Daniel Gilliam  0:00  
I'm Daniel Gillum from 90.5 w, u, O, L, and my guest today, Tessa lark, violinist, Lisa Bulava, composer, collaborating on a brand new concerto premiering this weekend with the Louisville orchestra. It's called Pulse. Lisa and Tessa, kind of a homecoming for both of you. Lisa, you were part of the first year of the Creator core. Tessa, you're a Commonwealth gal. You've played with the orchestra a lot over the past several years, and since you've both worked with the orchestra so much, it's kind of like getting back together with old friends. There's probably not a lot of introductions to be made,

Tessa Lark  0:43  
yeah, it feels I mean, usually, at least in my experience, Lisa, you probably have similar as soon as the rehearsal starts, you know, the maestro will say, you know, everybody, please welcome you know, Lisa, if you love our Tesla lark And today, Teddy just kind of pummeled right into it. He's like, okay, so this is what we're gonna and of course he did take a moment to welcome us back, but it really did feel like just coming into, you know, the proverbial living room and continuing where we had left off last time.

Lisa Bielawa  1:19  
I felt like no time had passed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Gilliam  1:22  
For Lisa, yeah. I mean, you're used to writing for the orchestra, yeah? It kind of takes some of the growing pains out for you, right? Well,

Lisa Bielawa  1:31  
I mean, and in fact, in writing the piece, it gives me a little company. I mean, you know, concertos are very time consuming to write, you know, and they take a lot of time alone, because they take a lot of focus detailed work. And in this, in this situation, of course, I knew not only the soloist, but also a lot of the people who would be premiering it. I knew, you know, that I wasn't just writing for, you know, X or Y, whatever section I was writing for people whose names and faces I know and and so it just was, it made the whole thing feel almost obvious today to show up and be like, oh, yeah, right. This is, you know, they were already the orchestra in my mind, right?

Daniel Gilliam  2:10  
I'm always curious with a collaboration like this, with a soloist and composer, a little bit of a chicken and egg cart before the horse kind of thing. You know, Tessa, did you go to Lisa with ideas first? Or Lisa, did you go to Tessa with ideas and, you know, kind of, how did it start, in terms of the collaborative spirit of this concerto?

Lisa Bielawa  2:35  
Well, if I can go first and just say, like, I, you know, we have this joke about it, but I, sort of, I start by stalking the soloist and, like following them around. So I went to hear Tessa play so many different kinds of music. I mean, I went down to the blue note to hear her play, you know, jazz set, and I drove up to West Chester to hear what did you play that day? That was like a, was it Greek or something, or, I can't remember. I mean, you know,

Tessa Lark  3:01  
I just Yeah, did some some crazy, like, mid Yeah, 20th century Russian stuff. Oh, no, was it, or was it Schubert? Who knows? Something like, too

Lisa Bielawa  3:15  
bad. But then I also came to hear you at the big years festival with your Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, and that was all Edgar Meyer, you know that that that music along with Bach and and, of course, then I heard Tessa play on when we were on tour together with the yellow even though I wrote a small part for her in my piece. That was a collaboration with Lindsay Branson, the the singer songwriter from Hazard, Kentucky, right? So we had a little bit of a taste of, sort of collaborating then, but I got a chance to hear Tessa play, you know, and, you know, also some encores where you sang and played. Remember, what was that? Yeah, yeah, some tunes. So getting a sense of, you know, there's always a sort of an immersion, you know, in in just what is the soloist about, like, what's their what's their relationship to their instrument, what's their relationship to their audience when they play, how do they hear? What's their, you know? So I got a lot of opportunities in the short time when I was writing, you know, when I was really researching the piece, to hear, to hear Tessa in a variety of different contexts, which is great, yeah.

Tessa Lark  4:24  
And Lisa kindly forced me to put have some input, especially in the last movement of the piece. We she had the first two movements completed, and she just said, you know, I'm not going to be able to finish this thing unless you tell me what some of your favorite tunes are. And Lisa really wanted to be sure that in the last movement there are three traditional old time tunes that I play wholesale. And so Lisa just said, play a few things for me that. It's you know, tunes that mean a lot to you. And so I played through a few things, and she just sort of listened and honed in on the tunes in particular. She felt that like I really had, you know, an affinity for so she forced me to have input, which meant a lot to me. Yeah, it's very cool,

Lisa Bielawa  5:21  
well, and also, this is another thing that I feel very strongly about, and this is a whole other subject, but I am not, I am not from Kentucky, and these, this is not a style that's that's like, authentic to me. And there's, you know, I mean, there's nothing worse than hearing a composer who's not, you know, I mean, the last thing I want to do is go in there and, like, appropriate, a style that is, you know, that is really outside. I mean, just traditional music making in this part of the country is a, you know, a generations, you know, deep practice. And for me to come waltzing in here and just like, do stuff that's in that style, you know, just it's just not the way I like to do it. I I wanted to have a lighter touch on the elements of the piece that that bring in Tess's experience. And in order to have that lighter touch, I actually needed to have her bring the tunes, the tunes, like she said that there were wholesale what that means is that the traditional tunes that are in the fourth, in the third movement are, I haven't done anything to them. I mean, just start right here. Play dry and dusty four times. Bob's your uncle, you know. Like, that's it, you know. Like, and I don't touch it. It's barely it. Basically, it's only in the score, in, you know, in, like, in, in very broad, sort of general terms, in order for Teddy to know where Tessa is, basically, but otherwise, there's nothing there. It's just start here. Do it four

Daniel Gilliam  6:56  
times. Are there traditional cadenzas in your concerto?

Lisa Bielawa  7:01  
Yes, yes, yeah,

Tessa Lark  7:04  
there's, there are improvised bits, and there is a cadenza at the my, my very first entrance, which is pretty novel for a concerto, you don't get that too much, and that's written out. That's that that feels to me like Lisa's cadenza, you know, yeah, it was, you know, her, her free form. And it's so character full and gestural. And it feels to me one of the more traditional, romantic style, violin concerto, e vibes, that's in the whole piece. So it's fun to kind of start out that way. It's it's unconventional that it is, straight away I just come in with a huge, you know, with great flair and great romance. But then from there, it sort of dissolves into an absolutely unique world. And there is a section where the orchestra is laying down every sort of poly rhythm, and I improvise from there, Lisa, again, gives some guide notes that she might prefer hearing, and also just the chords. So I read it down like a jazz chart, and I flow in and out of improvisation, and then written bits every few bars for about this, I think it's just a couple of minutes, yeah, section,

Lisa Bielawa  8:35  
Yeah, feels longer, probably,

Tessa Lark  8:39  
you know, and

Lisa Bielawa  8:41  
there's a lot of fun. Yeah, there's a codetta, I guess we're calling it the codetta at the end, which is another thing actually, that Tessa kind of said, Yeah, that would be great if this were, because at the very end of the piece, the last tune in the in the third movement, is dry and dusty, which is, which is traditionally played on a fiddle that is the dead man's tuning, which is D, G, A, D. It's an entirely different instrument that she's going to pick up. She'll put down her violin and pick up this fiddle that is in this tuning. But that means that if she's going to finish out the piece on this thing, and if I'm going to actually have her go back to playing like, you know, Lisa original, you know, virtuosic writing. She's going to have to do it on this other fiddle, this completely different tune. So I really loved leaning into that. I mean, it's not, it's not necessarily a cadenza, per se, but it is. It is an absolutely virtuoso flourish at the end of the piece that uses the fact that the tuning is completely different.

Daniel Gilliam  9:44  
That leads me to my next question, and really my last question, which was, which is, Lisa, did you push yourself out of your comfort zone in writing this concerto?

Lisa Bielawa  9:54  
Well, I mean, yes, but that's kind of my jam. I. Like, I mean, I don't know. Like, it's kind of unfair for me to say, oh, yeah, sorry, you know, because that's also what I pretty much do all the time. I don't know. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not a kid anymore, like, I'm just writing, you know, every time I write a piece, I have to have a reason to like, I need to learn from a from every creative context I'm in, otherwise, what am I doing, you know? I mean, this is not what am I doing, you know, I want to keep growing and and that's how to do it, you know. And not only that, but especially with the concerto. I mean, with the concerto, part of my job is to take a soloist into a place of, you know, pretty extreme vulnerability, and take, take a take a virtuoso performer out of their comfort zone, too. And if I'm going to do that, isn't it right that I should match that level of emotional risk? I mean, doesn't that seem fair? You know,

Tessa Lark  10:54  
that's a beautiful thing. And I feel like, Lisa, you're sole sister to me in that way, because I I don't feel like I am doing enough as an artist on stage if I'm not trying to do better every time I pick up my violin. And I hinted at this a little bit with a text that I sent to Lisa, but this, this concerto is has really opened my eyes to what, what it really means to me to be a musician. I think it's the only piece out there where I really have a chance and am challenged to do all of the things that I love trying to do, like improvising, playing jazz changes over a chart, playing bluegrass, playing really virtuosic, You know, traditional violin music, and also playing really profoundly moving, sometimes weirdly disturbing music too. I mean, it gets, it gets in, in, in the most amazing way. That's some of my favorite music, the the second movement. Some of it reminds me a little bit of these in this is a horrible thing to do. Compare a composer with another composer, but these bartkey and sort of, you know, you take kernels of folk music, but it's not that at all. It's this, you know, like a twisted, nightmarish dream of a thing, and so it the music just tells a story and it comes off the page. But it also has the folk elements. It has improvisational elements, it has collaborative chamber music elements with the orchestra. And there's no other piece that I've ever played like it. So I feel like this is the first time I'm really getting to go on stage in one piece for 23 minutes and to show it all. Yeah, and I, you know, I've had this question in my head, like, I love exploring and writing my own music and playing new stuff, but what, why do I still, you know, pine for playing in the Bronx concerto, playing a Mendelssohn concerto, and it's honestly because it is just great music that will always be great. And I think playing a lot of new stuff and exploring new stuff, you do have to, just like, go through the weeds a little bit, and sometimes the music's not going to be great. You need to let you know people explore. But this is a piece that is really great and has so much depth to it that I will just keep on learning things about for the rest of my life. So it's it's super exciting to have this.

Speaker 1  13:59  
Thanks, honey. It's amazing. I mean it, I mean it really do, Yep,

Daniel Gilliam  14:06  
good vibes. Here. Pulse is the name of the concerto, composed by Lisa bellava, premiered by Tessa lark and the Louisville orchestra this weekend. Tessa, Lisa, thanks so much.

Unknown Speaker  14:18  
Thank you. Interesting. Thank you. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai