Photo via Nathalie Joachim
Nathalie Joachim
Nathalie Joachim
Present Music, Milwaukee’s leading ensemble specializing in the commissioning and performance of new music, offers a special nod to transgender and queer musical artists for the final concert of its 2025-26 season.
The program features Nathalie Joachim who will perform her collected work Ki Moun Ou Ye, an exploration of her Haitian heritage featuring a vibrant tapestry of Joachim’s voice, electronically sampled vocal textures, and an instrumental ensemble conducted by David Bloom. Also to be presented are queer Black composer’s Marcos Balter’s We Carry Our Homes Within Us Which Enables Us To Fly, and inti figgis-vizueta’s Form the Fabric.
Concert goers are invited to arrive early to visit the exhibit Currents 40: Widline Cadet, the Museum’s world-renowned Haitian art collection and Gertrude & Friends: The Wisconsin Magic Realists, a collection nearly 80 paintings featuring the Gertrude Abrcrombie’s circle of queer and otherwise unique artists including John Wilde and Karl Priebe. A cash bar and small bites are available. The concert begins at 7:30 pm.
In celebration of Pride Month and Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ community, Present Music is proud to offer a 20% PRIDE discount for this concert under the code: PMPRIDE20
Timely Concert
Present Music’s concert is particularly timely. Aside from launching Pride Month 2026, it also comes at a moment when LGBTQ+ rights and recognition of the community’s very identity is under attack by our own government. The recent debacle in Watertown, Wisconsin underscores the current danger.
It was there that a high school band concert had included “A Mother of a Revolution,” an instrumental work honoring Marsha P. Johnson, a history-making Black transgender activist who played a significant role in the Stonewall Uprising when LGBTQ people responded to years of repression and discrimination. In that moment of asserting their rights, they rose up. The Watertown Unified School Board claimed the work glorified violence and therefore voted 7-1 to ban its performance. In fact, that decision was in part inspired by the extreme right-wing Moms for Liberty, a white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ organization that is itself apparently inspired by Adolf Hitler, who was quoted on their newsletter masthead.
The ban was certainly not based on anything other than the fact that Johnson was Black and transgender. Ironically, while the work in question celebrates the quest for human rights, in this case, the real violence comes from the psychological lynching perpetrated against LGBTQ youth (it should be noted that the WUSB recently removed transgender students from the district’s anti-harassment policy). If any good came of it all, the episode garnered international attention and exposed the nation’s sun downing democracy. The ensuing backlash has also brought attention to the plight of those in now living under the duress of institutionalized hate.
To purchase tickets visit: presentmusic.org/events/nathalie-joachim
