Present Music presents

Thanksgiving
Wherein Lies the Good

Sunday, November 22, 2020 | 5:00 pm CST
Present Music Digital Stage

Program

Mark Stewart: Private Duet
Mark Stewart — Chaladoo

Traditional: Opening Song
Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group

Robin Holcomb: excerpts from Wherein Lies the Good (1995)
Marianne Parker — piano

Mark Stewart: The Hayloft
Mark Stewart — Orchestra of Original Instruments

Michael Torke: from Spoon Bread: I. Cornmeal (2016)
Ilana Setapen — violin
Melinda Lee Masur — piano

Angélica Negrón: from Chorus of the Forest: Awaken (2019)
Reagan High School Choirs
Erica Breitbarth — director
Walt Boyer — vocal coach

Mark Stewart: To Whom It May Concern: Thank You (2008)
Mark Stewart — electric guitar

Alex Weiser: excerpts from and all the days were purple (2017) | און ַאלע טעג ז ַײנען געװען פּורפּורן
Eliza Bagg — soprano

I. My Joy (text: Anna Margolin) | מ ַײן גליק
III. I Was Never Able to Pray (text: Edward Hirsch )
IV. Longing (text: Rachel Korn) | בענקש ַאפֿט
V. Poetry (text: Abraham Sutzkever) | פּ ָאעזיע
VI. Lines of Water (text: Mark Strand)
VIII. We Went Through the Days (text: Anna Margolin) | מיר ז ַײנען געג ַאנגען דורך טעג

Traditional: Friendship Dance
Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group

Mark Stewart: Vincent
Mark Stewart and Biodun Kuti — electric guitars

James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson: Lift Every Voice and Sing (1899)
Reagan High School Choirs
Erica Breitbarth — director
Walt Boyer — vocal coach

Present Music’s 2020-2021 Season, Limitless, is made possible with generous support from the United Performing Arts Fund, the sponsorship of Saint John’s on the Lake, and grants from the Milwaukee Arts Board, the Milwaukee County Cultural, Artistic and Musical Programming Advisory Council, and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Credits

Present Music

David Bloom and Eric Segnitz — Co-Artistic Directors

Ilana Setapen — violin
Eric Segnitz — violin
Erin Pipal — viola
Adrien Zitoun — cello
Marianne Parker — piano
Melinda Lee Masur — piano
Carl Storniolo — percussion

About the Guest Artists

Eliza Bagg

Eliza Bagg is a Los Angeles and New York-based experimental musician, working primarily as a vocalist in the field of contemporary classical music. Along with producing her own work, she has collaborated across genres with such prominent artists as Meredith Monk, John Zorn, Michael Gordon, Daniel Fish, Ellen Reid, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Nick Zammuto, Helado Negro, Bryce Dessner, Chris Cerrone, and Julianna Barwick. Bagg sings regularly as a member of Roomful of Teeth and ModernMedieval trio and has performed as a soloist with the New York and Los Angeles Philarmonics, Chicago, San Francisco, and North Carolina Symphonies, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Trinity Wall Street Choir, A Far Cry, NOW Ensemble, and TENET. Bagg writes, produces, records, and performs a solo future-pop project as Lisel, whose singing Pitchfork has compared to “a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy.”

Mark Stewart

Mark Stewart is a Wisconsin-born multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, and instrument designer. He has been Paul Simon’s Musical Director for over 20 years, is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and has worked with Steve Reich, Sting, Anthony Braxton, Bob Dylan, Wynton Marsalis, Meredith Monk, Stevie Wonder, Phillip Glass, Iva Bittová, Bruce Springsteen, Terry Riley, Ornette Coleman, Don Byron, Joan Baez, Paul McCartney, Cecil Taylor, Bill Frisell, Alison Krauss, Bobby McFerrin, David Byrne, James Taylor, Bette Midler, and many others. He is the inventor of the WhirlyCopter, a bicycle-powered choir of singing tubes, and the Big Boing, a sonic banquet table that seats 30 children playing 490 found objects. He lives in Brooklyn and North Adams, MA, playing and writing popular music, semi-popular music and unpopular music, whilst designing instruments that everyone can play.

About the Music

Robin Holcomb: excerpts from Wherein Lies the Good (1995)

Thirty years ago, eclectic pianist, composer and singer Robin Holcomb emerged on the Downtown New York scene with her difficult-to-define style. Variously described as “Joni Mitchell meets Charles Ives,” or “Erik Satie meets Appalachia,” her “folk music of the future” betrays an original and haunted sensibility. Holcomb’s work has a helical quality, a three-dimensional spiral of American musical vernaculars, from rock and minimalism to Baptist hymns and her childhood fascination, Civil War tunes.

With her sprawling piano work Wherein Lies the Good, she creates music which is (in the words of the New York Times) “as elegantly simple as a Shaker quilt, and no less beautiful.” The title of the work refers to a lesson from the ancient East Indian philosophy, the Sacred Jain Texts, which teach the laws of Karma.

The student asks: “Why is the soul unhappy? Wherein lies the good of the soul?”
The master replies: “Good of the soul is happiness without restlessness. That can only be accomplished by taking refuge in the soul.”

Pianist, composer, librettist, singer and songwriter Robin Holcomb has performed internationally as a solo artist and the leader of various ensembles at venues including Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, Teatro Manzoni, Moers Music Festival, Festival of Perth, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Arts at St. Ann’s, Guimarães, Roulette, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Seattle Opera House, and the Verona, San Francisco, and Vancouver Jazz Festivals. Critically acclaimed recordings of Holcomb’s compositions, performances, and arrangements have been released on the Nonesuch, Tzadik, New World, and Songlines labels. Holcomb’s music has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Portland Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, and she is a founder, conductor, pianist and composer with the New York Composers Orchestra, Washington Composers Orchestra, and Robin Holcomb Ensemble.

Mark Stewart: To Whom It May Concern: Thank You (2008)

Mark’s father was an Episcopal priest and his mother was an agnostic. His mother came to a brilliant solution for how to say a secular grace at family dinners: “To whom it may concern, thank you.”

See the bio above for more about Mark.

Michael Torke: from Spoon Bread: Cornmeal (2018)

Spoon Bread was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and written for violinist Tessa Lark. Lark’s background is from Kentucky, which brings a fresh approach to her classical playing. In addition to that inspiring starting point, I wanted to write music that would give a platform to her warmth, bountifulness; her bouquet of musicality. Starting with the characteristic sound of détaché bowing (each note gets its own bow stroke; it is non-slurred) —a primary feature of fiddle playing, also found in jazz violin performance, and has an historical precedent in Baroque music — I wanted to join that technique with a harmonic vocabulary which would be considered unmistakably American (with some French overtones…but then there is a direct relationship between harmonies Ravel used and certain strains of jazz). I thought the title would give a nod to something common and shared by Kentuckians. In fact, she enthusiastically revealed to me when we first read through the piece, there is a Spoonbread Festival that takes place near her hometown that brings tens of thousands of people together every year. The movement titles, Cornmeal, Milk, and Eggs, for the fast-slow-fast structure of the piece, are the key ingredients found in every spoon bread recipe.

— Michael Torke

Michael Torke’s music has been commissioned by such organization as the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey, National Ballet of Canada, Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Public Theater, Old Globe Theater, and London Sinfonietta. He has worked with such conductors as Simon Rattle, Kurt Mazur, Edo de Waart, and David Zinman. Beginning his career with exclusive contracts with Boosey and Hawkes and Decca Records, he now publishes his music on his own press, Adjustable Music, and record company, Ecstatic Records. His music has been called “some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years” (Gramophone). Hailed as a “vitally inventive composer” (Financial Times) and “a master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral palette makes him the Ravel of his generation” (The New York Times), Torke has created a substantial body of works in virtually every genre. His violin concerto, Sky, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

Angélica Negrón: from Chorus of the Forest: Awaken (2019)

Awaken is one of four choral modules from Chorus of the Forest, an installation piece for electronics, mechanical musical instruments, and chorus written specifically for the Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden. Awaken explores connections between trees and humans by using exclusively verbs used to describe actions related to trees that could also apply to people. This module seeks to create a space for awareness and empathy as well as a realization of the interconnectedness of all living organisms and their intricate networks of communication.

— Angélica Negrón

Chorus of the Forest is a site-specific work commissioned while Negrón was Composer-in-Residence at the New York Botanical Garden. At a time when giving a voice to the trees is more urgent than ever due to climate change and deforestation, this immersive choral experience explores humanity’s relationship with the forest in a world increasingly dominated by technology.

Angélica Negrón is a Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist who writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. At NYBG, Negrón will explore musical techniques through interactive performances that give voice to the natural world.
She has been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, Bang on a Can All-Stars, A Far Cry, MATA Festival, loadbang, The Playground Ensemble and the American Composers Orchestra, among others. Her music has been performed at the Kennedy Center, the Ecstatic Music Festival, EMPAC, and the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial, and her film scores have been heard numerous times at the Tribeca Film Festival. She has collaborated with artists such as Sō Percussion, The Knights, Face the Music and NOVUS NY, among others and is a founding member of the electronic indie band Balún.

Alex Weiser: excerpts from and all the days were purple (2017)

In her poem yorn, Yiddish poet Anna Margolin reflects back on her life, and closes by speaking directly to God ending with the line: “un zukhn dir, nit gloybndik in dir” — “and seeking you, not believing in you.” This poem, along with the remainder poems included in this work, can be understood as kinds of secular prayers. Each deals in some way with the meaning and shape of life, embracing its joy while trying to make sense of its difficulties and transience. Many of my favorite poems are like little talismans or amulets: each a kernel of wisdom that I carry through life because they provide for me something to hold on to in the face of life’s challenges and transience, each poem a way of seeking God without believing in God.

and all the days were purple features a collection of such gems in Yiddish and English from poets Anna Margolin, Edward Hirsch, Rachel Korn, Abraham Sutzkever, and Mark Strand. The cycle is bookended with two songs setting Anna Margolin poems that act as a kind of prelude and postlude. Each Anna Margolin poem reflects on life from the perspective of being after or outside of it. Instrumental sections separate these two songs from the four others, which reflect on life from within its tumult, longing, beauty, and difficulty.

— Alex Weiser

Composer Alex Weiser’s debut album and all the days were purple, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Music. He recently completed an opera with librettist Ben Kaplan, called State of the Jews, based on the life of Theodor Herzl. Other commissions and performances have included Typical Music (Todd Reynolds, Ashley Bathgate, and Vicky Chow), Lisa Moore, Mellissa Hughes, Sandbox Percussion, JACK Quartet, Momenta Quartet, Argento Ensemble, Bearthoven, and Fifth House Ensemble. An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, Weiser co-founded and directs Kettle Corn New Music, was for nearly five years a director of the MATA Festival, and is now the Director of Public Programs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Weiser studied at Yale University and New York University, where teachers and mentors included Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Michael Klingbeil, Kathryn Alexander, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Ingram Marshall, and Christopher Theofanidis.

James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson: Lift Every Voice and Sing (1899)

Lift Every Voice and Sing – often called “The Black National Anthem” – was written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson and then set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in 1899. It was first performed in public in the Johnsons’ hometown of Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12, 1900 by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal.

— NAACP

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. He was widely celebrated for his leadership of the NAACP, where he became the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua 1906-1913. In 1934 he became the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University and later served as a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University, a historically black university.

John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) was an American composer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Trained at the New England Conservatory and then in London, he began his career as a public school teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. Traveling to New York, he began his show business career along with his brother and composer Bob Cole, writing hundreds of songs and two successful Broadway operettas. Most of their stage works featured Black casts, but they were also inclusive of other races. His spotlight on Native Americans was so well received that Rosamond was inducted as a ‘sub-chief' into the Iroquois tribe of Montreal's Caughnawaga Reservation, which had a majority population of ethnic Mohawk people. Also a prolific singer, Johnson sang the role of Frazier in the original production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, taking roles in other dramas as well. He reprised his role as Frazier on the 1951 studio recording of Porgy and Bess.

Reagan High School Choirs

Erica Breitbarth — director
Walt Boyer — vocal coach

Texts and Translations

Angélica Negrón: from Chorus of the Forest: Awaken (2019)

Alex Weiser: excerpts from and all the days were purple (2017) | און ַאלע טעג ז ַײנען געװען פּורפּורן

James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson: Lift Every Voice and Sing (1899)