Photo Credit: Wes Tank
“I don’t like that word,” says Kevin Stalheim. He’s reacting to my suggestion that Present Music’s next concert, “StalheimTime Finale,” marks his retirement from the ensemble he founded 37 years ago. And yet, whatever word is used, “StalheimTime” marks an end and a beginning. It will be Stalheim’s final concert as Present Music’s artistic director as he makes way for his replacements. Starting next season, the ensemble will be led by a pair of co-artistic directors: Longtime Present Music violinist Eric Segnitz will work alongside David Bloom, a young New York conductor who passed muster after participating in he group’s 2016 Turner Hall concert.
Kevin Stalheim, David Bloom and Eric Segnitz.
“He made an impression,” Stalheim says of Bloom’s conducting. “And he has genuine respect for our past.”
Present Music has gained a reputation internationally for commissioning new work from contemporary composers and locally for concerts that broke the barriers—many barriers. “I think we were the pioneers, the igniters in Milwaukee,” Stalheim begins. “Back in the day, simply doing work by living composers was a big deal here—especially showing that their music didn’t have to be boring, thorny and academic but could be entertaining and accessible to a lot of people.”
Before multi-ethnic became a tired buzzword, Present Music’s programming crossed national and cultural boundaries with imagination and respect. “We didn’t just find a living composer from, say, a Latin American country,” Stalheim explains. “We’d hook into the vernacular music of the country,” seeking local exponents of that musical culture to perform as part of the concert or—in that Present Music tradition—the post-concert party. In so doing, Present Music crisscrossed those old walls between high and low culture. “We wanted to bring those two audiences together,” Stalheim says. They did it in ways that were more challenging than, for example, watching a symphony orchestra perform tepid arrangements of rock songs.
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Stalheim describes “StalheimTime” as a “celebration of what Present Music made together so far. The program is all pieces we’ve done before, a contemplation of what we’ve created together.” By together, Stalheim doesn’t mean only the ensemble’s core members but the numerous collaborations between Present Music and the community. Stalheim was always eager to recruit local artists for joint ventures in sound and motion.
Central to “StalheimTime” is a performance of John Cage’s Apartment House 1776. “His idea was very expansive,” Stalheim says of the composer, who conceived the piece for the U.S. Bicentennial. “There are Native American ingredients—and hymns, folk tunes, African American influences, ‘Yankee Doodle.’ Cage was asking, ‘What is your idea of America?’” The diverse potential of 1776 lends itself to collaboration with a range of Milwaukee performers from Bucks Native American Singing & Drumming Group and African American percussionist Jahmes Finlayson to Cantor Jerry Berkowitz from Anshe Poale Zedek Synagogue and the gospel voice of Laura Schneider.
“StalheimTime” will also feature contributions by Danceworks, Brooke Thiele, Quasimondo Physical Theatre and the Hearing Voices Ensemble in compositions by John Adams, Elena Kats-Chernin, Donald Erb and Johann Strauss.
Incoming co-artistic director David Bloom was already aware of Present Music before he received a cold call in 2015 from Stalheim asking him to participate in an upcoming performance. “Kevin became a mentor to me for that concert,” Bloom recalls. “He said, ‘We want to do something I wouldn’t think of!’ What we did was a wild program of renegade young composers.”
As for Stalheim’s future plans, he says: “I’m an exploratory person, curious and bored easily. I was bored with playing trumpet, bored with grad school—Present Music was the exception because it was a constant series of different projects. Still, 37 years is a long time. I’m excited to leave it behind for new things like canoe racing. And it’s true: I want more time for family and friends. I wonder about composing. It would probably take me two years to compose a 15-minute piece and then I’d force Present Music to perform it. But I don’t know if that will happen!”
Present Music’s “StalheimTime Finale” begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 1, at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St. For tickets and more information, visit presentmusic.org or call 414-271-0711.
