Photo by Samer Ghani
Nathalie Joachim and Present Music 2026
Nathalie Joachim plays the flute at Present Music's 44th Season finale concert at the Milwaukee Art Museum (2026)
There may not be another setting as spectacular as Milwaukee Art Museum’s Windhover Hall for a performance of any kind. On Friday evening Nathalie Joachim conducted a journey into her Haitian heritage for Present Music’s season finale.
The venue, with its 90-foot-high glass ceiling, was easy to imagine as a huge resonant chamber with Joachim, the musicians and the audience inside a massive instrument. The seagulls gliding as dusk settled over Lake Michigan on view behind the stage only enhanced the evening.
Drawing inspiration
Photo by Samer Ghani
Nathalie Joachim and Present Music (2026)
Nathalie Joachim sings during Present Music's 44th season finale concert at the Milwaukee Art Museum (2026)
The composer-flutist-vocalist drew source material from seven generations family’s history on their remote Haitian farmland. Brooklyn-born Joachim’s song introductions traveled in time, addressed trauma and offered a concert where magic realism was yours for the taking.
Early in the evening, Joachim’s voice as an instrument offered a glimpse of what was to come, turning the space into a sonic cathedral. The musical arrangement of “Kouti yo (Stitches)” built on a moogy heartbeat thump of modern production. “Renmen m plis” offered an affirmation of love with a modern pop arrangement.
Power of words
Opening with an impassioned flute spotlight, Joachim highlighted the power of words on “Ti nèg (Little man).” With instrumentation and an arrangement that would have been at home on John Cale’s album Music for a New Society, she acknowledged:
Though you have tried to abuse us with this
word,
We’ve owned it.
We’ve made it ours.
ReWe claimed our power.
On this land, when you hear nèg
It identifies us.
And marks you as other
Joachim drew the audience in with “Nan kò mwen,” moving at a sprightly tempo that included arranged parts for musicians’ hand claps. “Kanpe anba solèy” found her in reverence for ancestors who sat on the same beach and felt the same sun.
The evening’s thought-provoking material raised questions as well as entertained. “Her final selection “Ki moun ou ye (Who are you?)” challenged Haiti’s history with her flute and percussion driven arrangement getting the final word.
|
|
Before Joachim took the stage, conductor David Bloom led the musicians through a pair of pieces. “Form the Fabric” by inti figgis-vizueta lived in the sustained, rising and falling of strings, woodwinds and brass. Marcos Balter’s “we carry our homes within us which enables us to fly” found a Yorubian chant rising from meditative sections of music, becoming more animated, and rendered itself a soundtrack for the seagulls soaring outside the wall of windows.
