Present Music presents

Thanksgiving
Circle Unbroken

November 21, 2021 | 5:00 pm
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (Milwaukee, WI)

Present Music Digital Stage | November 24-28, 2021

Program

Traditional: Opening Song

Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group

Vladimir Martynov, arr. Zachary Ritter: The Beatitudes (1998, arr. 2021)

Kirsten Sollek — contralto

Land acknowledgement

Margaret Noodin from the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Peter Hannan, arr. Zachary Ritter: from Trinkets of Little Value: I. Theguehoaca (1991, arr. 2021)

Kirsten Sollek — contralto

Caroline Shaw: from To the Hands (2016)

I. Prelude
II. in medio / in the midst
V. Litany of the Displaced

Reagan High School Choir
Erica Breitbarth — director

Jonathan Bailey Holland: The Clarity of Cold Air (2013)

Raven Chacon: Voiceless Mass (2021) — world premiere, commissioned by Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ, Plymouth Church UCC, and Present Music

Michael Torke: Four Proverbs (1993) — commissioned by Kevin Stalheim

1. Better a Dish
2. Drink Water
3. One Man Pretends
4. There is Joy

Kirsten Sollek — contralto

Traditional: Friendship Song

Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group

Pre-Concert Film Screening

Sky Hopinka: Kunįkága Remembers Red Banks, Kunįkága Remembers the Welcome Song (2014)

Support Present Music today!

This concert would not be possible without the support of community members like YOU. In honor of 40 years of Present Music, we've set a fundraising goal of $40,000 to be able to continue offering a platform for diverse and groundbreaking new talent, as witnessed here today.

Thank you to the Heil Family Foundation for generously offering to match up to $10,000 in gifts made now through the end of our campaign on November 30th!

Click here to give online today.

You can also send a check by mail:
Present Music
3720 N Fratney St, Unit 2i
Milwaukee, WI 53212

Present Music is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. All charitable donations are tax-deductible.

Sponsors

This concert is supported by the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ, Plymouth Church UCC and the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. Student tickets donated by Cecile Cheng, Tim & Sue Frautschi and Louise Hermsen.

Present Music’s 2021-2022 season is made possible with generous leadership support from the United Performing Arts Fund, sponsorship of St. John’s on the Lake, and funding from New Music USA, 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

Jennifer Clippert — flutes
William Helmers — clarinets
Ben Adler — clarinets
Matt Sintchak — saxophones
Nick Zoulek — saxophones
Carl Storniolo — percussion
Alex Weir — percussion
John Orfe — piano & organ
Marianne Parker — piano & keyboard
Jeanyi Kim — violin
Eric Segnitz — violin
Samantha Rodriguez — viola
Adrien Zitoun — cello
Scott Kreger — contrabass
David Bloom — conductor
Marty Butorac — electronics, sound engineer

Staff:

Rebecca Ottman (Operations & Marketing Manager); Alex Moreno (Digital Marketing Coordinator); Kelly Rippl (Graphic Designer); Grace Van Dyk (Development Manager)

Board of Directors:

Jessica Franken (Chair); Carole Nicksin (Vice Chair); Fran Richman (Secretary); Brian Wilson (Treasurer); Louise Hermsen (Governance); Barbara Boles; Cecile Cheng; Heidi Dondlinger; Tim Frautschi; Ron Jacquart

Bucks Native American Singing & Drumming Group

Featuring: Kelly Logan, Eric Logan, Adrian Logan, Dan Cappo, Bob Blackdeer, Ronnie Preston, Maynard Webster, and Denise Logan

Representing HoChunk, Ojibway and Cree Nations

Additional Credits

Livestreaming by David Vartanian, DV Productions

Special Thanks

Cecile Cheng Sheilla Feay-Shaw
Tim and Sue Frautschi
Louise Hermsen
Margaret Noodin — Director, Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education
Kyle Norris

About the Guest Artists

Kirsten Sollek

Kirsten Sollek has been called “an appealingly rich alto” (The New York Times), and a singer with “elemental tone quality” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). As a soloist, she has worked with the Bach Collegium Japan, Jane Glover, Helmuth Rilling, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Kansas City Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and the Dallas Bach Society. Very active in contemporary music, she has worked extensively with composer John Zorn, premiering his music in the US, Europe, Australia, and Israel. She has sung at the June in Buffalo, Ojai, and Big Ears music festivals performing works by Steve Reich, and has recorded Reich’s The Desert Music and Tehillim with Alarm Will Sound and Music for 18 Musicians with Ensemble Signal for Harmonia Mundi.

About the Music

Vladimir Martynov: The Beatitudes (1998, arr. 2021)

The Beatitudes are eight blessings sung as the Third Antiphon at the Divine Liturgy in Slavic Orthodox practice. They call upon the listener to embody the ideals of mercy, spirituality, and compassion. A soloist sings the words from the Sermon on the Mount to a folk-like pentatonic melody over a timeless ostinato. Only in the last verse is the music (along with the listeners’ attention) given a new direction—heavenward.

Vladimir Martynov is a Russian composer known for a brand of minimalism developing in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s: a static, spiritually-inspired style without the shimmering pulse of American minimalism. The Beatitudes, as performed by Kronos Quartet, was featured in La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), the winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Martynov is also an ethnomusicologist specializing in the music of the Caucasian peoples, Tajikistan, and other ethnic groups in Russia. He studied medieval Russian and European music, as well as religious musical history and musicology.

Peter Hannan: from Trinkets of Little Value: I. Theguehoaca (1991, arr. 2021)

The text for this song is taken from a list of about 200 words recorded by French explorer Jacques Cartier on his 1535 voyage to the land now known as eastern Canada. The words are not arranged alphabetically, but rather by association or subject. The title refers to Cartier’s own description of the currency he used to win over the people of this new land, and the text includes core verbs of the human experience, such as: sing, dance, laugh, and cry.

Canadian composer Peter Hannan has completed about 70 commissions, including works for the Vancouver Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, CBC Orchestra, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Icebreaker, and Modern Baroque Opera, among others. As a performer, Hannan spent many years performing as an electronic instrumentalist and recorder soloist.

Caroline Shaw: from To the Hands (2016)

The Crossing commissioned To the Hands as a response to Ad manus from Dieterich Buxtehude’s 17th century masterpiece, Membra Jesu Nostri. To the Hands begins inside the 17th century sound of Buxtehude. It expands and colors and breaks this language, as the piece’s core considerations, of the suffering of those around the world seeking refuge, and of our role and responsibility in these global and local crises, gradually come into focus.

The prelude turns the tune of Ad manus into a wordless plainchant melody, punctured later by the strings’ introduction of an unsettling pattern. The second movement fragments Buxtehude’s choral setting of the central question, “quid sunt plagae istae in medio manuum tuarum,” or “what are these wounds in the midst of your hands.” It settles finally on an inversion of the question, so that we reflect, “What are these wounds in the midst of our hands?” We notice what may have been done to us, but we also question what we have done and what our role has been in these wounds we see before us.

In the fifth movement, the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numerical figures are spoken by the choir. These are global figures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015. Sometimes data is the cruelest and most honest poetry.

Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician, vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Sō Percussion, the LA Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow. She has produced for Kanye West and Nas and has contributed to records by The National, and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry.

Jonathan Bailey Holland: The Clarity of Cold Air (2013)

Inspired by many a cold, Northern Midwest or New England day, this work is primarily atmospheric, focusing on the sonorities achieved by blending the instruments of the ensemble in various ways. There are many stark sounds: high, glassy harmonics from the strings, bowed metallic percussion instruments, harsh multi-phonics from the winds, airy cymbal rolls.

— Jonathan Bailey Holland

Originally from Flint, MI, composer Jonathan Bailey Holland began studying composition while a student at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he received a school-wide award for his very first composition. He went on to study at the Curtis Institute of Music and Harvard, and is currently on the faculty at at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Holland’s works have been performed and commissioned by leading orchestras across the country and world, and he is currently writing a new opera commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project that explores the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Raven Chacon: Voiceless Mass (2021)

Voiceless Mass is a large ensemble work composed specifically for the Nichols & Simpson organ at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, but can be performed in any space of worship with high ceilings and pipe organ. Though ‘mass’ is referenced in the title, the piece contains no audible singing voices, instead using the openness of the large space to intone the constricted intervals of the wind and string instruments. In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.

This is the world premiere performance of Voiceless Mass, which was commissioned by the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ, Plymouth Church UCC, and Present Music.

Raven Chacon is a Diné artist known as a composer of chamber music, as well as a visual artist and solo performer. He was born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Michael Pisaro and Wadada Leo Smith. Chacon serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project and is a Berlin Prize laureate.

Michael Torke: Four Proverbs (1993)

Despite all of our cultural and technological advancements, the question of “What is right,” or, “What does it mean?” is as interesting today as it was in the time of Solomon. Such questions require not a high IQ, but emotion and reflection, which are essential characteristics of music. Quite natural, it seemed, to find correspondences between pithy phrases packed with meaning and humor, and short, recognizable musical phrases. Above all, in this piece, I believe a listener can really hear what I am doing with the notes because of my use of text, all the while letting the meaning of these various proverbs have room, through the various rearrangements of words, to gradually penetrate into the mind and soul of the listener.

— Michael Torke

Four Proverbs was commissioned for Present Music by the ensemble’s founding Artistic Director, Kevin Stalheim, and premiered in 1993 at the Milwaukee Art Museum, conducted by the composer.

Milwaukee native Michael Torke’s music has been commissioned by leading orchestras as well as opera, ballet, and theater companies around the world. His music has been called “some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years” (Gramophone), and he has been lauded as “a master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral palette makes him the Ravel of his generation” (The New York Times). His violin concerto, Sky, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

Reagan IB High School Chamber Choir

Director: Erica Breitbarth

Vocal Coaches: Katelyn Peterson, Walt Boyer and Heidi Wylie

Sopranos: Alaina Berlin, Allie Ensor, Magdalyn Rowley-Lange, Zephyr Wal, Melissa Benitez, Niya Rodriguez, Genesis Freidl, Yaimelys Jimenez-Delgado

Altos: Jeimy Arias, Naomi Berlin, Sunshine Conner, Anajah Lewis, Catherine Guerrero, Gianna Maniaci, Grace Santiago, Kaya Schwartz, Victoria Velazquez Rojas, Cassandra Viveros

Tenors: Juroc Correa-González, Diego De Haan, Max Kiekhofer, Taw Reh, Elijah Stawicki, Charlie Voith, Peter Wilder, Moy Aguila-Rojo, Abdul Al-Bassam, Romelro Price, Nathaniel Stouff, Zeno Wilson

Basses: Neve Carr, Nathan Christensen, Dylan Duffy, Dylan Schaefer, Ethan Flechner, Josh Janacek, Zach Nelson

Texts and Translations

Vladimir Martynov: The Beatitudes

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those that weep, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
Blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when you are offended and persecuted, and when they say all kind of evil lies about you for my sake: rejoice and be glad, for your reward shall be great in the heavens.

Peter Hannan: from Trinkets of Little Value: I. Theguehoaca

Caroline Shaw: from To the Hands

I. Prelude

[no text — choir on vowels only]

II. in medio / in the midst

[text from Buxtehude’s Ad manus — Zechariah 13:6 — adapted by Caroline Shaw, with the addition of in medio manuum nostrarum (“in the midst of our hands”)]

V. Litany of the Displaced

The choir speaks global figures of internal displacement, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The numbers spoken are the numbers of internally displaced persons by country, in ascending order. These are people, some of whom may have legal refugee status, who have been displaced within their own country due to armed conflict, situations of generalized violence or violations of human rights.

Michael Torke: Four Proverbs