Present Music Celebrates Thanksgiving This Weekend

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For many years, Present Music’s Thanksgiving concert has joined the ranks with the Rep’s A Christmas Carol and the Milwaukee Ballet’s Nutcracker among the city’s favorite annual holiday arts outings.

This year’s concert, on Sunday Nov. 21, features world premiere by Diné (Navajo) composer Raven Chacon, Voiceless Mass. Present Music Co-Artistic Director Eric Segnitz describes the chamber piece as “an engaging, non-traditional work which induces wonder and a heightened awareness of an ever-changing sound environment.”

Much of the program is focused on Milwaukee, including a Present Music audience favorite, Four Proverbs, by Milwaukee-reared composer Michael Torke. Along with the Present Music ensemble, the program features the Reagan High School Choir singing Caroline Shaw’s choral work To the Hands and a performance by The Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group. Contralto Kirsten Sollek will sing “Four Proverbs,” Canadian composer Peter Hannan’s Trinkets of Little Value and Russian composer Vladimir Martynov’s Beatitudes.

Prefacing the concert is a screening of a short film by Ho-Chunk filmmaker Sky Hopinka whose mission is to explore the possibilities of indigenous cinema.

“As with so many things, events of the past 18 months have changed the context of this concert somewhat,” Segnitz says. “We’re inevitably more aware of the fragility of life right now. The basic human need to gather and express thanks—it helps us to balance those uncertainties, and also helps us to fully grasp all of life’s ups and downs. We thought it appropriate this year to call the program ‘Circle Unbroken,’ not so much for the iconic country song, but for the earlier Black Elk proverb of gratitude:

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‘So long as the sacred hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. A nest of many nests...’ The Native culture’s values and honor of the natural order ring particularly true for us in 2021.”

“Circle Unbroken” begins with a pre-concert talk and film screening at 4 p.m., followed by the 5 p.m. concert on Sunday, Nov. 21 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson St. COVID-19 protocols will be in place. For more information, visit presentmusic.org.

Present Music will not live-stream “Circle Unbroken” on Nov. 21 but will instead offer a more fully produced stream of the event broadcast on YouTube 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 24 and available anytime for holiday viewing through Nov. 28.