait for piano with drone, premiered by pianist Evelyne Luest with members of Contrasts Quartet at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall in 2002. It is the second of four related works based on six lines from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which Bielawa describes as “passages of great intimacy and vulnerability.” Hurry, Bielawa’s recreation in musical time of the experience she had when reading Boris Pasternak’s poem “Hurry, My Verses,” completes the album. It was premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2004. The Lay of the Love features performances by acclaimed musicians: baritone Jesse Blumberg; soprano Sadie Dawkins Rosales; pianists Jocelyn Dueck, Benjamin Hochman and Evelyne Luest; violinist Colin Jacobsen; cellist Eric Jacobsen; clarinetist Anthony McGill; and flutist Lance Suzuki.

Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literature and artistic collaborations. She began touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival. Bielawa was appointed Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus in 2013.

Her music is frequently performed throughout the US and Europe, with recent highlights including a residency at The Stone, a Radio France commission, and world premieres of “Rondolette” by Brooklyn Rider and Bruce Levingston, “Double Violin Concerto” by Boston Modern Orchestra Project, “The Right Weather” by American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, “Chance Encounter” by Susan Narucki and The Knights, and “Airfield Broadcasts,” a work for hundreds of musicians performed on former airfields in Germany and California. Her current project is “Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser,” a serial opera created for episodic broadcast.