This concert features music inspired by voices around the
Pacific Rim, from California to Australia, Singapore to Russia,
Mexico to Canada (to name a few). Included is “Eagle
Song” by Bob Baker, a Squamish Nation (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh
Úxwumixw) composer in present-day Vancouver,
and a Māori lullaby,
“Hine e Hine” originally by Fanny Howie. California composers
are represented in two selections: “Mondavi
Fanfare” by Roger Nixon — commissioned for the
opening of the Mondavi center in 2003 — and “Go
California,” a march written by Jonathan B. Elkus, who
directed the UC Davis bands from 1992 to 2003.
Program
Campus Band • Garrett Rigsby and Natalie Laurie,
directors
Jack Loh: Canton Folk Song Suite
Bob Baker (Squamish Nation): Eagle Song
Jodie Blackshaw: Vulnerable Joy
Roque Cordero: Spirit of Panama March
— Intermission —
UC Davis Concert Band • Pete Nowlen, director
Roger Nixon: Mondavi Fanfare
Jinjun Lee: Sing
Worachat Kitrenu: Reun-Pae
Fanny Rose Howie: Hine e Hine
Antonio Gervasoni: Peruvian Fanfare No. 1
Joe Hisaishi: Studio Ghibli Anime March
Nubia Jaime-Donjuan: “Sajuaro” from the Little Mexican
Suite
Sergei Prokofiev: March, op. 99
Jonathan B. Elkus: Go California
In 1978 the Tellefsen Hall Directors at UC Berkeley
commissioned Jonathan Elkus (Director of the UC Davis bands from
1993 to 2003) to compose UC Berkeley’s “Cal Band March” in memory
of Chris Tellefsen, an employee of the Associated Students of the
University of California who worked closely with the Cal Band
from the 1920s through the 1960s. Originally known as “Go
California,” it was arranged by Elkus and Larry Austin, who had
also served as UC Davis’s Concert Band Director from 1958 to
1972. This is a new concert edition, retitled “Go California”
with contributions from Kai Boennighausen, who received his
bachelor’s degree in music from UC Berkeley in 2023.
featuring the UC Davis Concert Band
Pete Nowlen, director
and Rollo Dilworth, visiting composer
If the American Dream includes hope of a better life in a
promised land, then the story we tell must also acknowledge
that dream has not always been equally available to all
Americans. This concert gives us both sentiments of this
“American Story.”
Rollo Dilworth set his choral and wind ensemble work “Weather”
to the poem of the same name by Claudia Rankine. “Weather” (the
poem) appeared in the New York Times Magazine shortly after the
murder of George Floyd in 2020. It captured in a few
pointed phrases the pain of the pandemic and of America’s
racial conflicts. Using American-born musical traditions,
including the Blues, Rollo Dilworth juxtaposes Rankine’s words
against a musical fabric, which challenges us to accept this
part of our American story, and in time weather that challenge.
André Thomas, a composer known around the world for his
spirituals, wrote his “Mass of Love and Joy” (filled with
moving and joyous spirituals) in 2018 upon his own retirement,
and which concludes and lifts up this choral concert. Thomas
says of his work, “anyone can relate to spirituals. Everyone
goes through trials and everyone looks for comfort.”
Program
Chamber Singers
Norman Dello Joio: A Jubilant Song
Samuel Barber: “Anthony O’Daly” from Reincarnations
William L. Dawson: Soon-Ah-Will Be Done
Concert Band
Carlos Simon: Amen!
— Intermission —
Combined Choruses
Rollo Dilworth: Weather
with the UC Davis Concert Band
and Shinae Kim, piano
“Historically, the arts have always fulfilled the dual roles of
responding to change while at the same time creating change.
Claudia Rankine’s poem, Weather, is a poem that gives
voice to the voiceless, especially those who have been and
continue to be marginalized because of difference. It responds to
and reflects realities that are both culturally specific and
humanly universal. Claudia Rankine challenges all of us (no
matter your background or lived experience) to know better, to do
better, to take action, and to become agents of social justice
and social change.”