Artist Sheryl Oring and composer Lisa Bielawa created Mauer Broadcast - a series of pop-up choral performances - for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and a program hosted by Kulturprojekte Berlin. The 16-minute musical piece for an unlimited number of voices was performed four times during Berlin Festival Week in the open air at Brandenburg Gate (4 November, 14:30 and 5 November, 14:00), Alexanderplatz (10 November, 12:30), and Marx-Engels Forum (10 November, 14:00). The musical work was created specifically for each of these official celebration sites, and listeners were able to walk among the performers. Anyone could join the performances – the music was designed to be singable by the public, and involves many “call and response” sections. 

The texts for Mauer Broadcast were selected from Sheryl Oring’s Maueramt project from autumn 2014, produced in conjunction with the 25th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall. At this series of public performances, Oring set up typewriter locations along the former Wall and asked questions such as: “What do you think about when you think about the Berlin Wall,” or “What would you like the world to remember about the Berlin Wall?” Answers were typed on a manual typewriter onto small sheets of paper and collected for an exhibition at the Museum THE KENNEDYS in Berlin. 

In addition to participants from the public, each Mauer Broadcast featured the American Church Berlin Gospelchoir; Lisa Bielawa and Ken Norris, sing leaders; Kati Brien and Bastian Duncker, alto saxophones; Elena Kakaliagou, horn; Damir Bacikin, trumpet; and Vladimir Veres, trombone. The horn played the entire piece from the center of the site, while the other instruments and singers began at opposite peripheries and worked their way towards the center for the celebratory finale, enacting a symbolic “reunification.”