Review- Present Music & Burkina Electric

Present Music is the charming, eccentric uncle of the Milwaukee music scene. Always unpredictable, given to bouts of self-effacing humor as well as occasional pithy insights, he’s the guy you look forward to seeing at family reunions.
Saturday at Turner Hall, PM took another step deeper into the brazen eclecticism that makes them one of the most interesting arts groups in town. Throwing the spotlight on composer/performer Lucas Ligeti, it showcased the entirety of his interests—from high-modern (or postmodern—who’s keeping score) art music to tech-savvy experiments to cross-cultural pop.
The PM ensemble started the evening, performing a string quartet by Ligeti (which I unfortunately missed due to a time mix-up), a world-premiere by Caroline Mallonnee and some standard fare by Philip Glass. Mallonnee is familiar to Milwaukee via her piece for beer bottles performed by PM last year, but “Reaction” is a full-blooded and serious work. A workout for percussion, it’s full of driving—yet off-centered—rhythms and interestingly textured layers. Two pieces from Glass’s familiar “Facades” gave keyboardist Philip Bush and the PM’s wind and horn players a chance to shake the roof, and they did.
Ligeti’s Marimba Lumina is a curious animal. “Invented” by Ligeti in the hope of putting some “motion” into the playing or electronic music, the solo pieces he played here offered a strange disconnect between sight and sound. At times, notes registered as Ligeti brought the color-coded mallets down on the surface of the instrument (a flat, electronically coded table). But most of the time, his mallet-strokes seemed to just hit switches or buttons that turned on various electronic sound generators. So while he wailed away on this “percussion” instrument, we heard a swirling, electronic swoosh through the speakers that seemed completely dispossessed from the player.
Behind the group, Burkina Electric, Ligeti’s electronics (he was joined by Kurt Dahlke, who played a couple of motion-sensitive, percussive light sticks) were an interesting backdrop to the Afro-Pop blend of guitar and voices. There is no absence of movement here. The lead singer, Mai Lingani, was always flanked by two dancers–Hugues Zoko and Idrissa Kafando–as she sang beat-heavy songs about love, money and other travails of modern life. Much of the audience, perhaps used to the generally cerebral tenor of contemporary art music, seemed a little shocked. This is dance hall music, and while a small contingent of movers and shakers clustered in the corner of the room, most of the audience defied the rhythmic pulse and stayed cemented to their seats.