Black Rock Philharmonic – Burning Man – Music on the Playa – BRP is group of amateur and professional musicians from different camps that perform classical music and more to the growing Burning Man community.

Hear, See, Feel
The Music
on the Playa

May 1st, 2023

Musician sign ups are open for the 2023 Season! Please sign up by clicking the button!

Music selection is still underway for the 2023 season–program is not at all finalized.
One reason for signing up is: when it’s available, we’ll let you know so you can go get it!

If you were able to join us for the 2022 season, we hope you enjoyed being part of a 70-100 musicians playing live acoustic classic music on the Playa and are going to be able to join us again. We thank all our audiences, including our largest audience ever (Thank you!) which exceeded thousands at the Paradisium show on Thursday evening.

If you’re a classical musician who is planning to come out to the Playa this year for the first time, we hope you sign up to let us know you are coming and think about playing with us–and if you’re playing with another ensemble, that’s awesome! You may find our website FAQ about instruments and the Playa useful.

Finally, if you read through the website, you’ll find information on:

Soloists
Scholarships
Starting a discussion with us about playing at a large art work and
Other interesting details (including the aforementioned FAQs on instruments and the Playa)

Looking forward to seeing you all in the dust! Here we go!

Black Rock Philharmonic's Rehearsal and Concert Schedule for the 2023 Season:

The plan currently is to follow our usual 3 rehearsal plan but we will reducing our concerts to for this year to a 3 concert season. Last season was–rugged. We’re gonna try taking a deep breath for strike.

Rehearsals for 2023–Will all be at Frozen Oasis (4:15 and E this year, next to Silver City and “That Cat Camp”)

Sunday evening August 27th, 2023, 5:30 pm–this is a “make it if you can”–usually around 35 people
Monday late afternoon: 4:30 pm: everybody for 2 hours
Tuesday morning 10:30 am: everybody for 2 hours

and 3 CONCERTS (yep, one less this year; After this year, we’ll re-evaluate)

Season’s Opening Concert: Wednesday- evening 5:30 pm at Frozen Oasis – this year, because of fiscal and crew constraints–no planned dinner. Apologies.

Playa Concert: Thursday evening 6:00 pm –at a large art work, Chapel of Babel, which is projected to be in the Inner Playa, along the 3:00 road. Titanic’s End has graciously agreed to partner with us to provide the rich and multi-dimensional sound to cover our audience of several thousand people.

In the past, we have collaborated and performed at large art pieces such as La Victrola, The Orb (2018), The Folly (2019), and in 2022, Paradisium. There were thousands in the audience and to our count–17 art cars. We humbly thank all of you.

We have have been honored to collaborate with each of our large art piece partners. For anyone who is thinking of discussing with us a collaboration for 2023’s Animalia; think in terms of whether your art piece might be large enough to offer shade to a 100 person orchestra (The Folly was 7 stories tall)–and being horizontally long enough to serve as a partial sound shell and wind break. Well, anyway, that’s what we’d wish for!

Temple: Friday morning-9:00 am – Our last concert of the 2023 season.

Frozen Oasis will once again be our support camp.

We will have the camp’s stage, shade and acoustical shell, as well as a locked storage shipping container to make use of and our transport support vehicle with a lift gate for large instruments.

See you there on Sunday/Monday/Tuesday and then for Wednesday’s opening concert!

More details to follow: and–NOPE: PROGRAM IS NOT FINAL YET–we’ll let you know as soon as the music is ready to go!

Black Rock Philharmonic's Rehearsal and Concert Schedule for the 2023 Season:

REHEARSALS FOR 2023

Will all be at Frozen Oasis (4:15 and E this year, next to Silver City and “That Cat Camp”)

Sunday :: Evening August 27th, 2023, 5:30 pm “make it if you can”
Monday :: Late afternoon: 4:30 pm: everybody for 2 hours
Tuesday :: morning 10:30 am: everybody for 2 hours

CONCERTS
Wednesday :: Evening 5:30 pm at Frozen Oasis
Thursday ::Evening, 6:00 pm (call at 5:30 pm), Chapel of Babel which has been placed at 1:00 from the Man, 2200 feet out.
Temple: Friday morning-9:00 am – Our last concert of the 2023 season.