Present Music Goes ‘Underground’

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For $20 year-round, you can take a tour of Miller Caves, the subterranean vault beneath the Molson Coors complex where beer kegs were once stored. But for $150 on one night only, you can tour the Caves, hear a concert of new music, attend a reception—and have a Miller.

The special event at Miller Caves, “PM Underground,” is sponsored by Present Music, Milwaukee’s internationally regarded contemporary music ensemble. It’s a fundraiser with proceeds supporting a trio of albums by Present Music set for release in the coming years. It’s also a last-minute addition to the ensemble’s 2024-25 season, “a sneaky way to get back to a six-concert season,” says PM’s co-artistic director, Eric Segnitz.

The Miller Caves were hewn from stone in the 1840s as natural refrigeration for Miller beer. As far as Segnitz knows, there has only been one previous concert in the Caves, the John C. Reilly Band, earlier this century. The unusual venue can seat 50. To comfortably accommodate the audience, “PM Underground” will have two shows, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 14, with a 7:30 reception in between for both sets of concertgoers.

Three visiting artists will perform with Present Music at the concert, all of them familiar to the Milwaukee ensemble’s audience: Shara Nova, the Pulitzer-winner Raven Chacon and Carla Kihlstedt. Nova’s music borders on alt rock; Chacon’s soundscapes involve “non-traditional ways of playing instruments,” says Segnitz; and Kihlstedt might be coaxed into reprising bits of “26 Little Deaths,” the Edward Gorey-inspired song cycle she premiered with Present Music in 2022.

The evening’s repertoire by three young contemporary composers is hard to categorize. “It’s really organic. They are classically trained but their expression is non-classical,” Segnitz says. “A whole generation of composers have grown up in this way.” Present Music is the only Milwaukee ensemble to have consistently followed the evolution of contemporary music along those paths.

For tickets and more information, visit presentmusic.org.

To watch Present Music’s season preview video, visit: youtube.com/watch?v=5JGbyC5IBbc.