On musicking Kaleidoscope 8 together

Dean Brian Pertl conducts the entire Kaleidoscope cast for the finale. Photo by Kai Frueh.

On Saturday, Oct. 12, the whirlwind spectacle of Kaleidoscope, featuring students and faculty of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and Lawrence Community Music School (LCMS), returned to the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center (PAC) for its eighth occurrence since the event’s inception in 2006. Coinciding this year with the 150th anniversary of the Conservatory, the 90-minute show was an exhilarating celebration of the wide array of musical styles flourishing in our university community.

Although for audience members the concert experience began at 7:30 p.m., the day began much earlier for performers, with ensembles arriving in the early afternoon hours for sound checks, a rehearsal of the concert’s grand finale, a cue-by-cue to practice transitions between ensembles, a full run-through of the program and, of course, lots of backstage bonding. Coordinating a seamless performance of nearly 400 musicians across 20 groups both large and small, from a piano trio to Symphonic Band, gamelan to opera, Clarinet Ensemble to percussion, saxophones, jazz, choirs, early music, wind ensemble, orchestra and more was a collaborative logistical feat!

After a day of rehearsals, musicians took a dinner break before returning backstage to gear up for the performance. As the start time neared, Brian and Leila Pertl, Dean of the Conservatory of Music and Instructor in Music Education respectively, visited backstage to offer performers both encouragement and gratitude for their collective efforts. Those performers not performing until late in the show then scampered upstairs to the venue’s fourth-floor seating, from which they could witness the performance unfolding until it was time to discretely disappear backstage once again in preparation for their own contributions.

As the concert began, Associate Professor of Music Education and Associate Director of Bands Matthew Arau welcomed the Appleton community to the performance and introduced Dean Pertl, detailing a selection of the Conservatory’s numerous groundbreaking accomplishments throughout his 16-year tenure: among them, the introduction of the Bachelor of Musical Arts degree, the redesign of the musicology program and the Bachelor of Arts in Music major, and an astonishing number of DownBeat Awards earned by our jazz musicians.

Dean Brian Pertl conducts the entire Kaleidoscope cast for the finale. Photo by Kai Frueh.

Dean Pertl took the stage, proceeding to acknowledge the work of colleagues across the university and greater Appleton community in coming together to make the event possible. Mary Van De Loo, Director of the Lawrence Community Music School, also spoke briefly before the music began with a small Balinese gamelan ensemble center stage, initiating the evening’s momentum with calm but energized rhythmic currents.

As we were briefly plunged into darkness at the end of their performance, lighting then directed our attention to our right, where the Clarinet Ensemble immediately began to play “Devil Sticks” by Scott McAllister (b. 1969) from the balcony, followed by a “Menuetto” for two violins by Béla Bartók (1881–1945) performed by Charlotte and Adrienne Lee, students of the Lawrence Community Music School, from the facing balcony.

The nonstop music circled around us, coming from a different direction at every turn as the concert proceeded, and I found myself engulfed, but perhaps surprisingly not disoriented by the experience. Even as the program offered an eclectic mixture of canonic Western classical repertoire, traditional music from Bali and the Dominican Republic and pieces by living composers including Lawrence faculty and alumni, I never found myself questioning the unexpected assemblage — there was no reason they shouldn’t all fit together, and I found the range of genres and characters irresistibly engaging.

Having enjoyed Kaleidoscope 7 as an audience member back in 2022, I came to this performance with some idea of what to expect, but participating as a performer as well this time around only augmented my experience. As a member of Viking Chorale, I participated in the endearingly humorous “Brüderlein und Schwesterlein” from Johann Strauss II’s (1825-1899) opera Die Fledermaus, after which the Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble performed Michael Philip Mossman’s (b. 1959) “57th St. Mambo.”

This brought us to the concert’s grand finale, in which Dean Pertl led all of us as we performed “In the Quest for Understanding,” an anthem based on Gustav Holst’s (1874-1934) “Jupiter,” with text added by Carl P. Daw, Jr. describing our experiences learning and growing together at Lawrence. My own voice sounded alongside the voices and instruments of my fellow students from across the campus community and with those in the audience who joined us on the last verse, and as the concert drew to a close, I felt so powerfully how integral and indeed central musicking is to our university’s identity, both on-campus and beyond — musicking is world-building.

As Dean Pertl put it in an Instagram post following the performance, “On Saturday I had the thrill of walking out on the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center Stage and conducting Holst with 400 of my favorite musicians. My heart is full of love and gratitude for our Lawrence Conservatory of Music. In four weeks you put on a breathtaking Kaleidoscope spectacular. Thank you for letting me be a part of the musical magic.”