The Department of Music presents more than 100 concerts each year
by a range of ensembles. The department sponsors an annual
artist-in-residence program, bringing internationally renowned
artists for performances and lectures. The department also
presents a free weekly noon-concert series, which features
visiting artists, department ensembles, and student performers in
an informal setting.
To request the current performance season brochure, or to
subscribe to our e-mail events list, please email
us.
The Bacchetto / Sabey Duo is a collaborative project
of San Francisco-based composer-performers Nick Bacchetto and
Ben Sabey. The duo creates new spatial audio works for
piano and a custom modular analog synthesizer controlled by an
MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) instrument.
Ben Sabey is a composer of chamber, orchestral,
and electronic music, lately specializing in expressive
polyphonic control of analog synthesis and spatialization.
Nick Bacchetto is a composer and pianist whose
creative works derive from a tension between algorithmic and
intuitive composition, and explore concepts such as fractal
geometry and natural selection.
Christian Baldini, director and
conductor
with the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows
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. Rekindling an old tradition, we
relaunch Rising Stars of Opera with several singers from the
acclaimed San Francisco Opera Center performing a wide range of
great arias with full orchestral accompaniment from our own UC
Davis Symphony Orchestra.
Program
Gaetano Donizetti: “Caro elisir, sei mio” from L’elisir
d’amore
Georges Bizet: “Habanera” from Carmen
Giacomo Puccini: “Signore ascolta” and “Nessun dorma” from
Turandot
Francesco Cilea: “Acerba voluttà” from Adriana
Lecouvreur
Jacques Offenbach: “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” from Les
Contes d’Hoffmann
Composed by New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood,
Immersion (1998) for marimba and two
tam-tams was written for Dominic Donato and Frank Cassara and
arranged for the Talujon Percussion Quartet in 2001. It grew out
of a fascination with the rich beating frequencies generated by
long cluster rolls in the low register of the marimba and the
interaction between the marimba and a quartz bowl gong tuned to
F.
Composed for a flexible number of collaborative performers,
Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together was
written in response to the 1971 uprising at the Attica
Correctional Facility. Our performance of Coming
Together will feature both undergraduate and graduate
student instrumentalists, playing alongside the professional
musicians of the Empyrean Ensemble. The performance will feature
Omari Tau, voice, reciting a text written by Sam Melville
that reflects the conditions at Attica during his incarceration
there.
When it debuted Mary
Poppins dazzled theatergoers with a mix of
whimsical music, animated characters combined with live-action, a
spoonful of medicinal laughter and magical wisdom from a
mysterious nanny. Who would have thought that a cheeky
babysitter could have such an impact on a dysfunctional family .
. . and on those of us who watched too!
Mary Poppins received both popular and critical
acclaim. The movie was recognized with a total of 13 Academy
Awards nominations (which was a record for Walt Disney
Studios). It even received a nomination for Best
Picture. Of the 13 nods, it took home five Oscars: Best
Actress for Julie Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music
Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song for “Chim Chim
Cher-ee.”
Choro Famoso
Mike Marshall, mandolin
Andy Connell, clarinet and saxophone
Colin Walker, 7-string guitar
Brian Rice, pandeiro and UC Davis lecturer in music
Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso bring a bright energy and
virtuosity to their concerts, maybe matched only by the
Brazilians themselves. Choro is an important musical tradition
of Brazil with characteristic Afro-Brazilian rhythms and
European popular dance tunes. Mike—already known throughout the
world for pushing on the boundaries of many music genres—became
smitten with Choro on his first adventure in Brazil.
In its first reunion with alumni chorus members since 2018, the
UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and University Chorus join together
to perform Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, a long-form
symphony imbued with a deep reverence for Heaven and the
journey to it from our mortal world. Mahler’s “Resurrection”
Symphony is clearly a Beethoven’s-Ninth kind of work, albeit
written sixty plus years later, and written after decades of
further symphonic development by not only Beethoven, but
Berlioz, Brahms, and others.
Gustav
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”)
with the University and Alumni Choruses, Erik Peregrine,
director, and
Carrie Hennessey, soprano
Julie Miller, mezzo-soprano
These new pieces for solo violin, or solo violin and
electronics, were created as part of the graduate student
workshop, in which graduate students meet with Icelandic
violinist Hrabba Atladottir each week during Fall Quarter,
refining their compositions.
