Music

News

Announcement

Professor San Martin awarded guest composer at Sao Paolo Composer Festival

The São Paolo Contemporary Composers Festival has invited Professor Laurie San Martin to be a Guest Composer at the coming 2025 festival.

Announcement

Laurie San Martin’s “Night Owls” performed by Ensemble Ari

Professor Laurie San Martin’s work “Night Owls” will be performed by Ensemble Ari. This work was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition and is written for Ensemble ARI.

Announcement

Rohde Awarded Commission from the Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress

Professor Kurt Rohde—a musician who plays viola, teaches, and composes—received a 2024 commission from the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation in memory of Andrew W. Imbrie (1921–2007) to write a new work for Brightwork New Music.

Announcement

Professor Mika Pelo Composition Premieres in Sweden

In 2023 Professor Mika Pelo was selected for a composer residency by the Peterson-Berger Foundation at Sommarhagen, the home of the late Swedish composer Wilhelm Peterson-Berger. As part of the residency, Pelo composed a new work, Akvareller (“Watercolors”). 

Upcoming Events

Event

Terrie Baune, violin
John Chernoff, piano

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Program

Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps

Johannes Brahms: Sonata in D Minor, op. 108

John Chernoff: Pandemic Rag

Free

This Shinkoskey Noon Concert is made possible with support from the Joy S. Shinkoskey Series of Noon Concert Endowment.

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Jazz Combos of UC Davis
Fall Quarter

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Otto Lee, director and UC Davis lecturer in music

Program

To be announced.

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Hendel Almétus: “A Search for Myself and My Voice Beyond Traditions and Cultural Norms”
a Valente Lecture

Room 105, Music Building

The music of composer Hendel Almétus (Ph.D. music composition ‘14) has been described as “vividly virtuosic and quietly meditative” (San Francisco Classical Voice). He has received commissions from distinguished artists, ensembles and institutions, including Earplay, Empyrean Ensemble, guitarist Dieter Hennings, Arizona State University, and the Kodachrome saxophone quartet. He has written for prominent artists including soprano Tony Arnold, guitarist Magnus Andersson, and ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound, Wet Ink Ensemble, Meridian Brass, and the One Art Ensemble.

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Megan Gürer, voice
Student Recital

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

with Karen Rosenak, piano

Program

Works to be announced.

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Saura Pal, voice
Student Recital

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

with Britta Joseph, piano

Program

Works to be announced.

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

UC Davis Concert Band and the Roseville Community Band

Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

UC Davis Concert Band
Pete Nowlen, director

Roseville Community Band
Stephanie Sugano, conductor (B.A. music and sociology, ‘98)

Holst’s Second Suite is among the most beloved of the classic wind band repertory and if it weren’t for the folk tunes they were based on, they may as well be music for a British royal. Other material presented on this program creates distinct moods, from the hustle and bustle of Lisa DeSpain’s “Bicycle Shop” to the calm playfulness of Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s “Children’s Intermezzo.”

Program

Roseville Community Band

Percy Fletcher: Vanity Fair
arr. Karrick

Samuel Coleridge Taylor: ”Children’s Intermezzo” from Othello Suite

UC Davis Concert Band

Gustav Holst: Second Suite in F

Viet Cuong: Sound and Smoke

Lisa DeSpain: The Bicycle Shoppe

Bruce Broughton: Overture to Miracle on 34th Street (from the 1994 film)
arr. Vinson

$12 Students and Children, $24 Adults (Open Seating)

About the Program

Mondavi Center, Davis, CA
Event

Musics of the World
Fall Quarter

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Program

Samba School • Brian Rice, director

Gamelan • Heni Savitri, director

Mariachi • Oscar Garibay, director

Bluegrass and Old Time String Band • Scott Linford, director

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Charlie Hankin: “Caribbean Clave Poetics”

Room 266, Everson Hall

Cuban musicologist and novelist Alejo Carpentier understood Cuban son from the 1920s and 1930s to represent Cuba’s most significant musical innovation, due to the way it codified the African-inspired, asymmetric 3 – 2 or 2 – 3 rhythmic timeline known as the clave. Clave subsequently became a predominant theoretical framework for Caribbean or “Latin” musicking, shaping popular genres such as merengue and salsa and influencing musical practices as far away as Uruguay and Brazil. Around the same time of son’s peak in popularity, Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén scandalized literary circles by imitating tropes from son music and speech patterns associated with Afro-descendant, underprivileged communities in what he called “son poems.” Although Guillén’s son poems are commonly acknowledged for their incorporation of Afro-Cuban rhythm, little attention has been devoted to the way Guillén, despite having no musical training, developed a poetics of clave. This paper uses Guillén as a starting point to begin to theorize a broader literary practice in the Caribbean that I call “writing in clave.” Not only does writing in clave allow us to rethink the way writers disrupted distinctions between elite and popular culture and intervened in debates concerning race and nation. It also establishes a (sometimes reciprocal, sometimes nonreciprocal) dialogue with soneros, or son lyricists, and demonstrates the way literature and popular music in the Caribbean became spaces of mutual theorization.

Everson Hall, Davis, CA

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