With special guest caller Evie Ladin, the UC Davis Bluegrass
and Old Time String Band will provide an authentic opportunity
for square dancing on campus.
Come one, come all — no experience is necessary!
Free
Della Davidson Performance Studio, Nelson Hall, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
featuring Alturas Duo
Scott Hill, guitar
Carlos Boltes, charango and viola
Gonzalo Cortés, Andean woodwinds
With the guest ensemble Alturas, the Choruses of UC Davis and
Nicolás Dosman bring the rhythms and holiday vocal traditions
of the Americas to Davis. Works include “Navidad Nuestra” by
Ariel Ramírez, which is an Andean-influenced folk telling of
the nativity story; “Al Shlosha D’varim,” a traditional Hebrew
text set by Allan Naplan for the Ithaca Children’s Choir; and
“Abreme la Puerta,” a traditional holiday song from Puerto
Rico, which is sung using syllables only (no words).
Program
Concert Choir
arr. Albert McNeil: Hold Out Your Light (with Chamber
Singers)
Jeffrey Ames: Gloria Fanfare
Manuel de Sumaya: Albricias Mortales
Nunes Garcia: Cum Sancto Spiritu
Chamber Singers
arr. Cristian Grases: Abreme La Puerta
Andrea Ramsey: In The Bleak Midwinter
B.E Boykin: Dormi Jesu
Kenneth Lampl: Adon Olam
arr. Moses Hogan: Glory, Glory, Glory to the Newborn
King
J.S. Bach: Duets from the Lute Suite in E Minor, BWV 996
Lindabeth Brinkley and Cindy Behmer, oboes
Sergei Prokofiev: Quintet in G Minor, op. 39 (1924)
Cindy Behmer, oboe
Ann Lavin, clarinet
Dagenais Smiley, violin
Ivo Bokulić, viola
Michael Schwagerus, double bass
Alyssa Morris: Brokenvention (2011)
Lindabeth Brinkley, oboe
Cindy Behmer, English horn
Shinae Kim, piano
Arne Running: Quodlibet (2007)
Cindy Behmer, oboe
Lindabeth Brinkley, English Horn
The highlight of this solo guitar program is a work by composer
Douglas Boyce, who dedicates his Partita No. 3 (“La Comète”) to
UC Davis Associate Professor Claire
Goldstein in the Department of French and
Italian. The musical work is done in conversation with
Goldstein’s forthcoming book, “In the Sun King’s Cosmos: Comets
in the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France”
(Northwestern University Press, 2024).
Comets in the Sun King’s Cosmos is a study of the
unusually bright comets of 1664–65 and 1680–81, which
appeared not only in the sky but also in ballets and theater,
letters and early journalism, architecture and institutions,
theology and literary style. Goldstein studies how these
comets—considered at the time to be chaotic and without
discernable form or pattern—organized curiosity, scrutiny,
resistance and doubt during the reign of King Louis
XIV in France.
UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
and Singers from the San Francisco Opera
Center
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. Today, Rising Stars of Opera
features several singers from the acclaimed San Francisco Opera
Center performing a wide range of great arias in one complete
opera act.
Sarah Hennies’s Growing Block (2019) is also a
work for collaborative performers; it asks each musician to
curate 14 different sounds. These different sound objects then
unfold gradually, as the piece progresses. The composer writes
“Growing Block is based on the scientific theory of the same
name that theorizes that past and present time exist but future
time does not.”
Cage: Child of Tree
for solo percussion, using amplified plant materials
Cage: Branches
for multiple percussionists, using amplified plant materials
Events Plaza, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
Musicians
Alysa Banks (’21)
Diego Gordon
Alyssa Melendez
Ruby Walker
Program
Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968) is a
performance piece, which will be set in the Events Plaza at the
Manetti Shrem Museum. Pendulum Music makes use of
multiple microphones swinging, pendulum-style, over loudspeakers.
Featuring dramatic squawks of feedback, the piece concludes when
the inertia of the swinging microphones naturally come to rest.
Sharp rhythms gradually wind down into a sustained drone piece.
The composer writes, “If it’s done right, it’s kind of funny.”
Free
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Old Davis Road, Davis, CA
Empyrean Ensemble
Sam Nichols, director • Matilda Hofman, resident conductor
Musicians Playing—
Tod Brody, flute
Sandy McPherson, clarinet
Jennifer Ellis, harp Michael Seth
Orland, piano Chris Froh, percussion
Hrabba Atladottir, violin Ellen Ruth Rose, viola
Leighton Fong, cello
Concordian Dawn
Christopher Preston Thompson, tenor and medieval harp
• director
Amber Evans, soprano
Clifton Massey, countertenor
Thomas McCargar, baritone
Niccolo Seligmann, vielle
With additional support from the Departments of French and Italian,Comparative
Literature, and The
Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program at UC Davis,
Concordian Dawn brings life to a fourteenth-century French
allegory, “Le Roman de Fauvel” and illuminate its relevance to
modern audiences, thinkers, and performers—encouraging all to
think about the source material with a modern sensibility.
Concordian Dawn, ensemble for medieval music, specializes
in twelfth- through fourteenth-century vocal repertoire,
drawing on primary source material and focusing on
socio-philosophical similarities between texts from centuries
ago and the mindset of modern society. In so doing, Concordian
Dawn produces a musical experience accessible to contemporary
audiences, relating the human condition of the past to the
familiar experiences of the present.
Faythe Vollrath, harpsichord and UC Davis lecturer in music
Katherine Kaiser, soprano
Appearing in different ways, dreams, visions, and fantasies all
materialize as illusions of the mind. Sometimes delightful, and
sometimes disturbing, these illusions provide insight into
inner desires and provide composers license to flaunt musical
conventions and compose with inventive forms and ideas. This
concert will feature music full of mind-bending forms, dreamy
sound worlds, and fantastic texts. Giles Farnaby’s
“Dreame” perceives what the composer views in his sleep. Henry
Purcell’s “Blessed Virgin’s Expostulations” demands the return
of the angel Gabriel, first seen as a vision by Mary in her
early years.
Program
Giles Farnaby: Giles Farnaby’s Dreame
Henry Purcell: Bess of Bedlam and Blessed Virgin’s
Expostulations
Barbara Strozzi: Celli, stelle
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Se l’aura spira tutta vezzosa
Giovanni Battista Draghi: “Where Art Thou of God of Dreams”
Stephen Beatty: Vocalise for Soprano and
Harpsichord (2022)
