Present Music invites audiences into an immersive world of music, film, and ceremony with Rituals, Spells, and Charms, a ciné-concert taking place March 20 and 21 at Jan Serr Studio, where film and live music unfold as one. Composed by an eclectic group of living composers, the program explores ritual, repetition, trance, rhythm, and transformation across cultures and musical languages, creating a shared space shaped by the alchemy of film and music.
At the heart of the program is Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, a collaboration between composer Vijay Iyer and acclaimed, late filmmaker Prashant Bhargava. Iyer’s score is performed live alongside Bhargava’s cinematic footage from the eight days and nights of Holi celebrations in Mathura, India, evoking the incandescent, communal energy of the festival. Present Music brings this experience to Milwaukee just weeks after the annual Holi celebrations take place in Mathura, creating a rare sense of immediacy between contemporary performance and long-standing tradition. In addition to the performance, audiences can enjoy Indian beverages, desserts, and curated visual and musical elements inspired by Holi, offering a welcoming extension of the film’s cultural context.
Inspired in part by Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Iyer and Bhargava were drawn to Holi as a parallel expression of seasonal transformation. Where Stravinsky’s score famously explores spring through tension and upheaval, Radhe Radhe responds with joy, devotion, and communal release. The result is what the artists describe as “a ballet of sorts,” a performative encounter between live music and film, lived experience and myth, the self and the transformed self.
Alongside Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, the program features music by Jlin (Little Black Book), an experimental chamber work shaped by bold rhythms and freedom of sound), Judd Greenstein (Jitter Pocket), and Christopher Cerrone (Hoyt-Schermerhorn), creating a wide-ranging evening that blends cinematic soundscapes, infectious grooves, and rhythm-driven chamber music. Critically acclaimed pianists John Orfe and Isabelle O’Connell perform Radhe Radhe and Cerrone’s two-piano Hoyt-Schermerhorn, highlighting the central role of piano across the program.
Principal Conductor David Bloom leads Present Music in this adventurous program, continuing the ensemble’s commitment to bold, genre-crossing performances that connect global traditions with contemporary expression.
From the ecstatic rituals of street festivals to the charged stillness of the urban skyline, Rituals, Spells, and Charms offers a vivid journey through contemporary sound, film, and collective experience.
The Program
Vijay Iyer and Prashant Bhargava, Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi
This sensual work serves as a devotional ritual celebrating the goddess, Radha, using the combined alchemy of sound and cinema to reframe the world through a divine lens.
Jlin, Little Black Book
Originally composed for Kronos Fifty for the Future, Little Black Book reflects Jlin’s pursuit of absolute freedom of sound. Drawing from her background as an electronic music producer while embracing the possibilities of acoustic instruments, the work invites performers into a bold, open-ended sound world shaped by experimentation, rhythm, and instinct.
Judd Greenstein, Jitter Pocket
The international composer blends infectious, hip hop-inspired grooves with classical instrumentation in a vibrant, rhythmically complex work.
Christopher Cerrone, Hoyt-Schermerhorn
The two-piano work pays tribute to the New York skyscape, capturing the nostalgia and anxiety of a semi-deserted Brooklyn subway station.
Rituals, Spells, and Charms
Jan Serr Studio | 2155 North Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee
March 20-21, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
AT
$70 | PREFERRED SEATING
$38 | GENERAL SEATING
$18 | STUDENT SEATING
$25 | ARTIST SEATING
