Brickyard Broadcast

A spatialized work for hundreds of musicians that had its world premiere in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment

By Lisa Bielawa, Composer & Producer

Commissioned and presented by North Carolina State University Department of Music, with additional support from the Raleigh Civic Symphony Association and the Concert Singers of Cary

Brickyard Broadcast uses technology and interactivity to reinterpret the NC State Brickyard, the university’s beloved and iconic gathering area outside of D.H. Hill Jr. Library, as a virtual space in which the musical performance unfolds. Hundreds of audio recordings were integrated, created over the course of the fall 2020 semester by individual student and community musicians playing and singing in isolation under the guidance of Lisa Bielawa; Dr. Peter Askim, Director of Orchestral Studies, NC State Department of Music; Askim and Dr. Nathan Leaf, Director of Choral Activities, NC State Department of Music.

Musicians from NC State University choirs, NC State’s Raleigh Civic orchestras, and the Concert Singers of Cary participated. Jason Evans Groth, Digital Media Librarian; Colin Keenan, University Libraries Specialist; and Kyle Langdon, University Library Specialist and Audio Engineer, led the creation of the VR environment and the online premiere performances.

Brickyard Broadcast was premiered in a live event on November 12, 2020 at 6pm ET. The Brickyard Broadcast VR environment remains online, accessible to the public for free. For more information, visit: https://music.dasa.ncsu.edu/2020/10/27/brickyard-broadcast/

Brickyard Broadcast represents an energizing and participatory artistic process designed to help address the challenges faced by orchestras and choirs during the prolonged period of social distancing. Rather than staging a synchronous performance via remote platforms, Brickyard Broadcast created a playful, interactive common space for the musicians, mirroring their own campus common space, opening up the gathering to anyone in the world who wishes to join them there. 

The piece is a 20-minute work that viewers can experience either from start to finish in a curated sound experience or in a self-guided choose-your-own-adventure modular way. Nine separate musical groups animate the various areas of the virtual Brickyard, creating an immersive sound experience for anyone who visits the site, accessible either with VR interface or, in a 3-D stereo version, via any personal web device.

While Brickyard Broadcast was developed expressly for VR premiere, because it was designed expressly for the landscape of the Brickyard at NC State, it has the potential to be mounted as a physical performance with groups performing at varying distances from each other on the Brickyard itself. In either case, whether online or in person, every audience member’s experience is completely unique, depending on how they choose to move among the sounds they hear.

Organic to this sound experience are the texts that the choirs are singing – fragments taken from the writings of various thinkers from a broad historical range who mused on the phenomenon of people gathering in common space, and the indomitability of song: Gertrude Stein (“A refusal to sing is one thing, to go on with a song is not wrong.”); H.G. Wells (“It takes a multitude to make such a stillness”); Wallace Stegner (“There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters”); plus Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Ives, and Walt Whitman.

Brickyard Broadcast Creative Team:
Lisa Bielawa, Composer and Producer
Dr. Peter Askim, Director of Orchestral Studies, NC State University Department of Music
Dr. Nathan Leaf, Director of Choral Activities, NC State University Department of Music
Jason Evans Groth, Digital Media Librarian, NC State University Libraries
Colin Keenan, University Libraries Specialist, NC State University Libraries
Kyle Langdon, University Library Specialist and Audio Engineer, NC State University Libraries
Colin Moore, Operations Coordinator, NC State University Department of Music
Ian Boyd, NC State University Library Specialist
Sarah Hassan, NC State University Libraries Pentair Fellow