WELCOME TO TEMPELHOF BROADCAST

Willkommen bei Tempelhof Broadcast

Performances: 10.05.2013, 7pm / 11.05.2013, 3pm / 12.05.2013, 2pm

Tempelhof Broadcast brought together hundreds of musicians in a large-scale spatial acoustic musical celebration in and about Tempelhofer Park in Berlin, Germany. The 60-minute piece was composed by LIsa Bielawa expressly for performance on the tarmac of the former Tempelhof Airport. This site, famous for its role in the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49, was currently open to the public, unaltered, but in 2013 it began to evolve into a new role in the life of the city. From May 10-12, 2013, the runways were turned into a vast musical canvas, as community and professional musicians executed a spatialized symphony. A partnership between Grün Berlin, Ensemble Mosaik, Work in Progress - Berlin, the Knights Chamber Orchestra of New York and Bielawa, the performance also included hundreds of amateur and student musicians. It was free and open to the public, and took place around and among the regular public uses of the Park.

The massive event began in the center of the field and dispersed outwards according to instructions given in the score, with some players moving in clusters, while others spread out in long chains, before exiting the park.  Some groups were instructed to stay close to each other for a certain duration, then peel away. Musicians playing larger instruments (like pianos) played on the beds of motorized luggage carriers that moved between the slower-moving groups. Their music was composed to form different sonic relationships with the musical tasks of the larger groups they approached or transected.