Lisa Bielawa in Residency at Eastman as Howard Hanson Visiting Professor
Bielawa will perform and teach in Rochester throughout the 2025-26 academic year.
The University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music welcomes composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa for a residency spanning the 2025-26 academic year. As this year’s Howard Hanson Visiting Professor, Bielawa’s residency will include a series of performances and masterclasses during the fall and spring semesters and culminate with Rochester Broadcast, her large-scale, site-specific “spatial symphony.” Bielawa, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner, 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, and “fluid and arresting…at once dramatic and probing,” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
“We are thrilled to welcome Lisa Bielawa to Eastman as the 2025–26 Howard Hanson Visiting Professor,” shares Elizabeth Ogonek, chair of Eastman’s Composition Department. “Lisa is a visionary and versatile composer and vocalist whose wide range of impeccably crafted work draws on literary influences, deep social engagement, and close artistic collaboration.”
A leader dedicated to providing opportunities for young musicians, Bielawa co-founded the MATA Festival, served as artistic director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and was the founding composer-in-residence and chief curator of the Philip Glass Institute at The New School. Ogonek concludes, “Her time at Eastman will provide opportunities for our community to enter into her dynamic and immersive musical world.”
Throughout the year, Lisa Bielawa will work closely with Eastman students, and several of her pieces will be performed by Eastman ensembles. The first performance of her visiting professorship will be on Thursday, December 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall. Eastman’s Musica Nova ensemble, under the direction of Brad Lubman, will perform Bielawa’s vocal chamber work, Incessabili Voce (2013), as well as Overcast Skies (2023) by Matthew Lam and Phlegra (1975) by Iannis Xenakis.
“I can think of no more fulfilling way to enter into the Eastman community than to jump onstage with the students to perform a work created expressly to maximize collaboration and spontaneity between the performers, alongside my longtime and cherished colleague Brad Lubman,” exclaims Bielawa. “This is the first adventure in what I know will be a joyful and broad-ranging immersion in Eastman’s musical life.”
LOOKING AHEAD
In the spring, Eastman and Rochester musicians will perform Bielawa’s Broadcast—a project celebrating the diversity of artistic life in Rochester, bringing together professional, student, and amateur artists to create a unique musical experience in the heart of the city. Scheduled for April 18, 2026, with a rain date of April 19, this event will be held at Parcel 5 downtown (285 East Main Street, Rochester) and will be free and open to the public
“I’m so happy that Rochester will join the list of Broadcast cities, which already includes Berlin, San Francisco, Louisville, Knoxville, and more!” Bielawa says. “I create these radically inclusive spatial symphonies for people to fill public urban space with sound, joyfully bringing people together through a celebration of the multiple musical communities in their hometowns. Eastman is a perfect partner for this next adventure in a famously musical city.“
Among the many groups performing will be instrumental ensembles from Eastman including Saxology, the University of Rochester Marching Pep Band, musicians from the Eastman Community Music School including the Klezmer Ensemble, and groups from the Rochester community including youth ensemble The All In Brass Band.
“Engaging our community is an important part of our mission,” states Eastman’s Joan and Martin Messinger Dean Kate Sheeran. “By inviting Lisa to lead a Broadcast specifically composed for Rochester, we are proud to bring music to people from all across Rochester by inviting them to be a part of it.”
This residency is sponsored by the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music. A forthcoming announcement will describe Bielawa’s 2026 events in further detail.
Media only: Lauren Sageer, Associate Director of Public Relations & Digital Content,
(585) 451-8492, lsageer@esm.rochester.edu
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About Lisa Bielawa:
Composer, producer, and vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, and American Antiquarian Society, Loghaven Artist Residency, and was part of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps. She received a Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ROCO, and the Orlando Philharmonic.
Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall in Armenia, the Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, the INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, and more. Bielawa consistently incorporates community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the pandemic, Bielawa cultivated a virtual community using submitted testimonies and recorded voices from six continents through her work Broadcast from Home, now archived by the Library of Congress. For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net. Â
About Eastman School of Music:
The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman’s dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training.
More than 900 students are enrolled in the Collegiate Division of the Eastman School of Music—about 500 undergraduates and 400 graduate students. They come from almost every state, and approximately 23 percent are from other countries. They are taught by a faculty comprising more than 170 highly regarded performers, composers, conductors, scholars and educators. They are Pulitzer Prize winners, GRAMMY winners, Emmy winners, Guggenheim fellows, ASCAP Award recipients, published authors, recording artists and acclaimed musicians who have performed in the world’s greatest concert halls. Each year, Eastman’s students, faculty members and guest artists present more than 900 concerts to the Rochester community. Additionally, more than 1,700 members of the Rochester community, from young children through senior citizens, are enrolled in the Eastman Community Music School.
About the University of Rochester:
The University of Rochester is one of the nation’s leading private research universities, one of only 62-member institutions in the Association of American Universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives undergraduates exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.