Present Music Gets Theatrical (and Technological)

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Photo by Samer Ghani

Corey Dargel with Present Music - Valentine's Day 2026

Corey Dargel performs with Present Music at Jan Serr Studio for 'Avant Garden of Love 2nd Edition' (2026)

Present Music is known for only teasing a few key details of each concert on their website or marketing materials. Audiences only know what they’re really in for until they are seated and reading the program book. Generally, this helps to create a sense of discovery, but in this outing, the mystery hurt the final product. The marketing had promised something about love and AI, but the audience was not quite prepared for the amount of theater in this collaboration with Quasimondo Physical Theatre. It led to some moments of hesitant applause and unclear transitions.

Jan Serr Studio was also not an ideal venue. Between this and the Milwaukee Art Museum, Present Music is using two spaces with seating all on the same level. Sightlines can be tough. From the first moments of the opening theatre piece, a take on original sin in the Garden of Eden, I had to lean around to properly see the action. A man and woman ate forbidden fruit to reveal a laptop in the tree and hence gave birth to Version 1 of an AI bot, followed by riffs on Dada (the art movement standing in as a baby’s first words—brilliant!) The robot would become a recurring character for the evening.

After this playful tone had been set, Steve Reich’s wonderful Double Sextet functioned as an absolute-music canvas for thoughts about the bustle of modern life and technology. I can understand the choice to perform it as a single sextet with playback, but the recording (by Eighth Blackbird) never fully convinced as an equal, blended partner. It should have been turned up more in the mix. Pianist John Orfe provided a strong foundation as usual, and the ensemble built to a fine sense of urgency. Conductor Georgia Wells was fun to watch, chopping through the constant meter changes. I would have liked slightly more legato in the slow movement’s melodies, as I’ve heard in some other performances. The final fast movement ripped along to a satisfying close.

Chamber Art Trio

Composer/vocalist Corey Dargel presented three chamber art songs as an introduction to his style before his commission on the second half. And that style? Funny, sweet lyrics, delivered in a simple, unaffected vocal, with appealing chamber textures underneath. In “On This Date,” unaccompanied by violin alone in big double-stops, he worried about someone dying in a plane crash: “Will I observe the anniversary of your death on this date every year?” In “Toes,” he offered a hilarious monologue about a partner unwilling to suck on his toes, proposing that he amputate them all and strap on “edible toes” that would taste like lollipops. Dargel has a knack for unique perspectives, and his delivery lets every funny insight in his lyrics land perfectly.

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Photo by Samer Ghani

Quasimondo Physical Theater performs with Present Music - Valentine's Day 2026

Quasimondo Physical Theatre performs with Present Music for 'Avant Garden of Love 2nd Edition' (2026)

In Simultaneous Poetry, a Dada performance created by Tristan Tzara in 1916, multiple people read different texts at the same time. This worked when delivered by the actors but attempts to bring in audience volunteers backfired; they didn’t project or read with enough gusto. What did work was the clever AI tie-in, with Version 2 of the bot needing more content, hence more streams of text at the same time.

After a long intermission, a Philip Glass piece for keyboard, Modern Love Waltz, underscored the surrealist 1935 film Camera Makes Whoopee. The AI bot had evolved to a version in the 8000s, now a full-body costume worn by actress Selena Milewski, who danced around with other Quasimondo players before giving birth to a new baby AI. The whole sequence went on too long, to the point of tedium.

True Love?

Corey Dargel saved the day with true love not pretend, a world premiere commissioned from an anonymous donor. This cycle of five songs imagines, in Dargel’s own words, “how Artificial Intelligence might compute+judge+experience+output love.” It hit a lot of relevant, timely beats about life and love in 2026: trying to validate the truth of emotions, using ChatGPT for therapy and advice, and relying on technology for sexual release. And the lyrics were funny and poignant as ever. A couple of examples: “Rehearsing I love you in the mirror / Makes me feel even sincere-er.” “Your data is mine to mine / So that you and I will always be online.” Like his earlier songs, this piece found a delightful aesthetic at the meeting of pop and chamber. Sometimes he employed a drum machine, and the bustling ensemble textures never obscured his vocals. My favorite of the set, “Th3rapy B0t,” had a rapid triplet feel and melodic lines that recalled Reich’s Double Sextet from the first half of the program. Special mention to Bill Helmers and his sweet bass clarinet solos in “1t 15 ChatGPT Wh0’5 C0n5ol1ing.” I loved Dargel’s work and want to hear it again.

The concert could have ended there on a perfect note, perhaps with a final short robot skit to tie it all together. We were already at the two-hour mark. But instead we entered a fever dream of vegetables. I commend the choice to have Alison Knowles’ avant-garde Proposition #2: Make a Salad backed by a chunk of John Cage’s Living Room Music played an orchestra of vegetable percussion. The rhythmic ostinato distinctly recalled Reich, creating more thematic unity, but it went on way too long, lasting close to 15 minutes. Quasimondo actors brought out tables to mix salad dressing, then dropped salad ingredients from the top of a ladder onto a giant plastic sheet. Kirk Thomsen, host of the group, had encouraged us to partake of the salad at the end so it wouldn’t go to waste, but as the great ritual progressed, I felt a sense of dread at the prospect that very few people would be in the mood to eat salad at 10 p.m.

This concert was clearly the product of very creative people with insightful ideas. It was just a bit too much. As I mentioned before, this venue did not serve the actors. Any hall with traditional sloped seating would have better drawn the audience into the performance art elements. And while the salad-making tapped into the trademark Present Music sandbox of mischief, it was related not to the love or AI themes but to a food theme that had only slightly been developed in the skits. Still, I welcomed the theatrical elements in general and would like to see Present Music try another collaboration in the future that tightens the screws a bit. In the end, it’s OK sometimes to witness a big piece of messy, alive art, in a time where even creating art as a human is a small act of resistance.