A Conga Line in Hell

Present Music‘s season-opening concert, All Souls Eve, on October 31 at the Milwaukee Art Museum offers something far more profound than Halloween entertainment. “A serious element pervades all of the programming,” explains artistic director Eric Segnitz. The evening recognizes late autumn as a liminal time when the veil between the physical and spiritual world is at its thinnest. “People are generally not that comfortable talking about the subject of death or the people they’re missing in their lives,” Segnitz notes. “But it’s just a universal experience. And of course, it would be reflected in art.”

The Mexican Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition offers a particularly striking perspective, which frames the evening’s opening and closing works.

The concert opens with a string quartet by Gabriela Ortiz, La Calaca, a section of a larger work Altar de Muertos (1996).

Ortiz described the work as reflecting “the internal search between the real and the magic.” Ortiz remarks that La Calaca expresses “Syncretism and the concept of death in modern Mexico, chaos and the richness of multiple symbols, where the duality of life is always present: sacred and profane; good and evil; night and day; joy and sorrow… This movement reflects a musical world full of joy, vitality, and a great expressive force.”

The concert closes with a celebratory work by Miguel del Aguila, Congo Line in Hell (1999). Aguila wrote of a dream with “the visual image of an endless line of ghosts dancing through the fires of hell. I relied mainly on the dramatic and expressive qualities of rhythm to convey the evil forces that govern my imaginary hell.”  The insistent, hypnotic conga beat is distorted and manipulated, at times shifting into devilishly complex, asymmetric meters— a tricky ’dance macabre’ where figures from all social ranks are equally subject to human foibles.

In between, the evening recognizes other cultural perspectives on death:

Evan Chambers was inspired by the numerous epitaphs on tombstones within a colonial cemetery in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire from a time when engravings honored the lives of those who died. Chambers created a cycle of 14 songs, The Old Burying Ground (2003, 2007), some drawn from epitaphs and others from commissioned poetry. Much of the music reflects early American sounds inspired by Irish folk traditions. Present Music will perform four selections featuring what Segnitz suggests is a “ghostly trio,” coloratura soprano Alisa Jordheim, tenor Brian Giebler and folk singer Ben Russell. Russell will also join the Present Music ensemble on violin.

George Crumb, known for contemporary chamber works, worked for 10 years on an American Songbook project (2001-2010) where he adapted familiar songs to unusual interpretation and instrumentation. The series spans seven albums of songs beginning with material from the Civil War.

Present Music has selected a familiar, more recent choice, Pete Seeger‘s Where Have All The Flowers Gone. The song’s structure employs circular repetition to devastating effect, each verse asking where something has gone—flowers, young girls, young men, soldiers, graveyards—until the cycle completes: flowers have been picked by young girls, who have married young men, who have become soldiers, who have died in wars, who are buried in graveyards, which are covered with flowers. Crumb succeeds in bringing the tragic cycle into perspective in an interpretation that breathes new life into a work that has been trivialized by nostalgic campfire sing-alongs.

Viet Cuong, a Vietnamese-American composer who has been featured at prior Present Music concerts, has been commissioned to write a new work. The result, Music of the While, draws in part from works by 17th-century English artist, Henry Purcell. In Purcell’s composition, the song seeks to calm one of the Furies who seek to persecute Oedipus for killing his father. Cuong writes, “Purcell conjures the uncanny power of music to linger, to enchant, to briefly ease the weight of existence. In Music of the While, I set fragments of these songs in a reverberant atmosphere where melodies and bass lines echo, refract, and swirl through the ensemble. Purcell once offered music to soften cares and suspend time, I offer this piece for ours…”

To hear the Coung premiere, watch for a Present Music CD to be issued next year featuring a number of commissions.

All Souls’ Eve is marked in Mexico with the creation of ofrendas, temporary exhibits honoring the lives of persons to remember. Artist Francisco X Mora has been invited to create ofrendas that celebrate the lives of Frieda Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Near that exhibit, attendees are encouraged to bring photos or small mementos of persons they may wish to honor.

The concert begins at Friday, October 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Dr. A full evening is planned. Mexican food trucks will be parked at the entrance starting at 5:30 pm. The concert ticket includes access to the Milwaukee Art Museum. At 6:30 p.m., hear a preconcert conversation with composer Viet Cuong, guest conductor Deanna Tham, and artist Mora, moderated by Milwaukee Art Museum curator Kantara Souffrant. Tickets may be purchased online.

Museum exhibits include a recently opened blockbuster exhibit, the Bradley Collection of Modern Art: A Bold Vision for Milwaukee. The exhibit features 100 works by renowned artists Barbara Hepworth, Alex Katz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko, among many others from the 400 item Peg Bradley collection.

Present Music will return within a few weeks, Sunday, November 23, with an annual highlight, the Thanksgiving celebration at the Cathedral of Saint John’s the Evangelist, featuring music by Caroline Shaw and Paul Wanko, the Ho Chunk family drum Little Priest Singers, and a visit by the four-time Grammy-winning choir, The Crossing from Philadelphia. The program will also premiere a commissioned work by Christopher Cerrone.

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