Present Music Brings Grammy-Winning Choir to Milwaukee for World Premiere Concert

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Photo by Charles Grove

The Crossing (2024)

The Crossing (2024)

For Present Music, the opportunity to work with a four-time Grammy-winning choir, The Crossing, was “fantastic!” PM’s co-artistic director, Eric Segnitz, barely contains his enthusiasm as he speaks of The Crossing’s central role in his ensemble’s Thanksgiving concert. The 22-member choir will perform the world premiere of music commissioned for the occasion, Christopher Cerrone’s Of Being Numerous.

Segnitz describes the process of commissioning Of Being Numerous. “We connected Christopher with the donors,” Milwaukee arts patrons Jan Serr and John Shannon. “They settled on a text, George Oppen’s epic poem, ‘Of Being Numerous,’ on individuality in a social context.” By the time Cerrone completed Numerous, “he radically deviated from the original text, including words from William Faulkner and Walt Whitman, and writing his own prose interludes. He inserted poetry and writings that related to the idea of Oppen’s poem.”

And then Cerrone used AI synthesis and electronic processing to create ghostly vocal textures for the interludes to simulate the voices of Faulkner, Whitman and Oppen. The dead poets’ virtual voices will be heard, interspersed among the chorales, accompanied by PM’s seven-piece ensemble in “a somewhat minimalist, somewhat ambient” mood, Segnitz explains.

“Christopher loved the poem—it speaks to the moment we’re in of a fractured society. We need some sense of unity. The hypothesis Of Being Numerous is: We truly all need each other. The director of The Crossing, Donald Nally, latched right on to it.”

The PM concert will be The Crossing’s first Milwaukee appearance. Cerrone has worked with PM in the past, as has Grammy and Pulitzer-winner Caroline Shaw, whose recent work, Ochre, will also be performed. “It’s about seeing the human experience through geology—the layering of time, and we’re all made of the same minerals.” Also on the bill, Paul Wiancko’s Distant Maneuvers. As has occurred since PM’s first Thanksgiving concert in 1996, the Ho-Chunk Little Priest Singers and drummers will open and close the program.

“It encourages a sense of community, gratitude and inclusion,” Segnitz says of the concerts.

The concert is scheduled for 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23 at Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson St. The program begins with a 4 p.m. pre-concert conversation between Cerrone, Nally and PM’s co-artistic director David Bloom. For tickets, visit https://www.presentmusic.org/events