Event Date
This program draws from a century of American composers who continue to envision what symphonic music can be and what sources it can draw from. In her Gaelic Symphony, Amy Beach made use of Irish melodies — and included the melody of her own original song "Dark is the Night" — in what was the first symphony composed and published by a female American composer.
Program
- Chris Castro: New Work, commissioned by the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
- Selection to be announced with the winner of the 2026 UC Davis Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition
- Amy Beach: Symphony in E Minor (“Gaelic”)
About the Composers
Oscar Garibay is an acclaimed trumpet performer and mariachi director based in Southern California, currently serving as Director of Mariachi Los Mesteños at UC Davis as well as at Chapman University and Santa Ana College. Mentored by José Hernández of Mariachi Sol de México, he has toured with the Grammy Award-winning Mariachi Los Camperos and is a leading advocate for establishing mariachi studies as a recognized university degree program.
Amy Beach (1867–1944) was a largely self-taught American composer and pianist who became the first American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. Her “Gaelic” Symphony (1896), written partly in response to Dvořák's call for American composers to draw on folk material, wove Irish folk melodies into a large-scale Romantic symphonic form.