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.
“Of California Ecology” features new works based on different
facets of California’s natural world. 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This program was originally made possible with the support of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.
Award-winning composer Yu-Hui Chang has written a wide range of
music that compels and resonates with professional musicians and
audiences alike. Her music has been performed across continents
in the Netherlands, Italy, UK, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand,
Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and throughout the
U.S. to critical acclaim.
Preconcert Discussion from 1:15–1:45 pm with
composers Yu-Hui Chang and Maria Niederberger with
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.
Dr. Faythe Vollrath, solo harpsichord and UC Davis lecturer in
music
Immerse yourself in the Halloween season with the eerie and
spooky sounds of the harpsichord. Spine-chilling chords and
cackling runs bring alive a concert of things that go bump in
the night, with black cats, Jeckyl and Hyde, and even
compositions written by spirits. Featuring works by J.S. Bach,
Dominico Scarlatti, James Dorsa, and Rosemary Brown.
Bay Area Indonesian-Folk-Rock fusion group, Purnamasari grew
out of the idea of supporting a new generation of artists from
both sides of the world through music and dance. The concert
takes place on the eve of the LUCE Foundation’s conference
“Rethinking the History of Indonesian Music.”
Purnamasari, led by Indonesian born, San Francisco Bay Area
singer-songwriter Lisa Graciano, integrates Indonesian gamelan
instruments and ideas into original, yet accessible guitar-based
songs and compositions. Purnamasari means Essence of the Full
Moon and features performers experienced in both gamelan and
Western music, mixing and extending traditional techniques. They
create a unique musical fusion, using a variety of gamelan
instruments and tuning systems, mixed with western instruments
tuned to a pitch allowing interaction with the gamelan.
Purnamasari grew out of the Indonesian American Cross
Cultural Music Project, a collaboration between Lisa and
gamelan player Paul Miller, and includes musicians Megan Hewitt,
Patrick Liddell, Richard Phillips, Keenan Pepper, Nami Murata,
and Julia Martin. The band performed at the San Francisco
International Arts Festival 2021, and the concert was also
sponsored in part by grants from the Sam Mazza Foundation and the
National Endowment for the Arts, and marked the release of
Purnamasari’s concept album titled Le Gong.
Maryam Farshadfar, piano
Shawyon Malek-Salehi, violin
Maryam Farshadfar, piano (Ph.D., ethnomusicology, University of
Montreal) and Shawyon Malek-Salehi, violin (B.A., music, UC
Davis, ‘14) present this lecture-recital, which discusses the
history of piano and violin in Iran, and the influence of
Persian culture on Western composers from the late 19th century
to the present. The recital includes performances of a variety
of lesser-known pieces by Western and Persian composers,
including pieces by Samin
Baghcheban, Gena
Branscombe, Henry Cowell,
and others.
Program
To be announced.
About the Artists
Maryam Farshadfar has had a passion for playing
the piano since the age of six, which has taken her across the
world to play and to share her love of music. She holds a
master’s degree in piano performance and has performed in solo
recitals and with chamber ensembles at prestigious concert halls
including the Tehran Niavaran Hall and Konzerthaus Freiburg.
Maryam has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of
Montreal (2017) where she was the recipient of the Bourses
d’études supérieures for her dissertation, “The Practice of
Persian Piano in Iran from 1879 to 1979,” which breaks ground in
the vibrant world music cultural debate about the traditional
practice of Persian piano music. She enjoys an active career as a
piano performer, scholar, and lecturer. She is currently a
full-time music faculty in San Jose Evergreen Valley College and
the music director of Evergreen Valley College Choir.
Shawyon Malek-Salehi graduated from UC Davis in
2014 with a bachelor’s degree in music (violin performance) and
pharmaceutical chemistry. He began studying the violin at the age
of five and is now a violinist with the Sacramento Philharmonic
and Opera, Oakland Symphony, and Stockton Symphony. He also
substitutes with orchestras throughout Northern California such
as the Berkeley Symphony, Monterey Symphony, and others. He has
performed at the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms), Amsterdam
Concertgebouw, and other European venues. He has also performed
at the Aldeburgh Music Festival with the Britten-Pears Orchestra
and studied at the Castleman Quartet Program. While at UC Davis,
he served as concertmaster of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
from 2010 to 2013 and won the UCDSO Concerto Competition in 2009,
2012, and 2013. At UC Davis, Shawyon studied with Dan Flanagan
and participated in masterclasses with Fritz Gearhart, Ida
Kavafian, Rachel Barton Pine, David Halen, and Gil Shaham. He
enjoys his life as an active performer, and also loves skiing,
hiking, and traveling.
Lyric for Strings (written 1946) is dedicated to George
Walker’s grandmother, with whom he was very close. Walker’s
grandmother escaped slavery and separated from her first
husband when he was sold. She died shortly before
Lyric’s completion. Listeners might find the short work
reminds them of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings
(written 1936), which had an impact on Walker—after all, they
shared a composition teacher at Curtis. Walker, it should be
noted, was a decorated American composer, who achieved many
firsts, including being the first Black American composer to win
the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Alejandro
Civilotti: Auris Concertum U.S. PREMIERE
with Eduardo Vassallo, Principal Cello of the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra
Both the composer Alejandro Civilotti and the cello soloist
Eduardo Vassallo are from Argentina, as is the UC Davis Symphony
Orchestra’s own director. Civilotti wrote Auris
Concertum in 2001, which premiered at the Teatro Colon in
Buenos Aires in 2009 with cello soloist Eduardo Vassallo.
Vassallo is visiting the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra from
England, where he is principal cellist of the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra. Civilotti is part of a second generation of
contemporary Argentinian composers and now lives and teaches in
Barcelona, Spain. The concerto is dedicated to Queen Sofía of
Spain, who was one of Civilotti’s benefactors and intervened on
behalf of the composer in order to get him a Cochlear implant,
which allowed him to regain hearing he’d lost in his childhood
years.
The concerto is in fact part of a set of two, one for violin
(Auris Resonantiam) and one for cello (Auris
Concertum). The name “Auris” refers to the journal
“Auris” on cochlear implants of the García Ibáñez Foundation,
which gave the composer his implants. The work opens with a solo
cello cadenza, which reappears at different points of the piece
as a memory, and is built on a motivic element built on
resonances of a root pitch: B flat. What follows are harmonic
frequencies in the composer’s “tinnitus,” from which he has
suffered for many years. In the second movement, the composer
sets the soloist on an incredibly virtuosic path against an
orchestral backdrop that is very dense. It was written to
symbolize how difficult it might be for someone with hearing
difficulties to understand individual voices in a crowded space.
Petrushka chronologically fits between Firebird
and Rite of Spring—all ballets produced by Diaghilev’s
Ballets Russes 1910–1913—and yet the version presented on this
concert was revised by Stravinsky in 1947, a few years after he
had become a Californian and two years since becoming a
naturalized U.S. citizen. For those curious about Stravinsky’s
Russian roots, he was born near St. Petersburg, Russia, and of
noble Polish heritage with his father born in present-day Belarus
and his mother born in Kyiv. The 1947 orchestration is better
suited to the concert setting (instead of the orchestra pit).
Stravinsky’s use of piano is a noticeable difference instead of
the earlier double harps.
UC Davis’s own Jazz Big Bands present songs from the Great
American Songbook as well as a few contemporary works and
sometimes feature student vocalists too. Tunes by Chick Corea,
Herbie Hancock, and many others are often presented.
The UC Davis Concert Band presents thoughtful works written
especially for concert band, and sometimes for film (“My
Neighbor Totoro” and “The Polar Express” to name a couple).
Constituting members of the UC Davis community from students to
graduate students to faculty, the band is proud to represent
more than thirty areas of study in its members.
Featuring student and community singers from the UC Davis
community directed by UC Davis lecturer in music Erik
Peregrine, these three choruses present diverse choral
repertoire representative of our choral traditions of the past,
our present, as well as new and developing traditions. Choruses
of UC Davis are comprised of the University Chorus, Chamber
Singers, and Early Vocal Ensemble.
