Lisa Bielawa: Chance Encounter
1/1/2007 • 8 tracks • 36 minutes
LISA BIELAWA (b. 1968)
1. Prologue & Opening 3:08
Eric Jacobsen, cello
2. Topos Nostalgia 8:12
3. Transition: Nostalgia-Drama 0:41
Colin Jacobsen, violin
4. Drama/Self-Pity 5:16
5. Transition: Drama-Nothing 1:13
B. Baron, clarinet
6. Nothing 5:28
7. Transition: Nothing-Aimlessness 0:46
L. Suzuki, flute
8. Aimlessness 11;50
℗ 2010 Orange Mountain Music
Lisa Bielawa's Chance Encounter is a 35-minute piece in, and about, transient public space with texts collected from overheard conversations, recorded in 2010 by The Knights and soprano Susan Narucki for Orange Mountain Music.
Susan Narucki and Lisa Bielawa researched Chance Encounter for more than a year. Bielawa carried a notebook with here everywhere, jotting down utterances that begged to be proclaimed, sung. She said, "I noticed over time that people often say things in transient spaces that help them locate themselves in space and time ('Last time I ate here by myself;' 'Remember – it was snowing horribly? And she was holding the dog?'), or provide a summary understanding of ‘the way things are’ ('They used to give you a paper bag with a sandwich and an apple, and that was the beginning of the end;' 'It’s tough when you know what’s out there, and all you can do is look'). Susan and I collected hundreds of such utterances, many of them in Lower Manhattan. I have organized them into categories – Aimlessness; The Third Person Who Is Absent; Nostalgia – and created free-form arias or songs that animate the particular mood of each collective topic."