BROADCAST

Knoxville Broadcast, a large-scale site-specific “spatial symphony” created by the award-winning composer Lisa Bielawa united hundreds of musicians from across Knoxville in three free public performances at World’s Fair Park on October 17 & 18, 2025.

Knoxville Broadcast continues Bielawa’s celebrated series of Broadcast performances in Berlin, San Francisco, and Louisville—each rooted in the history and community of its location. The San Francisco Chronicle called Crissy Broadcast, “…one of the most moving performances of the year…where all the boundaries we take for granted in musical life…are casually obliterated.” 

Free and open to all, Knoxville Broadcast transformed the entire park into a living stage during each 45 minute performance. Musicians began together in the Tennessee Amphitheater before gradually dispersing throughout the park, guided by long-distance musical cues. Audiences were free to wander, hearing the piece shift and transform from different vantage points. By dissolving the boundaries of a traditional concert, the work invited listeners of all ages into a shared, fluid, and deeply communal encounter with music.

For Knoxville, Bielawa composed a new score inspired by the city’s landscape, voices, and musical traditions. More than 600 local musicians of all ages and backgrounds took part, including the Appalachian Equality Chorus, Knoxville Community Band, Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, Halls Middle School Bands, L&N Stem Academy Concert Band and Orchestra, Drums Up Guns Down, members of Nief-Norf, Hardin Valley Academy Guitar Ensemble, Roane State Choral Society, and the University of Tennessee Gospel Choir, and students from the UT College of Music. Three all-ages “pickup” groups—Sterchi String Band (old-time), Found Forte (youth percussion), and the Sunsphere Singers (intergenerational choir)—were also open to the public.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Lisa Bielawa is an award-winning composer, producer, and vocalist. A Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner, Bielawa has received honors from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, and American Antiquarian Society, and was nominated for a Los Angeles Area Emmy for her unprecedented, made-for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser. 

Bielawa’s music has been premiered and presented worldwide by the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall, Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, INFANT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, and more. 

From 2019–2022, Bielawa was the founding Composer-in-Residence and Chief Curator of the Philip Glass Institute (PGI) at The New School’s College of the Performing Arts. In addition to performing as the vocalist in the Philip Glass Ensemble, Bielawa appears frequently in her own works and in music by composers such as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, and Michael Gordon. She recently made her orchestral conducting debut leading the Mannes String Orchestra in a special PGI presentation featuring her music, works by Jon Gibson and David T. Little, and Glass’s Symphony No. 3.

Composer Lisa Bielawa // Tempelhof Broadcast (Photo by Daniel Clark)

The Town Criers Community Choir // Louisville Broadcast

Waterfront Park Big Four Bridge // Louisville Broadcast

Musicians on the grounds of Crissy Field – San Francisco // Crissy Broadcast (Photo by James Block)

KNOXVILLE BROADCAST IS MADE POSSIBLE
WITH SUPPORT FROM OUR PARTNERS

All the boundaries we take for granted in musical life are casually obliterated in composer Lisa Bielawa’s magical and heartbreakingly beautiful exercise in public art.

– San Francisco Chronicle