Present Music’s Baroque Pop! to Bring Composers Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, and More For One Sensational Show

MILWAUKEE – As today’s abundant Wes Anderson videos and memes attest, the Baroque Pop genre is thriving more than ever. Performing on May 25th for the first time in her hometown will be Milwaukee-born Baroque Pop star, Julia Holter. The Los Angeles composer and multi-instrumentalist is known worldwide for her 2015 top-selling indie album “Have You in My Wilderness.” In addition to Holter, Present Music has also invited Los Angeles avant-garde composer Tashi Wada to play with them.

Presented in conjunction with the Milwaukee Art Museum‘s new exhibit, The Brilliance of the Spanish World: El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, this concert will immerse visitors in the decadent essence of 17th and 18th century culture. Hearing Holter in the gorgeous Milwaukee Art Museum Calatrava atrium will heighten all the senses and critics have compared Holter’s ethereal voice and style to Joanna Newsom. Holter will perform many of her best-selling numbers.

The program will open with time travel to the Baroque era with composer François Couperin’s “The Mysterious Barricades.” Next, “Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw creates thoroughly modern music using instruments typically associated with 18th-century courtiers in white powdered wigs. Following that will be “Behind The Wallpaper” by Alex Temple, a suite for voice and string quartet that describes a mysterious transformation in eerie David Lynch style. Closing the show Present Music and Holter will be joined by Tashi Wada, who will bathe listeners in joyous vibrations of bagpipes, ecstatic drones, and unconventional tunings— a unique sound warmly influenced by Wada’s father, Japanese Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada.

Because it’s Present Music, you know you won’t hear another show like this anywhere else.

Things the critics have already said of Julia Holter…

“A dizzying collage of dreamlike impressions…somewhere between avant-garde composition, mysterious artifact, and sci-fi thriller.”

— The Village Voice

“Holter’s lyricism is something completely distinct.” – Under the Radar

When: Sunday, May 25th, 7:30 pm

Where: Milwaukee Art Museum

Link to Buy Tickets

Interviews with artists and Present Music are available upon request.

Sponsored by Tim & Sue Frautschi and the Laskin Family Foundation

Artist Biographies

Julia Holter, (born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), studied music at the University of Michigan and composition at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2011 she released her debut studio album, “Tragedy,” inspired by Euripides’s Hippolytus. Her fourth album, 2015’s “Have You in My Wilderness,” brought international acclaim; followed by a live recorded studio album “In the Same Room” in 2017, and 2018’s “Aviary,” a double album. Her latest release “Something in the Room She Moves” came out last year.

Tashi Wada is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles, California. Wada completed his BFA in composition at the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with James Tenney. In 2017, Wada formed the ensemble Tashi Wada Group with whom he recorded his 2018 album “Nue,” made in collaboration with his father Yoshi Wada and released by RVNG Intl. His most recent album “What is Not Strange?” was released last year. Wada is the Founder-Director of the label Saltern.

Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic, or fantastical narratives. She’s particularly interested in reclaiming socially disapproved-of (“cheesy”) sounds, playing with the boundary between funny and frightening, investigating lost memories and secret histories, and telling queer and trans stories. Alex got her BA from Yale in 2005, and her MA from the University of Michigan in 2007. After leaving Ann Arbor, she spent two years working for the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program for young composers. In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.

Caroline Shaw is a producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, four Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with iconic artists across the spectrum, including Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Nas, and Kanye West. She recently scored “Leonardo Da Vinci” for Ken Burns and PBS, and keeps a performing relationship with the vocal duo Ringdown and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.