The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has released “Endeavor,” its third album in three years and the midway point of an ambitious five-year, five-album initiative dedicated to amplifying the work of living, diverse composers across the United States.
Recorded live on October 10, 2025, “Endeavor” is now available as a physical album and for streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube and other platforms. The album anchors the WCO’s Musical Landscapes in Color project, part of the orchestra’s Composer Collective series.
The program assembles five composers working in distinct idioms. It opens with Regina Harris Baiocchi’s “Muse for Orchestra” and includes the world premiere of Madison-based composer Autumn Maria Reed’s “Mental Health Suite,” a four-movement work that moves from “The Origin Story” through “As If Nothing Happened.” Also featured are Eric Gould’s three-movement “An American City” and Omar Thomas’s “Of Our New Day Begun,” which pairs soulful tones with driving rhythms. The recording closes with Xavier Foley’s “Soul Bass” concerto, performed by the composer himself on double bass.
The project grew out of the work of WCO Composer Curator Dr. Bill Banfield, whose 2002 book “Landscapes in Color: Conversations With Black American Composers” documented the artistic journeys of more than 40 leading Black composers along with the barriers that limited their recognition. “When Bill came onboard and we learned about this book he had published and these amazing conversations he’d had – it became a seed for an album idea, and from there, it grew into a full five-year, five album initiative,” said WCO CEO Joe Loehnis.
In a press release, Loehnis said the album’s title reflects where the orchestra finds itself at the project’s halfway mark.
“As a noun, Endeavor means a serious determined effort. As a verb, Endeavor means to seriously or continually try,” he said. “The WCO has made a commitment to this project, with the hope that it will inform and inspire our field to perform these great, living artists for decades to come.”
The Musical Landscapes in Color project traces back in part to a 2022 Catalyst Fund Incubator Grant from the League of American Orchestras, which named the WCO one of 20 U.S. orchestras to receive the three-year award. The grant tasked the orchestra with advancing equity, diversity and inclusion across the organization, from the back office to the concert stage. The WCO hired the Madison-based Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development to lead that work. American Family Insurance is the lead sponsor of both “Endeavor” and the broader initiative.
Several of the featured composers carry national reputations. Foley has written concerti commissioned and premiered by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with works co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Sphinx Organization and others. Banfield, a three-time Pulitzer Prize judge in American music and a 2019 research associate at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, recently received the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award.
Omar Thomas, who is featured on the album with “Of Our New Day Begun,” drew national attention this spring under very different circumstances. In May, the Watertown school board voted 7-1 to remove an instrumental piece by Thomas, “A Mother of a Revolution!,” from a Watertown High School spring concert. The piece, composed in 2019 and dedicated to transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, contains no lyrics or spoken narrative. Johnson was a key figure in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, widely regarded as a milestone in the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.
Board members called the piece “indoctrination” and argued it could incite political violence, contending it violated the district’s controversial issues policy. The decision drew sharp backlash. Roughly 350 students walked out of class the following day, gathering in the school’s Peace Garden and chanting “Let them play.” The band director, Reid LaDew, had followed district policy by notifying families in October and offering an opt-out; only three of the more than 30 students in the ensemble chose not to perform.
Thomas, now an assistant professor of composition and jazz studies at the University of Texas at Austin, learned of the controversy through national media coverage. He told Milwaukee TV station WTMJ that the board’s framing of the piece was “intensely reductive and also not surprising,” adding that the objections stemmed from a misunderstanding of the trans community.
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