Voters’ Broadcast
A transformative Election Year musical work for online and/or socially distanced ensembles
Lisa Bielawa, composer and producer
Text: Excerpts from Sheryl Oring’s I Wish to Say, Postcards to the President, 2004-2020
Lisa Bielawa’s mission with Voters’ Broadcast was to stimulate voter engagement, political awareness, and community participation in challenging lockdown conditions, through the act of giving voice to the concerns of fellow citizens, during the lead-up to the 2020 Presidential election.
Voters’ Broadcast is a broadly participatory musical performance for an unlimited number of voices and instruments made up of choral and instrumental ensembles, and Sing Leaders. The work was directed, conceived and composed by Rome Prize and American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning composer Lisa Bielawa, with text taken from celebrated artist Sheryl Oring’s I Wish to Say.
Goals for the work included:
To “broadcast” the thoughts, hopes, fears, passions, petitions, and questions of a wide spectrum of Americans, raising awareness of the diversity of voices – both figuratively and literally – that make up our society.
To bring a transformative artistic experience to online audiences, opening a space for heightened awareness, sensitivity and compassion at a vulnerable time in our country.
To stimulate voter engagement leading up to the 2020 elections.
To serve as an example for ways to bring music-making communities into civic life in ways that have great social and artistic impact.
Voters’ Broadcast was commissioned as part of the Democracy and Debate Theme Semester by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with support from its School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and developed in partnership with Kaufman Music Center in New York, where Bielawa was a 2020 Artist in Residence.
Multiple University of Michigan, Kaufman Music Center, and Wayne State University ensembles - including the University Musical Society Choral Union - participated in this 18-minute musical composition, designed to stimulate voter engagement and political awareness through the act of making music.
The text for Voters’ Broadcast is excerpted from Sheryl Oring’s ongoing project I Wish to Say, which uses vintage typewriters for social change. I Wish to Say consists of performances in which Oring and a pool of typists work on vintage manual typewriters and invite the public to dictate postcards to the U.S. President. In the current circumstances, Oring and the typists are holding Zoom sessions, during which participants dictate their messages to the next President. Launched in 2004, the project has garnered nearly 4,000 postcards to President Bush, President Obama, and President Trump, all of which have been mailed to the White House on behalf of the participant as part of the performance.
Lisa’s music for Voters’ Broadcast was composed and constructed in ways that made it perfect for broad participation by musicians who were isolated and not able to gather together to make music. The piece unfolded in sections based on the nature of the postcards that Bielawa selected to include in the work: Salutations; Petitions (statements starting with the word “Please”); Exhortations (requests and demands without the word “Please”); Questions; and others. It does not focus on the qualities or identities of the Presidents and candidates addressed, but on the feelings and views of American people addressing their elected leaders.
Originally conceived as a partner project, Voters’ Litany for chorus, symphony orchestra and organ, was commissioned by the Cathedral Choral Society and premiered on March 13, 2022 at the Washington National Cathedral in D.C., after a two-year postponement due to Covid-19.
Voters’ Broadcast was premiered in three virtual events on September 30, October 14, and October 28, 2020 hosted by Matthew VanBesien, President, University Musical Society, and co-presented by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Kaufman Music Center in New York.
The live world premiere performances of Voters’ Broadcast took place on October 24, 2020 outdoors in socially distanced performances co-presented by Kaufman Music Center and Brooklyn Public Library, as part of the Library’s crowd-sourced 28th Amendment Project, performed by high school students from Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School (M. 859).
“The project is poised to energize and inspire people in a unique way, inciting them to think, to vote, to consider their relationships to their political leaders and to each other. It is designed to deliver equal parts beauty and mobilization. In German when one votes, one ‘gives one’s voice’ (‘I voted’ = ‘Ich habe gestimmt’ [I gave my voice]). Voters’ Broadcast is dedicated to all of those who give their voices, through singing and by voting.” - Lisa Bielawa
Watch the Premiere Events for Part 1, 2, and 3:
Voters’ Broadcast is providing voting information via HeadCount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.