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
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us.
Anna Presler, violin and artistic director
Phyllis Kamrin, violin and viola Matilda Hofman, viola and UC Davis
lecturer in music
Leighton Fong and Tanya Tomkins, cello
Michel Taddei, double bass
The 107th Picnic Day at UC Davis will be a virtual
event this year and, as in past years, the arts will be there.
Music, design and cinema and digital media will be represented in
the celebration.
One of the most popular events every year is the Fashion and
Design Society’s (FADS) annual fashion show. This year’s theme
Uncharted reflects how the students in the Department of Design’s
Signature Collections course has risen to the challenge of
creating not only the fashions but also the production values of
displaying their garments.
Felipe Lara, a Brazilian-American composer
praised by the New York Times and other
critics for his brilliant modern music, rates collaboration with
other musicians the most important aspect of his work.
Matilda Hofman, conductor and
UC Davis lecturer in music Kyle Bruckmann, oboe and UC Davis
lecturer in music
Peter Josheff, clarinet
Jennifer Ellis, harp Chris Froh, percussion and UC Davis lecturer
in music Michael Seth
Orland, piano and UC Davis lecturer in music Ellen Ruth Rose, viola and UC Davis
lecturer in music
Aline Sitoé Diatta (1920–1944) was a leader in the indigenous
religion of the Jola, an ethnic group based in the southernmost
region of Senegal. In 1941, a time of severe drought and
intensified colonial demands, she founded a new shrine that
brought sorely needed rains and earned her a dedicated
following. She also advocated religious reforms that would
counter the spread of Christianity, re-center direct human
relationships with the creator Emite, and promote traditional
rice-farming in rejection of French-implemented cash cropping.
She was arrested by the French colonial government in 1943 for
“compromising the internal security of the colony” and died at
an internment camp in Mali in 1944. In this talk, I will
explore a collection of twenty-nine songs attributed to Diatta
from the perspectives of ecomusicology and relational ontology.
I will trace Diatta’s living legacy as an inspiration for
contemporary Jola musicians as well. Given the impossibility of
international travel in the past year, I will also present
preliminary results from an ongoing long-distance collaboration
with Jola musician Joël Bassene, whom I commissioned to compose
new melodies for the Diatta song collection as an experiment in
sound repatriation.
Scott Linford is an Assistant
Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music. He has conducted musical fieldwork
in West Africa, Central America, and the United States around
themes of participation and musical experience, ethnicity,
gender, agriculture and the environment, musical geographies, and
colonial and post-colonial politics. Raised in the San Francisco
Bay Area, he holds an MA and PhD in Ethnomusicology from UCLA.
