November 21st Thanksgiving Concert

 This just in...we recieved this press release about a Thanksgiving concert.  Looks like a pretty neat event!


Present Music’s Thanksgiving Tradition Continues


(Milwaukee, WI-November 9) Present Music (PM) will perform its annual, community-inspired Thanksgiving concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist Sunday, November 21 at 4pm. PM will once again be joined by Milwaukee Choral Artists (MCA), Milwaukee Children’s Choir (MCC) and Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group. PM’s Thanksgiving concert has earned a reputation as a highlight of Milwaukee’s performance calendar. This year promises continued excellence through community collaborations and inspiring music.



The MCA and the PM Ensemble will present the Midwest premiere of John Tavener’s ravishingly beautiful Come and Do Your Will in Me and The Lord’s Prayer. In addition to the MCA performance, MCC’s Jubilate group will sing selections from Srul Irving Glick’s Psalm Trilogy featuring a string quintet by the PM Ensemble. Organist Karen Beaumont will perform a piece by French composer Jeanne Demessieux. This will be the first time PM will perform works by Demessieux and Glick. The concert will once again feature an audience sing-a-long, a collective friendship dance, and traditional songs from the Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group.



Srul Irving Glick (1934-2002)
Psalm 92 (1999)



Thomas Larcher b. 1963
String Quartet #3/Madhares (2006/2007)
Fourth Movement: sleepless 2



John Tavener b. 1944
Lord’s Prayer (1999)



John Adams b. 1947
Shaker Loops (1978)
1. Shaking and Trembling
2. Hymning Slews
3. Loops and Verses
4. A Final Shaking



Jeanne Demessieux (1921-1968)
Repons Pour Le Temps De Paques (1962-1963)



John Tavener
Come and Do Your Will In Me (1997)



Srul Irving Glick
Psalm 47 (1999)



Friendship Dance (Please join the dance or remain seated) Traditional



Closing Song (Please stand) Traditional



About the Music
Psalm Trilogy: Psalm 47 & 92 (1999)

Psalm Trilogy was commissioned for the Toronto Children’s Chorus. The composer states:



“I proceeded to compile a libretto based on the psalms of David (Psalm 92, Psalm 47 and Psalm 23) using both Hebrew and English in the text. Shortly after that, I composed the music for what was later to become Psalm Trilogy. Being a religious and spiritually-oriented person, setting the Psalms has always been a special joy to me.



String Quartet #3/Madhares (2006/2007)
Fourth Movement: sleepless 2
Velocity is in fact a decisive factor in this string quartet and permitted Larcher to discover a method of composition with which he was previously unacquainted. Certain parts of the compositional concept which could not be accommodated in earlier movements find their place here: ostinato figures out of which velocity is produced and also the pairing off of instruments. The first violin and cello join together to perform an irregular dance and the inner two voices simultaneously play a sort of chorale as cantus firmus: on the one hand, a vexing surface and on the other hand a calm melodic progression – two levels which are then reversed in the instrumentation.

The impressions of the island of Crete to where Larcher retreated for the composition had an indirect effect on the creation of the work. The composer’s imagination was stimulated by the names of villages. He came across the name of Madhares and yellowed photos of a settlement above the steep cliff-line. Madhares became for the composer the vision of a past shrouded in mystery.
~Source: Rainer Lepuschitz/www.thomaslarcher.com

Lord’s Prayer (1999)
The Lord’s Prayer was commissioned by the Tallis Scholars as a piece for four-part, unaccompanied, mixed voices and is a striking example of Tavener’s use of gentle repetition, allowing the listener to perceive both music and text as suspended in time. This short yet hypnotic piece is beautifully meditative, drawing in performer and listener alike to a place of interior stillness and tranquility. Of this piece, Tavener writes: “The Lord’s Prayer should be sung very quietly, with an inner serenity and calm that is almost “silent.” This is the Prayer of all Prayers, and nothing can violate its silent theophany.”

Shaker Loops (1978)
Shaker Loops began as a string quartet with the title Wavemaker. Having experienced American Minimalism during the 1970's, Adams thought the combination of stripped-down harmonic and rhythmic discourse might be just the ticket for his own unformed yearnings. He developed a scheme for composing that was partly indebted to the repetitive procedures of Minimalism and partly an outgrowth of his interest in waveforms. The "waves" of Wavemaker were to be long sequences of oscillating melodic cells that created a rippling pattern like the surface of an agitated pond. But his technique lagged behind his inspiration, and Wavemaker failed at its first performance. The need for a larger, thicker ensemble and a less theory-bound means of composing became apparent.

Adams held on to the oscillating patterns and made an overall structure that could embrace more variety and emotional range. The quartet became a septet adding a sonic mass and the potential for more acoustical power. The "loops" idea was a technique from the era of tape music where small lengths of prerecorded tape attached end to end could repeat melodic or rhythmic figures. The Shakers portion was a pun on the musical term "to shake", meaning to make a tremolo with the bow across the string or to trill rapidly from one note to another.

The flip side of the pun was suggested by his memories of growing up near a Shaker colony in New Hampshire. Adams now knows that the term "Shaker" is derogatory, however it still summons up the vision of these pious and industrious souls caught up in the ecstatic frenzy of a dance that culminated in an epiphany of physical and spiritual transcendence. This dynamic, almost electrically charged element, so out of place in the orderly mechanistic universe of Minimalism, gave the music its raison d'être and led to the full realization of the piece.

Repons Pour Le Temps De Paques (1962-63)
Premiered on the Aristide Cavaille-Coll organ of Saint-Ouen in Rouen.

Come And Do Your Will In Me (1997)
The text is an expansive entreaty to the Supreme Being, and has its origins in the Hymn of Entry by Archimandrite Vasileios (Abbot of the Iviron Monastery in Greece) and from the Orthodox Liturgy. Tavener writes: “The music must be sung with enormous intensity and sonority, casting all into the fire of God.”

Come and do Your will in me.

Come when You wish and as You see fit.

Come like a breeze, [come] like a blessing, if You think it right.

Come like a thunderbolt to test me and burn up my being,

If You think that is how it should be.



Let each journey freely on the road of his life.

Let each sail on the sea of his uncertain fate.



Sail with the voyagers,

Fare with the wayfarers,

Heal the sick, O Physician of our souls and bodies.



Come and do Your will in me.

Come when You wish and as You see fit.

Come like a breeze, [come] like a blessing, if You think it right.

Come like a thunderbolt to test me and burn up my being,

If You think that is how it should be.



About the Composers

Srul Irving Glick

Srul Irving Glick grew up in Toronto and was educated at the University of Toronto where he received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in composition and theory. He continued his studies in Paris before teaching theory and composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music and York University.



One of Canada’s most prominent composers, Glick’s music is performed regularly around the world. His unique integration of contemporary music, Hebraic lyricism and classical composition techniques, formed into masterful and character-filled music has won him considerable acclaim.

Source~SrulIrvingGlick.com



Thomas Larcher

Larcher grew up in Austria studying piano and composition in Vienna before embarking on a career combining composition, performing, teaching and festival direction. Larcher's compositions are notable for their momentum, directness of expression and quality of invention. His works have been described as occupying 'a refreshing middle ground in the contemporary music scene, somewhere between the complexity of the Boulez Stockhausen avant-garde and the newer wave of simplicity.' He has a special ability to cast new light on the established repertoire, both through his searching interpretation and through programming that reveals links, contrasts and comparisons in music.
Source~Thomas-Larcher.com



Sir John Tavener

Tavener was born in London and was raised a Protestant but as a young man converted to Catholicism. In 1977, Tavener became a member of the Orthodox Church. Orthodox theology and Orthodox liturgical traditions became a major influence on his work. Tavener burst into international public awareness in 1997, when the Song for Athene was performed at Princess Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.



One of the most commercially successful living composers, Sir John Tavener has undergone a remarkable musical and spiritual odyssey. After his conversion to the Orthodox religion, he formulated a unique new idiom, often employing a slow, almost minimalist unfolding of melodic material. Much of his music is designed for religious services.



Called “holy minimalism” for lack of a better description, the music of Tavener has found an enormously receptive audience by reuniting classical music with contemplative spirituality. “Holy minimalism” is to music what contemplative spirituality is to prayer. To most, prayer involves addressing our words to God; but to the contemplative, prayer means listening in receptive silence. In traditional classical music you expect to hear development of musical ideas moving forward to a climactic conclusion, this music seems to go nowhere and that is intentional. The purpose is contemplation. The music is meditative, hypnotic, and gently repetitive. The gentle repetition gives the music a feeling of being suspended in time.
~Source: www.ClassicalArchives.com; New Spirituality In Choral Music by Martha Ainsworth



John Adams
Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his father. He began composing at age ten and heard his first orchestral pieces performed while still a teenager. The intellectual and artistic traditions of New England, including his studies at Harvard University and attendance at Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, helped shape him as an artist and thinker. After earning two degrees from Harvard, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has since lived in the San Francisco Bay area.



One of America’s most admired and respected composers, John Adams is a musician of enormous range and technical command. His works, both operatic and symphonic, stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Over the past 25 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language.

~Source: Earbox.com

Jeanne Demessieux
Jeanne Demessieux was born in southern France and attended the Montpellier Conservatory before attending the Paris Conservatory to study piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue, and composition. Between 1936 and 1939, she studied organ privately with Marcel Dupré. After receiving a first prize in organ performance and improvisation in 1941, Demessieux studied five more years privately with Dupré, before she played her début recital at Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1946. This was the beginning of her career as an international recitalist. She played more than 700 concerts in Europe and the United States. Demessieux had a prodigious memory: she memorized more than 2,500 works, including the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn and Marcel Dupré.

The first woman to give a recital in Westminster Abbey, Demessieux enjoyed a stupendous performing career and a reputation as a brilliant technician and improviser. Reviews of her North American tours rarely fail to mention her virtuosic pedal-playing in high French heels.
Source: ClassicalComposers.com

About the Guest Artists

Milwaukee Choral Artists

Founded by Sharon Hansen in 1998 as a chamber ensemble comprised of professional solo singers, the Milwaukee Choral Artists (MCA) is Wisconsin's premiere professional choral ensemble, and one of only five professional women’s vocal ensembles in the country. Regularly hailed for its imaginative programming, the group has quickly established itself in the mainstream of professional music. The Milwaukee Choral Artists performs three regular season concerts and several other special concerts each year at historic venues throughout the Milwaukee area. Committed to presenting music from diverse cultures, the ensemble has performed music in twenty-nine languages from more than forty world cultures since its inception. More information can be found at http://www.milwaukeechoralartists.org.



Milwaukee Children’s Choir

Milwaukee Children's Choir (MCC) is Southeastern Wisconsin's premier professional children's choir. Led by artistic director Carol Storck, MCC has programs for children of all school ages. Rehearsals are educational, child centered, age appropriate, and fun, and teach not only music but also important life skills such as poise, self-confidence, self-discipline, focus, memory, problem solving, and teamwork. MCC’s commitment to artistic excellence makes it the “go to” choir for performing arts groups such as Present Music, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Ballet, and Festival City Symphony, and led The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to declare MCC a "highly skilled and essential musical resource" in Milwaukee. Learn more at www.milwaukeechildrenschoir.org.



The Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group

The Bucks are a Northern Contemporary Style Drum Group that consists of Woodland Tribal Members from the Milwaukee area. The drum group has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada, hosting, supporting, and performing at pow-wows and other gatherings. The Bucks not only sing and practice traditional song and dance, but also compose a great deal of their own songs. Tribes represented by the Bucks include Ojibwa, Oneida, Winnebago, Menominee, and Ho-Chunk.



General Info

Patrons are encouraged to donate food to benefit Hunger Task Force at the Thanksgiving performance. PM will offer $10 off ticket coupons for Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) with the donation of three non-perishable food items. Food can be donated at the Cathedral on November 21st. Patrons can also purchase $1 raffle tickets for a chance to win a Schoehut toy piano with all proceeds benefiting Hunger Task Force.



Single ticket prices are $30, $20 and $5 for students. Only five $30 tickets remain at this time. Subscriptions start at $65. Tickets will be available by phone until Friday, November 19 at 5pm. Online sales will remain open until Sunday, November 21 at noon. Non-discounted tickets will be available at the door. Students must order by phone. This performance is not recommended for children 5 years and younger. Buy online at www.presentmusic.org or call (414) 271-0711. Hi-res photos are available.



Present Music office: 158 North Broadway, Milwaukee, WI 53202

Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist: 812 N. Jackson St., Milwaukee, WI 53202
This event is an independent function and is not related to, nor sponsored by, nor controlled by the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.





Present Music 2010-11 Season

Season Opener with Gabriel Prokofiev and Phillip Bush – September 18, 2010 at 8pm

Thanksgiving Concert – November 21, 2010 at 4pm

TOYS! Margaret Leng Tan – January 8, 2011 at 7:30pm

D/IVA Iva Bittová – March 19, 2011 at 7:30pm

Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) – May 7, 2011 at 4:30pm & 7:30pm

Season Finale with Amy X Neuburg – June 18, 2011 at 7:30pm



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Present Music is Milwaukee’s internationally acclaimed new music ensemble. Celebrating 29 years of new music, Present Music commissions, performs, records, and tours the music of living composers. In the past quarter century, more than 55 new works, by composers from around the world, have come into existence because of Present Music. Founded by Kevin Stalheim, Present Music works closely with many of the world’s most exciting and significant composers while supporting the talents of emerging voices. It nurtures the next generation of composers through its education program, the Creation Project.



Present Music is a member of the United Performing Arts Fund, which provides major financial support. This performance is supported in part by a grant from the Milwaukee Arts Board and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin. Present Music is also supported in part by grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the National Endowment for the Arts, CAMPAC, and by the generous support of foundations, corporations and individuals. Additional community support provided by Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C., Wisconsin Public Radio, 88nine Radio Milwaukee, and WMSE. PM is the five-time winner of ASCAP/Chamber Music America’s Adventurous Programming Award and can be heard on nine compact disk recordings on the Argo, Albany, Aoede, Northeastern, Naxos and Innova labels.



Present Music engages artists and audiences in imaginative and provocative experiences with new music through ensemble performance, education and commissioning.




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