Present Music is one of the nation’s leading ensembles specializing in the commissioning and performance of new music. Its mission is to engage artists and audience members in imaginative and provocative experiences with new music through ensemble performance and education. Founded in 1982 and based in Milwaukee, Present Music has worked closely with many of the nation's most exciting and important composers, and has firmly established one of the largest audiences for new music in the country.
Audiences “can almost always expect Present Music to bring on the unexpected” (The Shepherd Express) with programming that introduces innovative concert formats, embraces a broad diversity of repertoire, and makes the music of our time accessible to audiences with deep expression and serious fun. The Present Music ensemble ranges from a core group of seven musicians to an ensemble of twenty or more, expanding and contracting to perform the broadest possible range of music, often in unusual spaces.
In 2019, violinist/composer Eric Segnitz and conductor David Bloom became Present Music’s Co-Artistic Directors, bringing “breathtaking and inspired programming” (The Shepherd Express) to the ensemble’s stages. Their tenure follows conductor and musical community builder Kevin' Stalheim’s 37 years of service as founder and Artistic Director.
The ensemble has made a significant contribution to contemporary classical music, having commissioned and premiered over 80 significant new works from composers around the world and recorded many of them for the Argo, Albany, Aoede, Northeastern, Naxos, and Innova labels. Composers who have worked in residence or have been commissioned by Present Music include Pulitzer Prize-winning composers John Adams, Henry Brant, David Lang, Caroline Shaw, and Du Yun along with such luminaries as Elena Kats-Chernin, Annie Gosfield, Kamran Ince, Jerome Kitzke, Ingram Marshall, Missy Mazzoli, Bright Sheng, Roberto Sierra, and Michael Torke. Present Music also works with many of today’s most exciting emerging composers. Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass, commissioned and premiered by Present Music, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Present Music shows the world that Milwaukee is a center for creativity, having toured extensively throughout the United States and participated in major international music festivals in Japan, New York City, Turkey, and China. Present Music is also the unprecedented, six-time winner of ASCAP/Chamber Music America’s Adventurous Programming Award.
The ensemble nurtures the next generation of composers through its education program, the Creation Project, in which students in Milwaukee public schools have the opportunity to learn how to compose and to hear their works performed by professional musicians.
Co-Artistic Directors
Co-Artistic Directors David Bloom and Eric Segnitz bring to Present Music a dynamic combination of experience as performers, curators, community leaders, and educators. Together, they craft Present Music’s artistic programming, from cutting-edge performances to inspiring educational programs to wide-reaching community events.
David Bloom
David Bloom is a conductor equally at home in opera, new music, and orchestral repertoire, noted alike for his “rockstar energy” (Urban Milwaukee) and “graceful sensitivity” (I Care If You Listen). He is founding Co-Artistic Director of Contemporaneous, a 23-member New York-based ensemble which he has led in performances lauded as “ferocious and focused” (The New York Times). Also Co-Artistic Director of Present Music, he brings “breathtaking and inspired programming” (Shepherd Express) to Milwaukee’s long-running new music ensemble. Bloom dedicates his work to collaborating with artists and communities to inspire creativity, empathy, and joy.
In such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, MoMA, and Park Avenue Armory, Bloom has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Jacaranda, The Crossing, NOW Ensemble, Ensemble Connect, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Kronos Quartet, and soloists Dashon Burton, David Byrne, Helga Davis, Isabel Leonard, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Courtney Love, Hila Plitmann, Dawn Upshaw, and many more. Especially active as an opera conductor, Bloom has led productions for Opera Omaha, Beth Morrison Projects, Tri-Cities Opera, Cal Performances, PROTOTYPE Festival, Experiments in Opera,Opera on Tap, and more.
He has conducted over 350 world premieres and collaborated with collaborated with such composers as Donnacha Dennehy, Du Yun, inti figgis-vizueta, Michael Gordon, Judd Greenstein, Nathalie Joachim, David Lang, Tania León, Emma O’Halloran, and Julia Wolfe. In 2021, he conducted Present Music in the world premiere of Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass, which went on to win the 2022 Pulitzer Prize.
Bloom serves on the faculty at New York University, where he is Principal Conductor of Orchestras and teaches conducting. He has also served as an artistic advisor for activist orchestra The Dream Unfinished since the organization’s founding in 2015. davidbloomconductor.com
Eric Segnitz
Eric Segnitz is a violinist, composer/arranger, and Co-Artistic director of Present Music. Over Present Music’s entire history of concerts, tours, and recordings, Segnitz has written countless arrangements, scored six films for live performance. As multi-instrumentalist and a founding member of the ensemble, he has performed in virtually every performance from violin, and viola to guitar and hardanger fiddle.
As a soloist, he has recorded the world premiere of Astor Piazolla/John Adams’ concerto Todo Buenos Aires, as well as premieres of the concerto In White and the duo Partita by Kamran Ince. He served as producer and second violinist for the Kepler Quartet’s epic and widely-heralded recording cycle of microtonalist Ben Johnston’s ten string quartets. Fanfare Magazine calls Kepler’s Johnston recordings, “a gigantic contribution to American music… among the most important recordings devoted to music of our time. A milestone in music history.” His recordings as performer and/or producer have been released on the Argo, Innova, Albany, Northeastern, LML, Dargason, Narada, and New World labels.
His composition credits include plays, television, film, and concert works. He has written arrangements for the Carnegie Hall Lullaby Project, multiple productions at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and string arrangements published by Hal Leonard. Orchestral experience includes the Milwaukee Symphony, the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, and guest concertmaster positions with a number of orchestras throughout the Midwest.
Segnitz also directs many of Present Music’s education programs, serving as the resident composition teacher with Present Music’s Creation Project, and curator and performer in the Arts in Community Education programs. He also curates a Nordic fiddle festival every August in Door County, Wisconsin.
Marta Troicki, Managing Director
Vania Jurkiewicz, Operations Manager
Daniel Petry, Development Manager
Staff
Board of Directors
Officers
Jessica Franken, Chair
Carole Nicksin, Vice Chair
Fran Richman, Secretary
Brian Wilson, Treasurer
Louise Hermsen, Governance
Martin Butorac
Heidi Dondlinger
Christine Dunbeck
Reed Groethe
William Helmers
Donna Woodall
Tim Frautschi*
Lois Smith*
*Denotes Special Directors
Directors
Following are Present Music’s three most recent Form 990’s: