Milwaukee Musaik has had crescendos and decrescendos throughout its 50 years. The chamber ensemble will celebrate those years, and the musicians that shaped it and eventually saved it, with a golden anniversary concert on April 14 at Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church.
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Founded as the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra in 1974 by Stephen Colburn, the ensemble was born out of a regular outdoor concert series at Villa Terrace in the early ’70s.
It found audience success filling a missing “niche of chamber orchestra works” in the city, says Alexander Mandl, current conductor of Milwaukee Musaik. The Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra sustained high-caliber performances and even grow in that time.
In addition to playing chamber works and hidden gems in and outside of the classical canon, part of its mission was also “to highlight and spotlight the great talent within the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra,” Mandl says. Many of the ensemble’s members were – and continue to be – second or third chair musicians in the MSO.
In 1996, the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra established a residency at Wisconsin Lutheran College’s then-new Schwan Concert Hall. “In my humble opinion, [the hall] is the best chamber music acoustics that we have in Milwaukee,” Mandl says. But the ensemble’s fortunes turned. Colburn left his position in 2002 due to strained relations with the board, and the MCO struggled to find a replacement. It suspended performances for two years before conductor Richard Hynson revived the ensemble in 2006.
From there, the chamber orchestra had several high points, such as an outdoor concert in Cathedral Square Park with Bel Canto Chorus for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and a performance of María de Buenos Aires with Danceworks MKE and the Milwaukee Opera Theatre.
But in 2015, shrinking funds and number of board members put the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra on the brink of shutting down. “The articles to dissolve the corporation were about to be filed in January 2015, and musicians were asked to participate to try to find a solution,” says Mandl, who played violin in the ensemble.
Its musicians ended up taking over the board and transforming the group’s operations. There’s no longer a music director – the musicians themselves make the artistic and financial decisions of the ensemble. This big shift prompted them to change the ensemble’s name to Milwaukee Musaik – intended to reflect its new model of musicians from other ensembles and university faculties around Milwaukee coming together to form a whole.
For the Musaik’s golden anniversary concert, the group is bringing together Colburn, Hynson and Mandl to conduct. The finale is Richard Strauss’ Le bourgeouis gentilhomme, which is “one of the most challenging works for chamber orchestra,” says Mandl. “The last time it was done (in Milwaukee) was by the MSO with Andreas Delfs nearly 30 years ago.”
Preceding it is a commissioned piece by Wisconsin composer Christian Ellenwood commemorating the Milwaukee Musiak’s history. Mandl says it opens with oboe, Colburn’s principal instrument, and grows into the full chamber orchestra, like “a small seed germinating into a big tree.”
