Image via YouTube / Present Music
The Present Music annual Thanksgiving concert moved online this year. As has been the custom, the Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group enthusiastically began and ended the concert, playing outdoors.
This concert has typically had a spirit of contemplation, and this year was no different. Pianist Marianne Parker performed excerpts from Robin Holcomb’s Wherein Lies the Good. The music was at times cheerful, melancholic, peaceful, or folksy. The last selection played conjured the spirit of an Appalachian folk hymn. Parker played with stylish clarity and expressive tone.
Composer and musician Mark Stewart was a special guest. The Hayloft featured Stewart playing an orchestra of “original instruments,” including pitched whirring sounds created by a fan-like device attached to a stationary bicycle. The piece is one long crescendo and then decrescendo, expressing Stewart’s statement: “We are glad for sound.” His To Whom It May Concern: Thank You, for electric guitar and string quartet began with bubbly joy, later moving into a slow, chorale-like meditation, with high sweet sounds. The musicians performed alone in a studio setting, with expert sound mixing by John Tanner, Kurt Cowling, and David Bloom for the entire concert.
Milwaukee native Michael Torke introduced “Cornmeal,” the first movement of his Spoon Bread. Violinist Ilana Setapen caught the perpetual motion spirit of bluegrass in the opening section with artful vigor, playing with able pianist Melinda Lee Masur. The Reagan High School Choirs performed in virtual fashion, each singer in a separate video box surrounding a central video of woodland imagery in Angélica Negrón’s “Awaken” from Chorus of the Forest. This was warm, lush music of many layers, and in combination with the video conjured strong empathy with nature.
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Young New York composer Alex Weiser was heard in six songs excerpted from his song cycle all the days were purple. Soprano Eliza Bagg’s pure and clear voice sang the settings of poems in Yiddish or English. Often the accompaniments on piano, strings and percussion were scurrying under a generally slow-moving voice line. This is beautiful, singerly music. The songs in Yiddish sometimes brought to mind traditional art songs by Johannes Brahms. The composer explained in a program note about the poetry chosen, saying “each poem a way of seeking God without believing in God.” That sentiment seems to sum up the thoughtful aesthetic of the Present Music Thanksgiving concert in general.
Tickets for the concert may be purchased at presentmusic.org, and on demand viewing continues through February 22.
