Present Music

A rare treat for Madison listeners: Present Music, Milwaukee’s leading ensemble for new music, returns with an immersive performance of Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time. Modeled after the ritual of creating a Tibetan sand mandala, the piece unfolds over 60 minutes, using the cycle of an hour to symbolize the nature of life. This meditative work is an opportunity to reflect on time and spiritual renewal.

media release:  A one-of-a-kind chamber music concert will take place on Sunday April 20^th at 4:00pm, offering audiences an opportunity for serene reflection through music. The event, a single, meditative composition performed by members of Present Music, will be held in the intimate setting of the Token Creek concert barn.

"Music has the power to create space for introspection—this performance of Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time is designed to be a contemplative retreat, inviting listeners to immerse themselves for one hour in a deeply reflective experience." 

Token Creek, known for the welcoming beauty of the fully-refurbished barn that serves as recital hall, offers a suitably tranquil atmosphere for this rare event. Following the performance, guests are invited to enjoy refreshments and mingle with musicians for community and conversation.

Present Music in Madison  

After an absence of almost two decades, Present Music is returning to Madison, bringing an evocative and meditative program perfectly suited for troubled  times.  

There was a time when the “irrepressibly adventurous” award-winnng new music group from Milwaukee was a fixture on Madison’s concert calendar.  Single concerts in the late ’80s gave way to a formal series beginning in 1991, eventually reaching six concerts a year held in various venues around the city. Madison was second home.  

But despite the group's vibrancy, appeal and importance, Present Music struggled to to gain secure footing in Madison.  Where home concerts in Milwaukee routinely attracted crowds of more than 500, and its international tours were extraordinarily well-received, Madison audiences—devoted and loyal—remained small.  No longer able to sustain the years of operating losses, Present Music pulled up stakes in 2001.  

The idea of reviving a Madison series never fully faded, and now, almost 25 years later, as Token Creek shifts from summer festival to year-round presenter, the partnering of the two groups seems an auspicious match.  Both parties were eager, and yet it was tricky to find just the right event—something of the right scale to fit the intimate space of Token Creek’s barn recital hall.  

That right event came up this spring when Present Music proposed Huang Ruo’s achingly moving and evocative one-hour long A Dust in Time, for string quartet.  This is a rare performance of what has been described as “a mesmerizing sonic reflection on healing and hope.”    

A Dust in Time: A musical space for reflection and hope in bleak times

Huang Ruo’s musical meditation is inspired by and structured like a Tibetan sand mandala, a pulsating journey originating from an essential central point, expanding into a colourful fullness, and returning back to its essence again. Running sixty minutes to symbolise the rotation through the hour, the work represents a spiritual cycle of life, traveling from emptiness to fullness and back, growing towards ecstasy from silence before returning to its source, to completion.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film.