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

Orange Road Quartet
Works by Graduate Students

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Miguel Calleja and Holly Workman, violin
Nicky Moore, viola
Jordan Bartow, cello

Program

Jacob Lane: Frozen Moment PREMIERE

Colin Minigan: stillness and winter beech PREMIERE

Zoë A. Wallace: String Quartet 4: Unstuck in Time PREMIERE

James R. Larkins: Between Us PREMIERE

Bryndan Moondy: five exposures PREMIERE

a Shinkoskey Noon Concert

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Valente Lecture: Emily Zazulia
“The Friend Who Got Around: Medieval Theater, Church Music, and a Rather Inappropriate Song”

Room 266, Everson Hall

Within the gold-tinged choirbooks of fifteenth-century Europe, a bawdy song about genitalia is perhaps the last thing one might expect to find. Yet L’ami Baudichon (“the friend Baudichon”), whose text leaves little to the imagination, shows up as the basis for an early mass by Josquin des Prez. The song’s presence in sacred polyphony has long puzzled musicologists. Whatever the song is doing in Josquin’s mass, it also appears in other contexts: combinative songs, theater pieces, poetry, and literature. This paper examines the song’s varied uses in early French theater, focusing on its appearances in a morality play about blasphemy and a ribald farce.

This paper examines the song’s varied uses in early French theater, focusing on its appearances in a morality play about blasphemy and a ribald farce. In “Les Blasphemateurs,” L’ami Baudichon appears alongside other popular tunes in a scene of transgressive revelry, while in “Le Farce des Enfants de Borgneux,” it functions as a euphemistic reference to sexual activity. These theatrical appearances provide valuable context for understanding how popular songs functioned in late-medieval culture, particularly during a period when they began to play an increasingly important role in polyphonic compositions. Turning a spotlight on the non-musical sources for these tunes offers new perspectives on the relationship between popular song, theatrical performance, and transgressive speech in late-medieval France.

Event

Orange Road Quartet
Friday Concert

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Miguel Calleja and Holly Workman, violin
Nicky Moore, viola
Jordan Bartow, cello

Program

Laurie San Martin: Six Cuts

Erich Barganier: Apocrypha of the Eastern Ranges                             

inti figgis-vizueta: Mayu: The great river 

Iannis Xenakis: Tetras

 

Free

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Andy McKee, solo guitar

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Andy McKee, solo guitar

Andy McKee is among the world’s finest acoustic guitarists. His youthful energy and attention to song structure and melodic content elevates him above the rest. He entertains both the eye and the ear as he magically transforms the steel string guitar into a full orchestra via his use of altered tunings, tapping, partial capos, percussive hits and a signature two-handed technique. 

Program

To be announced from the stage.

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

Barbara K. Jackson Rising Stars of Opera

Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
Christian Baldini, music director and conductor

San Francisco Opera Center
Carrie-Ann Matheson, artistic director

Since its inception in 2010, Rising Stars of Opera has featured vocal artistry, stirring arias and a glimpse at the opera stars of tomorrow; and every ticket has been free to the public thanks to Barbara K. Jackson.

Rising Stars of Opera features several singers from the highly regarded San Francisco Opera Center performing a wide range of great arias with full orchestral accompaniment from our own UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.

Program

To be announced.

Free, limit four (Reserved Seating)

Mondavi Center, Davis, CA
Event

Empyrean Ensemble
Season 37

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Empyrean Ensemble
Sam Nichols, director • Matilda Hofman, resident conductor

Musicians Playing
Tod Brody, flute*
Peter Josheff, clarinet*
Michael Seth Orland, piano*
Chris Froh, percussion*
Hrabba Atladottir, violin*
Thalia Moore, cello*

*core member

Program

Pierre Boulez: Dérive 1

Laurie San Martin: New Work (World Premiere)

Maurice Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Piano, M. 77

Free, no tickets required

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA
Event

Michael Spiro and Friends

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Internationally recognized percussionist, recording artist, and educator known specifically for his work in the Latin music field.

Program

To be announced from the stage.

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

Valente Lecture: Jayson Beaster-Jones
"Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Bollywood’s Rock Band Aesthetic"

Room 266, Everson Hall

The soundtrack to the film Dil Chahta Hai (2001) was arguably the first hit soundtrack in Bollywood created by a rock band. In this presentation, Prof. Beaster-Jones illustrates how the collaborative approach for this Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy soundtrack generated momentum for a new kind of Indian film song.

He highlights the changing tastes of India’s urban youth audiences in the twenty-first century and shows how Dil Chahta Hai paved the way for the rock and EDM-oriented compositions of Hindi-language cinema that came to dominate the first decades of the 21st century. This influence, he argues, makes Dil Chahta Hai among the most influential soundtracks in Indian cinematic history.

Room 266, Everson Hall

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