LISTEN
To Kevin Stalheim, Artistic Director talk about the concert and hear an excerpt from Buffalo Nation (Bison bison)

 

 

 


Buffalo

Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 4:30pm and 7:30pm
Indian Community School
(10405 W. St. Martin's Rd., Franklin, WI)

Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 4pm
Lincoln Center of the Arts
(820 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee, WI 53202)

$35/$25/$15/students half price
Phone sales: (414) 271-0711 Monday-Friday 9am-5pm; students must order by phone or at the door
This performance is not recommended for young children.

 



Saturday, April 14 at 4:30pm

Saturday, April 14 at 7:30pm

Sunday, April 15 at 4pm - Tickets will not be available at the door.


Present Music will perform the World Premiere of Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) by composer and Milwaukee native Jerome Kitzke and librettist Kathleen Masterson. Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) is one of the largest commissions in Present Music history. This piece will illuminate in music and text the huge, varied and largely untold story of the American Bison from pre-history to the herd’s late 19th century decimation and on to present time. Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) is scored for solo singer, four actors, 28 member sound effects chorus, accordion, banjo, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, bass, Hammond organ, piano, and percussion.

Video Tour of the Indian Community School

Thank you to our sponsors and community partners! 

The Map Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation; Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, Suzanne and Richard Pieper Family Foundation and by other individual donors. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 


 

       

Decimation of buffalo herds in the late 19th century

  • Chronicled by historians, depicted in paintings and films
  • Never been portrayed in a theatrical musical setting to our knowledge
  • 30-80 million bison on the Great Plains as of the 1850s
  • Bison’s range was 1.5 million square miles of plains area; 500,000 square miles of prairie; 1 million square miles of forest area
  • Fewer than 500 bison left by 1890

The decimation will be at the heart of Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) and will lead into the stories of the irreversible effect on the Native Nation cultures and the sociological aspect of what it took for the young American culture to politically and spiritually execute such massive destruction. The piece will present the herds before human contact, as well as their current status in North America and how the decimation still resonates today.  The piece will look at the idea of American Manifest Destiny, including the notion that we are entitled to take what we want without consequences, but above all in a musically inventive way.

Jerome Kitzke

Kathleen Masterson

  • Has written opera, music-theater, and songs with composers Jerome Kitzke, Jeff Langley, and David Bishop
  • Wrote a full length opera, The Children of the Keweenaw, with Paul T. Seitz
  • Wrote a work for narrator and small chamber ensemble, The Blood Orange, with Max Lifchitz
  • Works have been performed in Amsterdam; Regensburg, Germany; Oakland, CA; Sonoma County, CA; NYC; Albany, NY
  • Received funding from the NEA, Michigan Council on Arts and Culture, and by a Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant
  • Co-founded the Spencer Cherashore Fund (1997-2006), which provided artistic development grants to actors over the age of 40
  • Earned a BFA, Theater, North Carolina School of the Arts; MA, Dramatic Theory and Criticism, New York University
  • Attended Rose Bruford School of Drama, Kent, England and eclectic music studies in voice, theory and harmony, choral singing, piano, banjo and music history.

She lives in Manhattan, and not too far from a buffalo ranch in the magical Catskill Mountains.

Program

  • 1. Prelude: On the Ladder of Rivers
  • 2. The Herd 1
  • 3. The Place Where the Winds Call Their Names
  • 4. The Herd 2
  • 5. Buffalo Nation
  • 6. The Herd 3 DRUM
  • 7. Butcher’s Crossing (the Decimation)
  • 8. The Herd 4
  • 9. The Buffalo Savers
  • 10. The Herd 5
  • 11. Buffalo Commons
  • 12. The Herd 6
  • 13. What Is Good Is Given Back
  • 14. The Herd 7
  • 15. Postlude: All Flesh Is Grass

Front page of the Buffalo Nation (Bison bison) score