Voters’ Broadcast is a 15-minute broadly participatory musical performance for an unlimited number of voices made up of choral and instrumental ensembles, and Sing Leaders. The work is 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.

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Voters’ Broadcast’s mission is to stimulate voter registration, 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. 

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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. 

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Bielawa's music for Voters’ Broadcast is composed and constructed in ways that makes it perfect for broad participation by musicians who are isolated and not able to gather together to make music. The piece will unfold in sections based on the nature of the postcards that Bielawa selects 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.