Photo by Kaupo Kikkas
Daniel Kidane
Daniel Kidane
Forty years is a long time. Kevin Stalheim probably gave no thought to Present Music’s 40th season when he founded the group in 1982—or considered that PM would continue once he retired. Dedicated now, as when they began, to music of the present, the Milwaukee group will celebrate its 40th birthday with a concert and party at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
The details—especially the party—are in flux at press time, thank you Omicron. However, the concert, called “Ablaze,” will go on. “This program is centered around the idea of ‘identity,’ and we approach it from many different angles—all over the map, you might say,” says PM’s co-artistic director Eric Segnitz. “It starts with folk music, ends with a rave-up tribute to Gloria Estefan, and tackles some challenging works in between.”
“Ablaze” includes a world premiere, the latest PM commission, Daniel Kidane’s Primitive Blaze. Kidane is a young British composer of Eritrean and Russian heritage much acclaimed in the UK. His previous compositions were steeped in hip-hop and R&B. “He described Primitive Blaze to us as ‘an energetic piece for electric guitar and saxophone’ accompanied by our core ensemble,” Segnitz says.
“Ablaze” is cosponsored by the Jewish Museum Milwaukee in conjunction with its current exhibit, “Then They Came for Me,” on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Segnitz says that the Jewish Museum was “interested in bringing multimedia artist No-No Boy (aka Julian Saporiti) to Milwaukee. He is a Vietnamese American folk artist who has been touring a work based on Japanese internment camps—which reflects their exhibit as well as a photography exhibit (“An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain”) currently at the Art Museum.”
Co-artistic director David Bloom describes another piece on the program, Viet Cuong's Re(new)al as “a journey through the wonders of renewable energy in the form of a concerto for four percussionists and chamber orchestra. The music is just glorious, moving past facts and figures that we tend to associate with utilities to capture a rapturous feeling of being inside the creation of hydro, wind and solar power.”
Would it be accurate to say that with “Ablaze,” PM sought out the work of young composers? “It turned out that way, in part because composers of this generation are highly attuned to issues of social justice and focused on increasing the public’s awareness through their work,” Segnitz explains, adding that in the context of PM’s 40-year history, “It’s an extension and amplification of what we have always done. Inclusion is very much the baseline for this group, though we try not to be pretentious about it.”
Unlike many proponents of “serious” music, PM has also always been about having fun.
