Ligeti and Burkina Electric will be theguests of Milwaukee’scontemporary music ensemble and presenter, Present Music, at a Feb. 6 TurnerHall Ballroom concert. Along with a performance by Burkina Electric, the 7:30p.m. show will include Present Music performing Ligeti’s composition forstrings, Moving Houses, plus a pairof 1980s-era Philip Glass pieces and the world premiere of Caroline Mallonee’s Reaction.
While acknowledging a debt to hisdistinguished father, Ligeti was drawn in directions that led far away fromEuropean modernism. Like many younger composers, he feels no obligation tostick to any one thing; rather, his track record is one of restless explorationinto jazz, rock, electronics and the music of Africa.In 1998 he moved to New Yorkand became part of the “downtown scene” of musicians whose taste for theavant-garde melds into the sonic language of rock. Six years later he foundedBurkina Electric with Mai Lingani, whose sharp, penetrating vocals dominate theband along with Ligeti’s marimba lumina, a MIDI percussion synthesizer in thekey of sub-Saharan Africa.
“It’s an orchestral instrumentamarimba with electronics associated with it,” Present Music Artistic DirectorKevin Stalheim says of Ligeti’s signature instrument. “It runs from stringsounds to electronic sounds to an actual marimba. It’s mind blowing when hedoes it live.”
Ligeti has explained that his embraceof the marimba lumina, which is armed with an arsenal of sampled sounds, camefrom his boredom in watching mouse-clicking musicians with laptops on stage. Hewanted an instrument that looked more dynamicthat audiences could engage withvisually as well as sonically.
“It’s the old and the new comingtogether,” Stalheim continues. “We know all about Fela [Kuti]. Burkina Electricadds the dimension of a new music composer to Afro-pop. You might find yourselfin an ethereal soundscape all of a sudden! It’s an adventure beyond pop music,but Burkina Electric is a kick-ass Afro-pop band.”
A lot of “world beat” is an artificialgrafting of disparate elements, a cold fusion. For Stalheim, Burkina Electric’smusic “sounds very natural. It represents the new world of young composers inthe pop and academic worlds.”
Representing another side of his manyinterests, Ligeti’s Moving Houses isa string quartet originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The musicbegins with simple, moody themes and develops into a complex web of references toeverything from “Eleanor Rigby” to African rhythm and Gypsy fiddling.
In the eclectic realm of Saturday’sconcert program, the pair of Glass pieces, with elegantly spinning wheels ofminimalism, represents familiarity, the grounding in an already well-establishedtradition of postmodernism. The final composer on the bill, Mallonee, will befamiliar to Present Music fans. Her composition for three musicians playingbeer bottles, arranged around the theme of the old Milwaukee favorite “100 Bottles of Beer onthe Wall,” was a hit when performed by Present Music in 2008.
The new work by Mallonee to be unveiledSaturday has nothing to do with beer, Africaor electronica. Written for violin, viola, cello, bass, tenor saxophone,clarinet, percussion and piano, “it’s rhythmically intricate, even though thebeat is steady,” Stalheim says. “The musicians play their notes in less obviousplaces.”
It sounds challenging and is part ofthe mélange of seriousness and fun that has long marked Present Music’sconcerts.
Fortickets and information, visit www.presentmusic.org or www.pabsttheater.org, orcall Present Music at 271-0711 or the Pabst Theater box office at 286-3205.
