Composer Lisa Bielawa to Lead Over 800 Musicians in Performances at Crissy Field, 10/26-27

Composer Lisa Bielawa's Crissy Broadcast turns Crissy Field in San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, into a vast musical canvas in three free performances on Saturday, October 26 at 10-11am and 4-5pm, and Sunday, October 27 at 12-1pm. The hour-long massive, spatial symphony will involve more than 800 musicians, including orchestras, bands, choruses, and experimental new music groups, performing for thousands of music lovers (and unwitting park-goers).

A diverse roster of professional, student, and amateur performing ensembles are working together to bring Crissy Broadcast to life in October. The groups participating include the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (Crissy Broadcast Lead Professional Ensemble), San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Symphony's Community of Music Makers, Chamber Chorus of the University of California, Golden Gate Philharmonic, Great Wall Youth Orchestra of Laney College, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Lowell High School Orchestra, Aptos Middle School Band, Presidio Middle School Panther Band, Sacred Heart Cathedral Orchestra, Berkeley High Band and Orchestra, and the Ruth Asawa/San Francisco School of the Arts.

Crissy Broadcast is part of San Francisco native Lisa Bielawa's Airfield Broadcasts project. In May, she created Tempelhof Broadcast in Berlin on the historic airfield-turned-public-park Tempelhof Field in partnership with the Berlin Parks Department (Grün Berlin GmbH) and under the patronage of the U.S. Embassy. Approximately 5,000 people attended the three performances of Tempelhof Broadcast. Die Welt am Sonntag reported:

The result . . . was impressive. A loosely knit texture of sound, oscillating between classic and modern music, noise and avant-garde. The audience which happened to be caught in the performance by accident was compelled; throughout the whole piece groups of listeners strolled back and forth between the individual ensembles. They paused, kept a respectful distance, or came closer, drawn by their curiosity . . . Finally, all kinds of people mingled together, with dogs or ice-cream cones, with rollerblades and skateboards, moving among the musicians. This was when Lisa Bielawa had reached her goal. "I want to close the gap between the orchestra and the audience," says the San Francisco-born musician. "No one needs to dress up for Tempelhof Broadcast. Instead, people can continue to barbecue their sausages."

The goal of Airfield Broadcasts is to interpret and celebrate public spaces, allowing listeners to draw their own meaning and experience from them. Bielawa hopes that the project will have a palpable and sustainable impact on the city. She says, "I would like to see Airfield Broadcasts bring about new partnerships, new vitality, and new relationships between arts and civic institutions, between different generations and economic strata, between arts or music lovers and totally non-arts-identified park-goers enjoying a surprise encounter with music as a 'happening' in the middle of their familiar and beloved city."

Marc Kasky, Director for Civic Engagement for Crissy Broadcasts, explains further, "As these events unfold in parks that have complex histories, one purpose of the project is to interpret these sites - to help people get a sense of the unique attributes of their own urban environment, and the breadth and inclusivity of the culture of these places."

The nature of Bielawa's new work is in keeping with the definition of the word broadcast, "cast or scattered in all directions." Musicians begin in the center of the field and disperse outwards according to instructions given to them in Bielawa's musical score, coordinated only by synchronized watches and long-distance musical cues. Some players move in clusters, and others will spread out in long chains. Some groups are instructed to stay close to each other for a certain duration, and to then peel away. Listeners in the park will be able to choose how to hear the pieces, deciding where to move as the musicians disperse. Traveling on foot or by bicycle, they will be able to take in several different points of view from throughout the field over the course of the performances.

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. In addition to composing music for ensembles and orchestras around the world, she has previously composed music that celebrates public spaces - most notably Chance Encounter - a piece comprising songs and arias of overheard speech co-conceived with soprano Susan Narucki which was premiered in New York by Narucki and The Knights. A project of Creative Capital, the 35-minute work for roving soprano and chamber ensemble has since been performed in Venice, Vancouver, and in Rome on the banks of the Tiber River in partnership with urban placemaker Robert Hammond, a founder of The High Line park in New York.