Present Music Marks Season 45 with 12-Musicians Feature

Present Music launched its 45th season on Friday with a concert titled Forty Something. The program focused on the human body as both an instrument and a subject, a theme that ran through every selection on the bill.

Conductor Deanna Tham directed a group of more than a dozen musicians for the evening's centerpiece, Donnacha Dennehy's Limina. The work comprises three movements named Head, Chest, and Nervous System. Tham managed the complex instrumentation across these sections, which ranged from bustling textures to heavy piano passages and staccato pulses.

The ensemble included Alex Wier, who used his own body as a percussion instrument during Vinko Globokar's ?Corporel. He produced sound through self-inflicted slaps while mannequin limbs appeared on a screen above the stage. Electric guitarist Derek Johnson performed Alex Temple's 3 Arms and 17 Half-Legs, a piece that blended skronk-jazz elements to disrupt traditional structure.

Other works included a rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, played by a pianist to start the show. A piece called Forty Something reworked Mozart's Symphony No. 40 into a funk-jazz arrangement, featuring a piano, horns, guitar, and saxophone. The program also featured Doublespeak, which drew on the styles of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Mike Lizzo, a tuba player, anchored the sound for the Extra Crispy Brass Band during the finale. As Limina concluded, the horn and drum octet entered from the theater's back row. The group paraded to the stage's edge and then proceeded down the opposite aisle into the lobby.

The brass band performed New Orleans second-line tunes, including Go to the Mardi Gras, Iko, Iko, and Feet Don't Fail Me Now. The procession ended with the Jackson 5 song I Want You Back. Audience members stayed in the lobby to eat cake and drink champagne to mark the season's opening.