Bielawa’s Latest “Broadcast” to Premiere Online

Lisa Bielawa (photograph by Phil Mansfield, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

For almost a decade, composer and producer Lisa Bielawa has been creating events performed in public spaces that she calls “Broadcasts.” The earliest of these, called “Airfield Broadcast,” was a 60-minute work involving hundreds of musicians. It was given its first performance in May of 2013 on the tarmac of what had been Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. The following October, around the time that Bielawa began her tenure as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, she mounted a second performance here in San Francisco at Crissy Field, renamed, appropriately enough “Crissy Broadcast.” By way of full disclosure, I should acknowledge that I found this to be one of those works that looks better in theory than in practice; but I shall probably remember it as the first time I was being monitored by a drone flying above me!

Bielawa is Composer-in-Residence for the Music of the 21st Century festival, hosted by the School of Music at DePauw University. Organized by Professor Eliza Brown, the festival was intended to provide the platform for Bielawa’s latest “Broadcast” composition, “Broadcast at the Crossroads,” whose title was inspired by the motto of the State of Indiana: “The Crossroads of America.” As might be guessed, this project was planned before lockdown conditions were imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The good news was that pandemic conditions provided an incentive for creative re-thinking to plan for “Broadcast at the Crossroads.” For example, Brown’s students collected field recordings of “social spaces” (such as the dining hall and the student union) around the campus on March 10 and 11, the final days before all students, faculty, and non-essential staff were required to evacuate the campus. Working from New York, Bielawa extended those recordings with post-shutdown sources, such as audio recordings of Zoom discussions. The full scope of those recordings formed what could be called a “collective dramatic monologue,” reflecting the complex dimensions of personality in a time of crisis.

The premiere screening of the resulting “Broadcast at the Crossroads” will take place at 4:30 p.m. (Pacific time) on Friday, April 2. A viewer will be installed on the “Broadcast at the Crossroads” Web page in Bielawa’s Web site. It will also be available for viewing through the DePauw School of Music YouTube channel. Following the premiere, “Broadcast at the Crossroads” will remain available for viewing on both sites.