Professor Kurt E. Rohde’s composition seeking all that’s still unsung will receive its world premiere at Brandeis University performed by the Lydian String Quartet on April 6.

Professor Kurt Rohde has been given a 2022 San Francisco Arts Commission fund. The $20,000 commission will be used to support 4:30 Movie, a new twenty-minute micro-opera using poems by Donna Masini published in 4:30 Movie (Norton, 2020). These funny, touching, ruthless poems take the reader through the diagnosis, treatment and death of the author’s sister from cancer. Using the language of how movies are made and consumed, Masini tells the story of her sister’s struggle, and of her grief—both during her treatment and after her death.

An excerpt called “Gaia|Gyre|Siren” from Newtown Odyssey, the site-specific opera composed by Professor Kurt Rohde, was recently performed. In conjunction with the performance, Rohde and his collaborators were interviewed for Urban Omnibus, a publication of the Architectural League of New York.

Commissioned works for string quartets by Professor Kurt Rohde and lecturer and alum Christopher Castro (PhD, composition, ‘18) have been awarded grants by the Chamber Music America (CMA) Classical Commissioning program. The grants support professional U.S.-based ensembles and presenters for the creation and performance of classical contemporary chamber works by American composers.

UC Davis graduate student in music Josiah Tayag Catalan, and Chris Castro (Ph.D., music, ‘18), now a UC Davis lecturer in music, are among the composers given premieres at this year’s Composers Conference.

UC Davis Professor of Music Kurt Rohde has new a CD, it wasn’t a dream, released by Albany Records featuring two major chamber compositions. The first work, it wasn’t a dream, sets a sequence of poems by Diane Seuss to music performed by soprano Charlotte Mundy, tenor Andrew Fuchs, and pianists Michael Brofman and Miori Sugiyama.

UC Davis Professor Kurt Rohde will be at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy, for Fall Quarter 2019. While in residence, Rohde will compose seeking all that’s still unsung, a new work for string quartet and electronics commissioned by the Lydian Quartet. Rohde’s new piece listens to the rapidly changing sonics of the “outside” natural world and brings them “inside.” It is an interior mirroring of the sounds that surround us and that we take for granted, many of which are disappearing.

Professor of Music Kurt Rohde of UC Davis, and Yu-Hui Chang—who taught composition at UC Davis in the early 2000s—are the two guest composers at this year’s Composers Conference.

Two one-act chamber operas by Professor Kurt Rohde were cited by the website SF Classical Voice as winners in their annual Best of the Bay series.