Music

Serena Yang (Ph.D. student in musicology) was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Taiwanese government to support her research and graduate studies. Her article, “Mode and Atonality in Japanese Music: Pitch Structure in Minoru Miki’s Jo no kyoku” was recently published in the Music Research Forum (University of Cincinnati).

With 10 days to fill, Sacramento State’s Festival of New American Music (www.csus.edu/music/fenam) has a lineup Nov. 6-15 to please all music lovers with a variety of forms and artists, and even includes a couple of former members of the Grateful Dead.

The Chamber Music Society of Sacramento will highlight the double bass — an instrument that often plays a background role in classical music — as the group hosts bassist Thomas Derthick at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at Congregation Bet Haverim, 1715 Anderson Road in Davis.

Derthick is principal bass of the Sacramento Philharmonic, Sacramento Ballet and Sacramento Choral Society. He frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Sacramento and has recorded and toured with the Empyrean Ensemble of UC Davis.

On Friday, UC Davis offered a tour of the still-under-construction Ann E. Pitzer Center to donors and music lovers Grace Noda, third from right, Grant Noda, center back, Malcolm MacKenzie, far right, and Natalie MacKenzie, second from right, who were early supporters of the project. The 17,500-square-foot building will include a 399-seat recital hall, which will double as a lecture hall. There also will be a lobby for receptions, book or CD signings, etc., several much-needed practice rooms, storage space for instruments, office space and more.

Michael Accinno, Ph.D. candidate in musicology at UC Davis, is one of the contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, a newly released collection of peer reviewed essays published by Oxford University Press. His essay “Disabled Union Veterans and the Performance of Martial Begging” documents the lives of disabled military veterans who performed as organ grinders in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War.

The Design Museum at UC Davis is hosting “Rattled,” an exhibition of more than 100 baby rattles (many of them historic) from the collection of Lu and Maynard Lyndon, the founders and owners of Placewares+LyndonDesign in Gualala, on the coast in Mendocino County.

“That the overtures are as much of a pleasure to listen to as the arias is thanks to the exceptional qualities of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) under conductor Christian Baldini—never rushing, usually finding the perfect tempo in common with his and Robin Ticciati’s predecessor in perfect SCO Mozart, Sir Charles Mackerras.”

—David Nice

This sparkling recording features the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Christian Baldini conducting a personal selection of arias from six of Mozart’s well-loved operas, alongside their respective overtures. The soprano Elizabeth Watts, winner of the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier prize, is the featured soprano and she brings character and depth of understanding to her performance.

In recognition of outstanding contributions to the academic environment at UC Davis through active engagement with faculty and fellow students, along with excellent academic achievement and demonstrated leadership in the music major.

Sarah Messbauer has earned an Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award for 2015. The award is co-sponsored by the Graduate Council and the Office of Graduate Studies.