Composer Lisa Bielawa's Chance Encounter Available

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On Tuesday, December 14, 2010, Orange Mountain Music releasef composer Lisa Bielawa’s Chance Encounter, featuring acclaimed soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights chamber orchestra, and produced by Grammy Award-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse.

Chance Encounter comprises songs and arias constructed of speech overheard by Bielawa and Narucki in transient public spaces. These spaces included airports around the world, sidewalks and streets, parks and cafes, and public transportation. The 35-minute piece is written for Narucki and a migrating ensemble of 12 instruments, and is meant to be performed in a public place. A project of Creative Capital, Chance Encounter has captivated audiences in Manhattan parks, at New York's Whitney Museum, outside the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome, on the banks of the Tiber River, in Vancouver, and at the Venice Architectural Biennale.

Bielawa explains, “In 2006, I began carrying a notebook with me everywhere, jotting down utterances that begged to be proclaimed, sung. I noticed over time that people often say things in transient spaces that help them locate themselves in space and time. Susan and I collected hundreds of such utterances, many of them in Lower Manhattan where the piece was premiered. I have organized the text into categories – Topos Nostalgia; Drama/Self-Pity; Nothing; Aimlessness Song – and have created free-form arias or songs that animate the particular mood of each collective topic.”

Here is a video:

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