Louisville Broadcast

A Spatial Symphony for Hundreds of Musicians by Lisa Bielawa
Presented by the Louisville Orchestra as Part of its Creators Corps Program in April 2023

Lisa Bielawa’s Louisville Broadcast is a 45-minute musical piece for an unlimited number of participants that celebrates two historic sites and the vitality of Louisville’s many musical communities. Two free performances of Bielawa’s piece were presented by the Louisville Orchestra on April 23, 2023, in Shelby Park from 11:30 am-12:15 pm and at Waterfront Park-Big Four Bridge from 7:00-7:45 pm, turning these sites into vast musical canvases.

Louisville Broadcast featured hundreds of musicians, celebrating the diversity of Louisville's musical life. A varied roster of over 500 professional, student, and amateur musicians from throughout Jefferson County joined together for the performances, including members of the Louisville Orchestra, students and parents from the Louisville Academy of Music, the Louisville Civic Orchestra, the University of Louisville Orchestra, VOICES of Kentuckiana choir, the Louisville Leopards, the Louisville Drumline Academy and ensembles from several JCPS schools: Male High School, Moore High School, Johnson Middle School, Farmer Elementary, and Tully Elementary, as well as the Louisville Classical Academy.

In addition, members of the public joined The Town Criers, a community choir that anyone could participate in regardless of musical background. Bielawa created music for the Town Criers that was easy to learn without any music-reading skills or training so that anyone who wished to raise their voice could join the performances.

The texts Bielawa set in Louisville Broadcast were collected from Louisville residents who contributed via the Louisville Orchestra’s website.

Lisa Bielawa chose Shelby Park and the Big Four Bridge as performance sites for their historical significance to Louisville. Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm designed Shelby Park in 1907, the only park in Louisville designed explicitly with a Carnegie Library (now the Shelby Park Community Center). It is the geographic anchor of the Shelby Park neighborhood, where the LO has established residences for the Creators Corps (including Bielawa). From 1895 to its decommission in 1969, the Big Four Bridge served as a railroad bridge for freight and passengers connecting Louisville and Southern Indiana. It was converted into a pedestrian bridge in 2013 and has since become an iconic landmark in the city, with 1.5 million pedestrians and cyclists crossing its span each year.

Lisa Bielawa says, “The goal of Louisville Broadcast is to interpret and celebrate these important public spaces in Louisville, allowing listeners to draw their own meaning and experience from them. I would like to see this event bring about new partnerships, new vitality, and new relationships between different generations, musical traditions and identities, and 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. By inviting anyone in the city to contribute their words to be sung by the participating choirs, I can multiply the diversity of Louisvillian voices that speak through the piece. It is the sound of a whole city – its history, people, neighborhoods, and communities.”

Photos by Jon Cherry, O’Neil Arnold, Christina Jensen