Kevin Stalheim
Surprise greeted Present Music’s first press release for the season. The lifted eyebrows had nothing to do with the concert program, which followed Present Music’s usual dedication to works by living (“present”) composers. It was the concert’s title, “Kevin’s Last Season Opener,” that caught readers on the chin.
Kevin, of course, could only be Present Music’s founder and artistic director, Kevin Stalheim. He has been inseparable from the ensemble as it grew from an ad hoc cadre of musicians into an institution. Stalheim has always been Present Music’s visionary and public face. And now, so the concert title says, he’s leaving.
“It’s my last season,” he confirms. “The problem with why is that it’s a complicated answer, and I’m not sure everyone would be interested to know about it. In one way, I’ve been doing this a long time”—37 years—“and it takes a lot of energy to keep it at a level that’s exciting. I’m not the guy to do it anymore.”
Along the way, Present Music became a world class presenter, commissioning world premiers of work in the field that some have oxymoronically called “contemporary classical music.” A trumpet player by training, Stahlheim emerged at a time—the early 1980s—when a rising generation of conservatory-educated composers and musicians had tired of the aesthetic rigidity that characterized much of the “serious” music that followed World War II. Culture was about to turn eclectic and postmodernism offered relief from the burdens of recent history. Stalheim and his cohorts weren’t content to play from music stands in dusty rooms to an audience of 12 aficionados. They wanted to reach the public. And they wanted to party.
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Although Present Music toured the U.S., Turkey, Japan and China, Milwaukee was more than the ensemble’s home base. In some ways, the city was its raison d’etre. They brought concert music of the 20th and 21st centuries to Turner Hall, the Wherehouse and other unconventional venues. They performed site-specific concerts at Discovery World, the Lynden Sculpture Garden and the Milwaukee Public Museum. “The audience went from one exhibit to another in different groups hearing different things at different times,” Stalheim recalls. “I was in the diorama next to the dinosaur.”
Present Music collaborated with everyone from Wild Space Dance Company to a gaggle of 99 percussionists and the children of the United Community Center. Their annual Thanksgiving concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist included performances by Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group, concert organist Karen Beaumont, chorales from local high schools and the Milwaukee Opera Theater, among many others. Before “multi-cultural” was heard of in Milwaukee, Present Music were doing it, weaving elements of African, Irish, Latin American and Asian music into their concerts.
Asked about his fondest memories of Present Music, Stalheim answers without hesitation: their 10th anniversary concert at Renaissance Place on Milwaukee’s East Side. “We wanted to highlight our collaborators,” he recalls. “We had dancers, we had performance artist Mark Anderson, we had Sigmund Snopek and Paul Cebar. We did a piece by John Cage and a piece with ping-pong balls. We threw balloons into the audience. It was a happening, not just a concert, but it included some very serious music.” The point was to draw “people who would never go to a new music concert.”
Through his years at the helm, Stalheim was determined to collaborate with the Milwaukee community as much possible, with its social organizations as well as its artists. “We were trying to do things that weren’t being done in Milwaukee in ways that were accessible, as opposed to that old attitude—‘If you don’t like it, go someplace else.’ We wanted to balance challenging music with fun, beautiful, crazy.”
Even so, Present Music’ accessibility wasn’t enough for donors who think that a night of Star Wars themes performed by a symphony orchestra counts as a bracing cultural experience. By contrast, “Kevin’s Last Season Opener” will include a few pieces previously performed by Present Music but mostly music that has never been played on a Milwaukee stage. Pointedly, the program includes work by contemporary women composers such as Joan Tower and Eve Beglarian, African-influenced music by Alhaji Bai Konte and Irish-flavored electronica by Emma O’Halloran. A rising young musician, David Bloom from New York’s Contemporaneous, will serve as guest conductor for most of the concert.
“I can’t say anything definite,” Stalheim says of Present Music post-himself. “I think keeping it going is the goal but you need a lot of support—a lot of hard work.”
Kevin’s Last Season Opener takes place 7:30 p.m., Sept. 8 at the Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts, 2419 E. Kenwood Blvd. For tickets, visits www.presentmusic.org.
