FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Christina Jensen, 646.536.7864 [email protected]

Announcing Airfield Broadcasts in Berlin & San Francisco

Parallel Large-Scale Spatial-Musical Celebrations Featuring Hundreds of Musicians

Lisa Bielawa Composer & Project Director

Tempelhof Broadcast Tempelhof Field in Berlin. Photo by Lichtschwärmer. Available in high resolution. May 10-12, 2013 Tempelhof Field | Berlin

Crissy Broadcast October 26 & 27, 2013 Crissy Field | San Francisco

Free and Open to the Public

www.airfieldbroadcasts.org

Crowdfunding Campaign for Tempelhof Broadcast: www.startnext.de/tempelhof-broadcast Crissy Field in San Francisco, courtesy of the California Department of Transportation. Available in high resolution.

Berlin & San Francisco — In 2013, two legendary urban airfields – Tempelhof Field in Berlin and Crissy Field in San Francisco – will be turned into vast musical canvases as part of renowned composer and San Francisco native Lisa Bielawa’s expansive new project, Airfield Broadcasts. Tempelhof Broadcast will take place on Friday, May 10 at 7pm; Saturday, May 11 at 3pm; and Sunday, May 12 at 2pm on the historic airfield-turned-public-park Tempelhof Field in Berlin in partnership with the Berlin Parks Department (Grün Berlin GmbH) and under the patronage of the U.S. Embassy. Crissy Broadcast will take place on Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27 (performance times to be announced) at Crissy Field in San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Each Broadcast is 60- minutes long, and all performances are free and open to the public.

Bielawa’s Airfield Broadcasts are massive, spatialized symphonies involving approximately 1000 professional, student, and amateur musicians, including orchestras, bands, choruses, and experimental new music groups from Germany and the United States. On the selected days in May and October, hundreds of musicians will perform on the grounds of the former Tempelhof Airfield and Crissy Airfield for thousands of music lovers (and unwitting park goers).

The goal of the pieces is to interpret and celebrate these public spaces, allowing listeners to draw their own meaning and experience from them. Bielawa hopes that the projects will have a palpable and sustainable impact on the cities involved. 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 of Civic Engagement for Airfield Broadcasts, explains further, “As these two 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.” In each city, musicians will 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 will move in clusters, and others will spread out in long chains. Groups may be instructed to stay close to each other for a certain duration, then peel away. Listeners in the parks will be able to choose how to hear the pieces, deciding where to move as the musicians disperse. Traveling on foot or bicycle or, in Berlin, on rollerblades, they will be able to take in several different points of view from throughout the fields over the course of the performances.

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. Dedicated to integrating music with modern urban life outside the concert hall, 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.

More Information Official website: www.airfieldbroadcasts.org Lisa Bielawa’s Airfield Broadcasts blog: http://airfieldbroadcasts.tumblr.com

Twitter: @AirfieldBcasts Facebook: www.facebook.com/CrissyBroadcast & www.facebook.com/Tempelhof.Music.Broadcast Crowdfunding Campaign for Tempelhof Broadcast: www.startnext.de/tempelhof-broadcast

About the Participating Musicians In Berlin and San Francisco, a diverse roster of professional, student, and amateur performing ensembles will work together to bring the Broadcasts to life:

In Berlin, ensembles performing as part of Tempelhof Broadcast include Work in Progress-Berlin, Parents Faculty and High-School Choir of the John F. Kennedy School, Jugendjazzorchester Sachsen / Marching Band "Das VIELE" Leipzig, Berliner Alphornorchester, Tempelhof Ensemble, The Flintstones Big Band Berlin, Original Wandlitzer Musikanten, and Magic Winds.

Confirmed performing ensembles for Crissy Broadcast in San Francisco include the San Francisco Symphony’s Community of Music Makers adult education participants, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Chorus of the University of California, Golden Gate Philharmonic, Great Wall Youth Orchestra, Purple Bamboo Orchestra, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, Lowell High School Symphonic Orchestra, Roosevelt Middle School Band, Presidio Middle School Band, and the entire Music Department of Ruth Asawa/San Francisco School of the Arts.

In addition, the San Francisco Girls Chorus will perform as part of Crissy Broadcast in their hometown, and will travel to Berlin to join the performance of Tempelhof Broadcast in May.

More performing ensembles in both cities will be announced over the next two months.

Genesis of Airfield Broadcasts Lisa Bielawa first conceived of Tempelhof Broadcast when she visited Tempelhof Field in June 2010, shortly after her work Chance Encounter was performed on the banks of the Tiber River. Upon walking out onto the tarmac, she envisioned hundreds of community musicians from all over Berlin, coming together and making music on the runways. She began working to make her vision a reality within days, building a coalition of city leaders, music ensembles, and park officials.

The parallel Broadcast in San Francisco came about naturally – Bielawa, a native of San Francisco, was jogging to break her “composer’s block” one day and heard the foghorns roll in at Crissy Field. She imagined a similar performance happening on that former airfield.

All the while, a memory of Bielawa’s first visit to West Germany in 1983 as a member of the San Francisco Girls Chorus had remained vivid for her. On that tour, their concert in Krefeld, attended by Helmut Kohl and George Bush Sr., made the news because protestors cut off the electricity in the building and the Chorus performed in the dark, from memory. Bielawa, who was recently appointed Artistic Director of SFGC, realized that she wanted the Girls Chorus to be part of Airfield Broadcasts, linking her own history and present.

Bielawa said, “I recognized the hope that my young counterparts in the San Francisco Girls Chorus might be contributing their voices to Airfield Broadcasts. Maybe the foghorns at Crissy Field will join in. History and sound may disperse, but memory flies in circles.”

About the Airfields Tempelhof Field has undergone many transformations, from military parade ground to aviation lab to public park, but in between these similar points it served as the main locus of the Berlin Airlift, making it a unique site in the history of German-American relations, and in the history of international military operations in general. Designated an airport in 1923, Tempelhof operated commercially until 2008.

Crissy Field resides on an ancient 130-acre saltmarsh and estuary, and has also had many roles in its long history, from an area that the Ohlone people used for harvesting fish from the bay, to a dock for Spanish and Mexican ships, to a Grand Prix raceway, to the first Air Coast Defense Station in the US in the 1920s, to a military research center and an aviation lab. It was transformed in 2001 to its current, vital role as a vibrant environmental showcase with iconic views of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

The resonance of Airfield Broadcasts on these two airfields-turned-parks is timely, since Grün-Berlin is currently beginning the process of transforming the site into a public park, with special emphasis on ecological, botanical, and civic design.

About Lisa Bielawa, Composer & Artistic Director, Airfield Broadcasts Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition. She takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Gramophone reports, “Bielawa is gaining gale force as a composer, churning out impeccably groomed works that at once evoke the layered precision of Vermeer and the conscious recklessness of Jackson Pollock,” and The New York Times describes her music as, “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart.”

Born in San Francisco into a musical family, Lisa Bielawa played the violin and piano, sang, and wrote music from early childhood. She moved to New York two weeks after receiving her B.A. in Literature in 1990 from Yale University, and became an active participant in New York musical life. She began touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1992, and in 1997 co-founded the MATA Festival, which celebrates the work of young composers. Bielawa was appointed Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco Girls Chorus in 2013.

Lisa Bielawa’s music is frequently performed throughout the US, and in France, Italy, the UK and Rome. Recent highlights include the premieres of Rondolette by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and pianist Bruce Levingston and Double Duet by the Washington Saxophone Quartet (with subsequent performances by the Prism Saxophone Quartet); performances of Graffiti dell’amante by Bielawa with the Chicago Chamber Musicians in Chicago and with Brooklyn Rider in New York, Harrisburg, and Rome; the world premieres of The Project of Collecting Clouds at Town Hall in Seattle by cellist Joshua Roman and chamber ensemble, Double Violin Concerto and In medias res by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (part of Bielawa’s three-year Music Alive residency with that orchestra), The Right Weather by the American Composers Orchestra and pianist Andrew Armstrong at Carnegie Hall, and The Lay of the Love and Death at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.

In addition to Airfield Broadcasts, other upcoming premieres include a Radio France commission for Ensemble Variances – the new 15-minute work will be performed in Paris, Rouen, and Metz as part of a program called Cri Selon Cri or “Cry by Cry” which explores the idea that the cry is a primary sound shared by animals and humans from all cultures of the world. In addition, Bielawa has composed a piece for the 175-year-old, 50-member Finnish male choir Akademiska Sångföreningen on a text from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Both new works will feature Bielawa as the vocal soloist.

Bielawa’s discography includes A Handful of World (Tzadik); The Trojan Women on a disc entitled First Takes (TROY); Hildegurls: Electric Ordo Virtutum, (Innova); The Trojan Women in a version for string quartet performed by the Miami on The NYFA Collection (Innova); In medias res (BMOP/sound), a double-disc set of Bielawa’s solo and orchestral works; the world premiere recording of Chance Encounter (Orange Mountain Music), and Elegy-Portrait on pianist Bruce Levingston’s 2011 album, Heart Shadow (Sono Luminus). For more information, please visit www.lisabielawa.net.

About the Airfield Broadcast Collaborators

Marc Kasky, Director for Civic Engagement, Airfield Broadcasts Marc Kasky has spent the past forty years working with non-profit organizations, public agencies, and developers on projects that have enhanced the quality of life in communities throughout the U.S. These projects have created places and institutions that have strengthened the connections people have to their geographic and social communities.

Kasky’s projects have included the conversion of historic military bases in San Francisco (Fort Mason Center), and San Diego (the Naval Training Center) into multi-use, community-enhancing places for cultural and economic activity. Both have been cited for their successful re-use of National Historic Register buildings. Kasky has also been a consultant and advisor on projects in Northern California and Baja California that are attempting to create culturally, economically and ecologically sustainable communities. In addition, over the past twenty years, he has advised public and private sector institutions and businesses on similar projects in Seattle, Boston, Buffalo, Orange County, Fort Ord, NYC, and Kobe, Japan.

Kasky has served on over twenty-five nonprofit boards, and co-founded the Green Century Institute in 2004. He has been a consumer activist, advocating for increased corporate accountability and transparency. He graduated from Wesleyan University (Connecticut) with a Bachelor degree, and from Yale University's School of Art and Architecture with a Master's degree in City Planning. Marc Kasky lives in the Presidio, a former military base on the San Franicsco Bay.

Tempelhof Broadcast, Berlin: Jule Kauert & Manuela Kugler-Knape, Production Managers Moritz Sembritzki, Artistic Coordinator

Grün Berlin GmbH Berlin is the seat of Germany’s federal government and parliament and also a major international capital of culture, tourism and the service industries. The city’s more than 2,500 squares, parks and green recreational areas are ideal for relaxation, art and cultural experiences. In addition to Tempelhof Park, Grün Berlin GmbH currently manages park facilities with a total size of over 600 hectares, including the Britzer Garten (the former site of the National Horticultural Show in 1985), the Gardens of the World in the Erholungspark Marzahn (former site of the Berlin Garden Show in 1987) and the Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände (a “worldwide project” of the EXPO 2000). In early 2011, Grün Berlin GmbH also took over responsibility for the management and development of the Botanical Park in Pankow. The parks are visited by up to 3.1 million people each year.

Crissy Broadcast, San Francisco: Jennifer Katell, Project Manager Steven Schick, Artistic Advisor Matthew Cmiel, Manager of Ensembles

Golden Gate National Recreation Area The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service that surrounds the San Francisco Bay area. It is one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States, with over 13 million visitors a year. It is also one of the largest urban parks in the world, with a size two-and- a-half times that of the consolidated city and county of San Francisco. The park is not one continuous locale, but rather a collection of areas that stretch from northern San Mateo County to southern Marin County, and includes several areas of San Francisco. The park is as diverse as it is expansive; it contains famous tourist attractions such as Muir Woods National Monument, Alcatraz, and the Presidio of San Francisco. The GGNRA is also home to 1,273 plant and animal species, encompasses 59 miles (95 km) of bay and ocean shoreline and has military fortifications that span centuries of California history, from the Spanish conquistadors to Cold War-era Nike missile sites.

Fort Mason Center For over 35 years Fort Mason Center has served as a unique community destination in San Francisco, hosting arts and cultural events, organizations, and programs in historic warehouse buildings and piers along San Francisco's scenic northern waterfront. Fort Mason Center is an extraordinary example of repurposing former military land and buildings for contemporary uses, including museums, performance spaces, and a vibrant schedule of art and cultural exhibitions and events. Established in 1977 as a nonprofit partner of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fort Mason Center fulfills the mission of GGNRA to bring Parks to the People and People to the Parks.

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Airfield Broadcasts is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, USA Projects, and many generous individuals.