One of the most important priorities of the music department
today is establishing a fund to cover the otherwise out-of-pocket
expenses for individual music lesson instruction for UC Davis
students. These students gain necessary one-on-one instruction
from a career professional in their field and use those skills in
individual and group performances—including the UC Davis Symphony
Orchestra, Choruses, Percussion Ensemble, Baroque, Early Music,
and more. We seek everyone’s support in this endeavor.
One of UC Davis’s highest priorities is the safety of its
students and all members of its community. UC Davis
prohibits all forms of sexual harassment and sexual violence,
including sexual assault, dating and domestic violence, and
stalking. Such conduct violates University policy and may
violate California law.
Professor Laurie San Martin, music department chair, has received
a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at
Brigham Young University. San Martin’s commission will be for
Ensemble Ari, a group of Korean American musicians in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Jeremy Borum (B.A. music ‘01) recently
orchestrated a rock opera titled The Witches
Seed by composer Stewart Copeland, which received its
first performance in an abandoned rock quarry in Italy this
summer. Copeland began his career as the drummer for the
British rock band The Police, and now enjoys a career composing
for concert, film, and the video game industry. Borum and
Copeland have collaborated on many projects over the years.
Ph.D. alumnus Ryan Suleiman (‘20), now an assistant professor of
music at Berklee College of Music, Boston, has launched a podcast
series, “Music and Nature,” which is affiliated
with Landscape
Music, a network of musical artists whose “mission is to
deepen public appreciation of the natural world by providing a
platform for contemporary composers and performers whose music
engages with landscape, nature, and place.” Ryan’s own music
compositions explore dreaming, the natural world, and the
understated beauty of everyday life. The podcast builds off a
couple of pilot episodes from 2020 and is available on your
favorite podcast service.
British Forum for
Ethnomusicology (BFE) recognizes outstanding scholarship in
ethnomusicology written in English. BFE has given a Special
Commendation to Professor Juan Diego Díaz for his
book Africanness
in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in
Brazil (Oxford UP, 2021) in its 2022 book prize
competition. The book focuses on “tropes of Africanness” in
self-identification and musical expression in the northeastern
state of Bahia in Brazil. The judges praised Africanness in
Action: “this is a beautifully written and profoundly
impressive work which offers a critically reflexive and
nuanced postcolonial representation of African music
in the Black diaspora.”
This recital features 20th-century American music, with
transcriptions by famed Russian-Lithuanian-American
violinist Jascha Heifetz, from George Gershwin’s Porgy
and Bess, as well as Samuel Barber’s own transcription of
the second movement of his Piano Concerto.
“Of California Ecology” features new works based on different
facets of California’s natural world. The trio will perform
compositions by ensemble members, Julie Herndon,
and Sl(e)ight Ensemble’s 2020 call-for-scores winner Kian
Ravaei. Drawing on the artists’ distinct backgrounds in
jazz, band, and chamber music, the program is inspired by seismic
activity, fungal biomes, waterways, and social ecology, among
other natural phenomena. The result is a diverse set of works all
created with the aim of bringing appreciation to California’s
beautiful and delicate environment.
This program was originally made possible with the support of
InterMusicSF.
Preconcert Discussion from 1:15–1:45 pm with
composer Yu-Hui Chang and Empyrean’s director Sam Nichols.
The music department’s professional contemporary music group the
Empyrean Ensemble will premiere Weaving Sound by Maria
Neiderberger, a 1981 graduate of UC Davis, a music department
lecturer for nearly 15 years and professor emeritus at East
Tennessee State University. The three-movement work interweaves
clarinet, viola and piano into a tapestry of sound. Her music has
been performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe.
This piece is an exploration of resonance, and in the essential
nature of the earliest harps. Crowd (etymologically related to
the Celtic words crwth, cruit, and
crot) was the English term used for instruments of the
lyre class, and ultimately for a frame harp from pre-Christian to
medieval times.
Commissioned by Boston Musica
Viva (BMV), the oldest professional ensemble in the United
States dedicated to contemporary music, Germinate was
written for their 50th anniversary in 2019. Scored for flute,
piccolo, bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion,
Germinate is a tribute to BMV for its contribution to
the music of our time. A former UC Davis faculty member,
Chang now teaches at Brandeis University.
Jonathan
Harvey: Still
Portia Njoku, tuba and UC Davis lecturer in music
In Still, written for solo tuba and electronics, the
soloist improvises around a series of eight chords, gradually
building up a sustained background of reverberations.
Another BMV commission, Hyla’s Polish Folk Songs notably
uses the melodica and organ to evoke melodies the composer heard
in Zakopane, Poland. Hyla noted, “In my composition I have taken
a number of the songs commonly heard in the area and re-combined
them, allowing them to bump heads as well as interact
peacefully.”
Joseph Donald Peterson, viola and UC Davis graduate student
in music
Program
J.S. Bach: Cello Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012
Several period performers are convinced Bach’s Sixth Cello Suite
was composed for the “Shoulder Cello” or the violoncello da
spalla, which is much larger than a viola. This arrangement for
viola is a testament to the versatility of Bach’s cello suites in
particular.
Milton Babbitt: Play It Again Sam
Piggybacking off of the misquoted line in the film
“Casablanca,” Play It Again Sam is a serialist
composer’s humorous take premiered by violist Samuel Rhodes (a
double meaning perhaps!).
Pablo Ortiz: Le vrai tango Argentin
Le vrai tango Argentin musically recalls Pablo Ortiz’s
uncle—who was going through a difficult divorce—playing classic
(pre-Piazzolla) tango records for Pablo as a young adult. Ortiz
says of his tango: “Like a good storyteller who is not afraid to
go on tangents, the performer conveys [this] narrative in a
pensive, relaxed manner.”
Harold in Italy was brought about by a commission by the
famous 19th- century violinist Niccolò Paganini in 1834.
Berlioz was commissioned by Paganini not for a violin concerto
but for a work that would feature Paganini and his new
Stradivarius viola. Paganini thought the viola solo was too
simplistic when he saw the score and declined to give the
premiere. But when he heard it performed (albeit four years
later) he was so pleased he paid Berlioz 20,000 francs
anyway. The title suggests a sort of tour of Italy, as well
as the 19th-century poem Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage by Lord Bryon.
Featured Soloist
Wendy Richman has been celebrated internationally for her
compelling sound and imaginative interpretations in a wide range
of genres. Her debut solo album,
vox/viola (New Focus Recordings, 2020), features nine
commissioned works for singing violist by leading contemporary
composers. She is a founding member of the International
Contemporary Ensemble, with whom she performs regularly in New
York City and around the world, and she has performed regularly
with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the period instrument ensemble
Tesserae. Richman is a faculty member at both UCLA and California
State University-Northridge (CSUN), where she teaches a variety
of academic music courses and applied viola, and she is a
sought-after clinician at universities and conservatories across
the country.
