Present Music presents

Ablaze

March 10, 2021 | 7:30 pm
Windhover Hall | Milwaukee Art Museum

Program

Julian Saporiti: No-No Boy

Instructions To All Persons from 1942 (2018)
Two Candles In The Dark from 1942 (2018)
Nothing Left But You (unreleased)
Imperial Twist from 1975 (2021)
Boat People from 1942 (2018)

Julian Saporiti — voice & guitar

Anthony R. Green: Piano Concerto: Solution (2019)

I. Tension
II. Solution

Eunmi Ko — piano

Daniel Kidane: Primitive Blaze (2022) — world premiere, commissioned by Nancy Laskin, in honor of Arthur Laskin

Thomas Giles — saxophone
Derek Johnson — electric guitar

Viet Cuong: Re(new)al (2017)

I. Hydro
II. Wind
III. Solar

Colin O'Day — percussion
Carl Storniolo — percussion
Ryan Kahlbaugh — percussion
Alex Weir — percussion

Nina Shekhar: Turn Your Feet Around (2021)

Pre-Concert Talk

6:30 pm | Lubar Auditorium

Kantara Souffrant — moderator
Anthony R. Green, Eunmi Ko, Julian Saporiti — participants

This evening’s performance is in memory of Arthur & Nancy Laskin

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Credits

Present Music

David Bloom and Eric Segnitz — Co-Artistic Directors

Jennifer Clippert — flutes
Margaret Butler-Padilla — oboe
William Helmers — clarinets
Zachary Childress — saxophones
Thomas Giles — saxophones & clarinet
Catherine Chen — bassoon
Gregory Flint — horn
Don Sipe — trumpet
Cole Bartels — trombone
Carl Storniolo — percussion
Alex Weir — percussion
Ryan Kahlbaugh — percussion
Colin O'Day — percussion
Eunmi Ko — piano
Derek Johnson — electric guitar & percussion
Jeanyi Kim — violin
Eric Segnitz — violin
Olga Tuzhilkov — viola
Adrien Zitoun — cello
Christian Dillingham — contrabass
David Bloom — conductor
Marty Butorac — electronics, sound engineer

Staff:

Barbara Schneider — Operations Manager
Grace Van Dyk — Development Manager
Alex Moreno — Digital Marketing Coordinator
Kelly Rippl — Graphic Designer

Board of Directors:

Jessica Franken — President
Carole Nicksin — Vice-President
Fran Richman — Secretary
Brian Wilson — Treasurer
Louise Hermsen — Governance
Barbara Boles
Cecile Cheng
Heidi Dondlinger
Tim Frautschi (Special Director)
Ron Jacquart (Special Director)
Gary Van Wert
Donna Woodall

Additional Credits

Livestreaming by David Vartanian, DV Productions

Special Thanks

Ted Brusubardis
Patti Sherman-Cisler
Tim and Sue Frautschi
Maria Gillespie
Kevin Miyazaki
Rebecca Ottman
Kantara Souffrant

About the Guest Artists

Julian Saporiti

Julian Saporiti s a Vietnamese and Italian American songwriter and scholar. His multi-media work No-No Boy has transformed his PhD research on Asian American history into concerts, albums and films which have reached a broad and diverse public audience. His latest album 1975 released through Smithsonian Folkways has been hailed by NPR as “an act of revisionist subversion” and American Songwriter called it “insanely listenable and gorgeous.” By using art to dive into highly divisive issues such as race, refugees and immigration, Saporiti aims to allow audience members to sit with complication as music and visuals open doorways to difficult histories. Saporiti holds degrees from Berklee College of Music, University of Wyoming and Brown University and has worked with cultural institutions such as Lincoln Center, the LA Philharmonic, National Parks and Carnegie Hall.

See below for notes and lyrics on Saporiti’s selections.

Eunmi Ko

Hailed as “exceedingly interesting” (New York Concert Review) and “kaleidoscopic” (San Francisco Classical Voice), pianist Eunmi Ko concertizes as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout Asia, Europe, and Americas. As a sought-after collaborator and champion of new music, she works with contemporary composers, ensembles, and performers from around the world. Ko is the co-founder and President of the Contemporary Art Music Project (CAMP) and the international new music festival Dot The Line in Korea. She serves as a pianist and assistant director of Indictus Project and co-founder and pianist of ensemble Strings & Hammers, which has the unusual instrumentation of violin, piano, and double bass. Ko is Associate Professor of Piano at the University of South Florida. Ko holds a BM degree from Seoul National University and graduate degrees (MM and DMA) from the Eastman School of Music.

About the Music

Anthony R. Green: Piano Concerto: Solution (2019)

Growing up in the United States, I would not have thought that 2019 would be the year where the racism and misogyny of the past would come back with such strength. After the disastrous 9/11 (9 November)/2016 election farce, Toni Morrison charged artists to get to work, and her death in 2019 strengthened this personal desire for my career within me. While I have been composing social-justice-related works for quite some time, 2017 is when I embraced this aspect of my career without inhibition, preparing for criticism, stereotypes, mono-dimensional expectations, the inevitable labels and boxes, and other unexpected consequences. Yet in the years following this move, the beauty that has been revealed, the work that has come out, the people with whom I have collaborated, the friends and musical family I have met, the opportunities I have been given – these taken together have synergistically blocked out the pejorative labels of social justice warrior and other negativity I received, both subtle and blatant. Piano Concerto: Solution falls squarely within this line of composition, and was developed after discussions with the soloist who premiered the work, Ms. Eunmi Ko.

Admitting to being attracted to my social justice leanings, a conversation ensued about some of Ms. Ko’s experiences as a female pianist in a world dominated by men, many of whom want to keep it a boyz only club. She discussed some experiences (especially when traveling) where she felt disrespected, labeled, and poorly treated. When hearing and reading the several dozens of stories of what men have told aspiring female classical musicians, it becomes painfully obvious that Ms. Ko’s gender is still a problem for far too many men in the classical music field. And from the tension of these interactions comes an even stronger woman – the solution to the problem of misogyny in classical music and everywhere. It is time to make clear what women in the arts and women in general must tolerate and too often sublimate for the mere reason that many men are insecure misogynists stuck in an outdated mentality that the president in 2019 attempted to resuscitate. Piano Concerto: Solution is a musical and visual manifestation of this idea, and can extend to members of other marginalized groups as well. This work was premiered November 2019, with Ms. Ko as the soloist, supported by the Bob McCormick Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Robert McCormick, at the University of South Florida (Tampa).

— Anthony R. Green

The creative output of Anthony R. Green (composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work. As a composer, his works have been presented in over 25 countries across six continents by internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles, including Wendy Richman, Stephen Drury, Kathleen Supové, Bill Solomon, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Ensemble Dal Niente, Opera Kansas, American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Philharmonic, String Archestra, Playground Ensemble, and Alarm Will Sound. Green is co-founder, associate artistic director, and composer-in-residence of Castle of our Skins, a concert and education series organization dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music.

Daniel Kidane: Primitive Blaze (2022)

Primitive Blaze is named after and inspired by Bridget Riley's artwork that goes by the same name. I was immediately drawn in and captivated by the bold geometric monochrome chevrons in Riley's work that to me conjure visions of a raucous and roaring inferno. I immediately started to think of an audio equivalent of the visual and what that may sound
like. I knew I wanted the soundworld to be grungy and bold. The boldness is delivered through relentless doubling, especially in the matching saxophone and electric guitar solo parts. The idea was to create a hybrid sounding instrument, by splicing the two instruments together. The grunginess comes from the constant movement and interplay between the instruments, which seeks to capture the playfulness of the flames.

— Daniel Kidane

Daniel Kidane’s music has been performed extensively across the UK and abroad as well as being broadcast on BBC Radio 3, described by the Financial Times as “quietly impressive” and by The Times as “tautly constructed” and “vibrantly imagined.” His works have been performed by the London Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Cheltenham Festival, Chineke! Orchestra (at the reopening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2018), BBC Symphony and Philharmonic, Huddersfield Choral Society, London Symphony Orchestra. Kidane began his musical education at the age of eight when he started playing the violin. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, St. Petersburg Conservatoire, Royal Northern College of Music, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Viet Cuong: Re(new)al (2017)

I have tremendous respect for renewable energy initiatives and the commitment to creating a new, better reality for us all. Re(new)al is a percussion quartet concerto that is similarly devoted to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas, and the solo quartet therefore performs on several “found” instruments, including crystal glasses and compressed air cans. And while the piece also features more traditional instruments, such as snare drum and vibraphone, I looked for ways to either alter their sounds or find new ways to play them. For instance, a single snare drum is played by all four members of the quartet, and certain notes of the vibraphone are prepared with aluminum foil to recreate sounds found in electronic music. The entire piece was conceived in this way, and even the accompaniment was written these ideas in mind.

Cooperation and synergy are also core themes of the piece, as I believe we all have to work together to move forward. All of the music played by the solo quartet is comprised of single musical ideas that are evenly distributed between the four soloists (for those interested, the fancy musical term for this is a hocket). The music would therefore be dysfunctional without the presence and dedication of all four members. For example, the quartet divvies up lighting-fast drum set beats in the second movement and then shares one glockenspiel in the last movement. But perhaps my favorite example of synergy in the piece is in the very opening, where the four soloists toast crystal glasses. We always toast glasses in the presence of others, and oftentimes to celebrate new beginnings. This is my simple way of celebrating everyone who is working together to create a cleaner, more efficient world.

Re(new)al is constructed of three continuous movements, each inspired by the power of hydro, wind, and solar energies. The hydro movement transforms tuned crystal glasses into ringing hand bells as the wind ensemble slowly submerges the soloists in their sound. The second movement turns each member of the quartet into a blade of a dizzying wind turbine, playing seemingly-impossible 90’s-inspired drum and bass patterns. The closing movement simulates a sunrise and evokes the brilliance of sunlight with metallic percussion instruments.

— Viet Cuong

Called “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times, the “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle), music of American composer Viet Cuong has been commissioned and performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Atlanta Symphony, Sandbox Percussion, Albany Symphony, PRISM Quartet, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Dallas Winds, among many others. Viet’s music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, National Gallery of Art, and Library of Congress. Viet is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He holds degrees in music composition from Princeton University (MFA/PhD), the Curtis Institute of Music (Artist Diploma), and the Peabody Conservatory (BM/MM). His music has been awarded the Barlow Endowment Commission, ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Award, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, Cortona Prize, New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, and Walter Beeler Memorial Prize.

Nina Shekhar: Turn Your Feet Around (2021)

During the COVID-19 pandemic – a highly unusual yet new normal, surreal and yet painfully real time – artists have been challenged to think about what community means. In an artform in which physicality is essential, how is this affected during a pandemic in which our bodies are at risk? Our connection to our physical bodies has deepened, becoming hyper-aware of every breath, every ache, and every anxiety. Furthermore, due to social distancing we haven’t been able physically connect with each other in the same ways as before, simultaneously craving and fearing each other’s human contact As society reopens, we’re all itching to get up and dance after sitting on our couches for an entire year.

Turn Your Feet Around brings the nightclub to the concert hall. Using deconstructed and warped fragments of the ever fabulous Gloria Estefan’s Get On Your Feet, performers have a chance to reconnect with their own physicality by dancing to wild reimagined grooves and 80s-style drum beats. Whether socially distanced or not, it’s time to get on our feet and find the rhythms and movements that have been waiting to unleash this entire year! Because as Gloria says, “Find it, I know it will pull you through.”

— Nina Shekhar

Nina Shekhar is a composer who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Described as “tart and compelling” (New York Times), “vivid” (Washington Post), and “surprises and delights aplenty” (LA Times), her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including LA Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, LA Chamber Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, The Crossing, and Jennifer Koh. Upcoming events include performances by the NY Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and New World Symphony. Nina is currently pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University. She previously completed composition graduate studies at University of Southern California and undergraduate studies at University of Michigan, earning dual degrees in music composition and chemical engineering. She was recently appointed as the 2021-2023 Composer-in-Residence for Young Concert Artists.

Julian Saporiti: No-No Boy

Instructions To All Persons from 1942 (2018)

The title of this song is a direct quotation of an infamous poster plastered up and down the west coast in the spring of ’42. It instructed all Japanese Americans to report to assembly centers so they could eventually be moved to concentration camps across the US. One of the main ideas behind this work is to break down big, unprocessable numbers like these 120,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans hastily sent to these camps, to unfocus the large narratives and black and white arguments around which we have constructed history and community legacies, and instead, refocus on individuals, as a way in for the listener and student. The three verses of this song are taken directly from three conversations I had with Sachi Kuwatani, Tats Nagase, and Roy and Miriam Hatamiya, while kicking around San Francisco in early 2016, all of whom were children or teenagers in the camps.

Instructions to all persons of Japanese...
Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry

I think of my friend Sachi, now, Mrs. Kuwatani
Telling me stories in the old folks home
Like the time she was a little girl
and climbed above the rest of the world
Scaled the tower at the Santa Anita racetrack
Where not even the boys dared go
And she felt good for a moment or so

I think of my friend Tats
fishing scorpions from the hot
Colorado River Indian land
Would be casanova
Walking three girls home from the dance
Well after midnight
Singing harmonies, til one by one they’d leave
And leave Tats to stroll back in the moonlight
Singing ballads to the stars all his own
And he felt good for moment or so

Instructions to all persons of Japanese...
Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry

I think of my friend Roy, a farm kid, teenage boy
Mr. Tanaka inviting him to join the dance band
In a place called Tule Lake, then, later on at Amache
He found a group of kids to find trouble with
Some little slice of living

Through a clerical error, his friends and him
Got a bunkhouse to themselves, they called the “Loafers Inn”
Playing cards and telling jokes
They felt good for a moment or so

Instructions To All Persons from 1942 (2018)

I originally wrote this song about dancing with an ex-girlfriend at a music hour in an old folks home in Laramie. The clumsy waltz, boot color and title are all that remain from the original draft. I repurposed the song in 2017 after visiting the root cellar at Heart Mountain. I felt some kind of inspiration standing in that impressively large, crumbling structure about the size of a football field which the incarcarees dug out themselves to store vegetables. I wanted to set a story there, in that room. Two kids dancing in the dark. As I rewrote the lyrics, I poured over copies of the Heart Mountain Sentinel, the newspaper published in the camp, and listened back to tall tales I had recorded of men who were boys in the camp. I looked at old photos from the museum archive. With guitar in hand, I sat with all these glimpses of the camp, looking for small actions, characters and feelings, and wrote this song. The song’s hero is a pretty bad ass young woman like when Olivia Newton John wears black at the end of Grease but you know, Japanese and in a concentration camp, who guides a nervous narrator, a farm kid, on a trip around the camp and beyond the barbed wire. She is his Virgil. He is probably my friend Jim Mizuta who was a teenager at Heart Mountain. The pair finds a little time to exist underground in this root cellar. Past the sounds of the issei men singing Japanese songs in the bathroom, past the ice skaters, past boredom, lighting a little fire, keeping sadness at bay, they sway in the dark like a Springsteen song.

Don’t it feel like a movie, teaching this girl how to waltz
Left feet, she might have three, but she sure feels nice in my arms
Old folks sing an old song, play in the agreed upon key
My eyes are stuck on her, her eyes don’t leave her feet

This girl, no class ring, maybe this is more than a lark
Brown boots, a dirt floor, dancing like two candles in the dark

Pretty outlaw call a quarter past, light knuckles on a barrack door
She got a brother down in Topaz, I saw that name once in a jewelry store
Wind around past the skaters and pond, looking for a cut in the wire
She’s got a key to the cellar door,
don’t ask questions, man, just stand there inspired

This girl, gets why, I miss the garden at the Golden Gate Park
Young blood and old songs, dancing like two candles in the dark

I tell ya man it’s like some movie and she’s just tailor made for the part
Lamps licking the roof beams, she’s got good looking down to an art
Hear the old folks sing them old songs, the background just fades away
Our coffee can fire’s almost gone, she says, “I gotta get out of this place”

This girl, a pin point, that moment ya feel a spark
Brown boots, a dirt floor, dancing like two candles in the dark
Dancing like two candles in the dark
Dancing like two candles in the dark

Nothing Left But You (unreleased)

This is an unreleased song about changing flags and vanishing countries. Tonight I’ll dedicate it to Kyiv.

What perfect harmony still shakes me to the core Begot the cynic’s soul to rumble?
It was in your voice

I had no choice

But to rise and ring out too
When those records play
All the clutter fades away
There is nothing left but you

There are no labors that can reset space or time
It’s beyond sacrifice or school
I’ve learned a lot
I’ve given up almost all I got
I keep a passport I can’t use
There’s no soil to kiss
Those old borders don’t exist
There is nothing left but you

Ain’t there some crest of a wave, oh, way out on the sea
In the back of a godhead’s ocean of ancient memories
That lifts some sacred boat
And it’s sailor, at least, a charming ghost
Who earned your heart when it was first free?
He was callous and cruel
But he bought your dreams and saw them through
To own the past, forgive the fool

What steady rhythm still doth move me at this hour
To put my pen to page and pray?
For the reconcile
To crack a joke and catch a smile
Why keep my fingers clenched dear muse?
Because, once, I died
And came out the other side
And there was nothing left but you

Imperial Twist from 1975 (2021)

Robert Vifian was a high school friend of my mom’s back in Saigon. In the spring of 2016, I met him in Paris at the fancy Vietnamese restaurant he owned. Over lunch he told me, “You know, I was in a band.... We would play these concerts for the GIs. They’d fly us out over the jungle in helicopters filled with music equipment and drugs and prostitutes, and people would be shooting at us.” Then, as if he hadn’t begun the coolest story ever, he just sort of trailed off. I pressed him for more. Like every other part of the world colonized by the West, rock ’n’ roll flourished in Southeast Asia. Teenagers picked it up from the French and later the occupying Americans. They learned it well, and often made it their own. “I was pro-Communist and extremely pro-American because I really loved rock ’n’ roll,” Robert told me. “Nobody forced us (or said), ‘you should listen to that.’ We came to it naturally.... We liked the music and we wanted to reproduce it.” When I returned to grad school that fall, I dove into Viet and Cambodian rock bands of the late 1960s/early ’70s. The records I found expanded my concept of artistic authenticity and broadened my borders of where art belongs and whom it belongs to. His story also connected me, as a musician, to my mom’s experience growing up in Saigon in a more emotional and electric way. One band I discovered particularly blew my mind. The CBC Band was a family group with origins in northern Vietnam who came south after the French were defeated in 1954 and the Communists took over. They filled the entertainment needs of American GIs who had money to spend. This song interweaves Robert’s stories with a tragic CBC Band gig. During the opening riff of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” a bomb went off. It wounded several servicemen and killed one of the drummer’s friends. Soon after, with the South’s defeat looming, the band fled, eventually making lives in Houston. Beautifully, 40 years after their violently abbreviated gig, veterans who were at that concert organized a reunion at a bar in Houston, and the band finished “Purple Haze.” They still gig to this day.

Can you give the world a twist just by doing the twist?
At the moment the bomb went off,
They were playing “Purple Haze”

I met Robert at his restaurant,
Septième arrondissement
The Doors still echo in the jungle
He said, “Your mother brought back 45s from Paris in ’65
and we learned ‘em note for note.”
Broken english Rolling Stones
Fenders, girls and dope
America provides

Oh, Saigon teens
Oh, Saigon teens

Can you give the world a twist just by doing the twist?
Can you save the world with Acid Rock?
I didn’t know my mother’s maiden name
That time in Texas when we were detained
Been back to old Saigon
How much of you is lost
When they change your name?

Oh, Saigon teens
Oh, Saigon teens
Oh, Saigon teens
Oh, Saigon teens
Half a world away
the band got back on stage
Four decades to the day
“Purple Haze”

Boat People from 1942 (2018)

Boat People comes from an archived Canadian Broadcast Corporation radio story I found from 1979 focusing on the harrowing journey of Dr. Tuan Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who eventually who resettled in Canada. Like hundreds of thousands of other Southeast Asians, the doctor fled Vietnam in a rickety fishing boat, thus branded one of the “boat people.” The song’s narrator sings firmly from 2017. 1 The straightforward true-to-life escape narrative is interspersed with my own present day numb/dumb moments of scrolling through a Facebook feed filled with articles about Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” There is also reflection on my Mom’s Vietnamese refugee story.

Forty years ago, the doctor left on a boat
Never seen the snow or felt it in his hand
Sail until you see dry land

I can’t get off the news, I can’t get off the floor
The “good folks” go inside when we need them most
What do prayers do behind locked doors?

Tuan went back to rebuild, only to watch Saigon fall
He climbs up Mont Royal, makes a life in Montreal.
Donated winter coats and Barbie dolls

Wrap myself in books. They’re talking bout this ban
I linger on bell hooks. She helps me to understand
Some of this ain’t new, no, ma’am.

Fourteen hours by car, cargo trucks and cabs
Just to shake the cops, Mom had to stay back
A Chinese safe house and covered tracks

Eighteen meters long, two hundred bodies full
A simple compass and a map from a kid’s geography book
Forget Ferdinand or Captain fuckin’ Cook

Bodies bobbing in the rough South China Sea
Ran across a Thai pirate ship scavenging
Ripped the doctor from his kids, bleeding

Hours under gun, then tossed into the water
He swam back to his son, held on to his daughter
Drifting through the night...

As the daylight broke, a mountain in the dawn
Off the Malaysian coast, sweet Pulau Bidong
Never cried so hard or so long

I can’t get off the news. I can’t get off my phone
My mother came here, too, forty years ago
If you see somebody’s cold, give ‘em a coat