Huang Ruo’s mesmerizing sonic reflection on healing and hope offers an opportunity for serene reflection through music. Present Music, Milwaukee’s premiere new music group, returns to Madison for this contemplative program of the achingly moving A Dust in Time.
(Image: “Touched by Light” by Tommy Druin. PO Box 531 Leland, IL 60531 tommydruin@gmail.com, https://tom-druin.pixels.com. Used with permission)
A Dust in Time
Huang Ruo’s mesmerizing sonic reflection on healing and hope. An opportunity for serene reflection through music.
The uninterrupted musical meditation is inspired by and structured like a Tibetan sand mandala, a pulsating journey originating from an essential central point and expanding into a colourful fullness, and returning back to its essence again. Running sixty minutes to symbolise the cycle of the hour, the work represents a spiritual cycle of life completed, traveling from emptiness to fullness and back, growing towards ecstasy from silence before returning to its source.
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.
The welcoming beauty of the fully-refurbished barn that serves as Token Creek 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.
Composer Huang Ruo
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.
His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and James Conlon.
The Artists
Present Music is one of the nation’s leading ensembles specializing in the commissioning and performance of new music. Its mission is to engage artists and audience members in imaginative and provocative experiences with new music through ensemble performance and education. Founded in 1982 and based in Milwaukee, Present Music has worked closely with many of the nation's most exciting and important composers, and has firmly established one of the largest audiences for new music in the country.
Audiences “can almost always expect Present Music to bring on the unexpected” (The Shepherd Express) with programming that introduces innovative concert formats, embraces a broad diversity of repertoire, and makes the music of our time accessible to audiences with deep expression and serious fun. The Present Music ensemble ranges from a core group of seven musicians to an ensemble of twenty or more, expanding and contracting to perform the broadest possible range of music, often in unusual spaces.
In 2019, violinist/composer Eric Segnitz and conductor David Bloom became Present Music’s Co-Artistic Directors, bringing “breathtaking and inspired programming” (The Shepherd Express) to the ensemble’s stages. Their tenure follows conductor and musical community builder Kevin' Stalheim’s 37 years of service as founder and Artistic Director.
The ensemble has made a significant contribution to contemporary classical music, having commissioned and premiered over 80 significant new works from composers around the world and recorded many of them for the Argo, Albany, Aoede, Northeastern, Naxos, and Innova labels. Composers who have worked in residence or have been commissioned by Present Music include Pulitzer Prize-winning composers John Adams, Henry Brant, David Lang, Caroline Shaw, and Du Yun along with such luminaries as Elena Kats-Chernin, Annie Gosfield, Kamran Ince, Jerome Kitzke, Ingram Marshall, Missy Mazzoli, Bright Sheng, Roberto Sierra, and Michael Torke. Present Music also works with many of today’s most exciting emerging composers. Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass, commissioned and premiered by Present Music, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Present Music shows the world that Milwaukee is a center for creativity, having toured extensively throughout the United States and participated in major international music festivals in Japan, New York City, Turkey, and China. Present Music is also the unprecedented, six-time winner of ASCAP/Chamber Music America’s Adventurous Programming Award.
The ensemble nurtures the next generation of composers through its education program, the Creation Project, in which students in Milwaukee public schools have the opportunity to learn how to compose and to hear their works performed by professional musicians.
More information
• For immediate release: A Dust in Time - Huang Ruo’s sonic reflection on hope and healing (Newsletter April 2, 2025)
• “Many listeners will find this remarkable work a consolation” – FIELD NOTES for April 20th (Newsletter April 8, 2025)
• “A rare treat for Madison audiences: Present Music at Token Creek on April 20th” - Meet the Artists (Field Notes) (Newsletter April 13, 2025)