Empyrean Ensemble Mika Pelo, director
UC Davis Professor of Music
Honoring Larry Austin—
Austin:Threnos for Bass Clarinet
and Electronics (Peter Josheff, bass clarinet)
Austin:Redux for Violin and
Electronics (Hrabba Atladottir, violin)
Larry Austin was a faculty member in the music department at UC
Davis between 1958–72 during some formative years for the
department. Austin was an award-winning composer who
founded SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde and
gained widespread recognition through a televised performance and
recording of his Improvisations for Orchestra and Jazz
Soloists by the New York Philharmonic conducted by
Leonard Bernstein. Austin was also very well connected and
was friends with some of the most important composers in those
days. For example, he invited Karlheinz Stockhausen to teach
at Davis while on sabbatical. Larry Austin was a very original
composer, avoiding the current trends of his day, writing truly
unique music. Austin taught for many years at the University of
Northern Texas and passed away in 2018.
Preview of Taproot New Music Festival Participating
Composers—
Inga
Chinilina:Sky Everyday for Bass
Clarinet (Peter Josheff)
Yuting
Tan:Moon On Water for Violin
(Hrabba Atladottir)
Two young composers have been invited to write pieces for the
Empyrean Ensemble for the Taproot New Music Festival in 2020:
Inga Chinilina and Yuting Tan. At this concert we will hear two
older (already written) pieces by these talented composers.
Empyrean’s Peter Josheff—
Peter Josheff:September for
Violin (Hrabba Atladottir)
Last, but not least, we’ll hear a piece by our very own Peter
Josheff, a founding member of the Empyrean Ensemble and an
accomplished composer.
The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by music director and
conductor Christian Baldini, opens
its season with one of the more flashy openings in all of
the standard symphonic repertory. Strauss’s Don
Juan is a remarkable tour-de-force for the
entire orchestra. It is a 20-minute orchestral tone poem that
parallels the fictional story of Don Juan, which originated as
early as 1630 and inspired—among others—Mozart to write his opera
Don Giovanni.
Maestro Baldini is very fond of the music by Richard Strauss,
having conducted several of his tone poems in previous seasons.
“Strauss wrote Don Juan when he was only 24,
and this is considered a revolutionary piece in many ways, from
its great breadth of virtuosity to its cunning characterization
of different moments in the poem by Nikolaus Lenau, on which it
is based,” said Baldini. “I chose to pair one of the most
energetic, dramatic and poetic works of the symphonic literature
with two beautiful and very different concertos, which feature
the soloist in a very different way – from the exquisite
Romantic, lyrical vein of Rachmaninov, to the extraordinary and
imaginative sound world of Lutosławski.”
Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is quintessentially Romantic;
tuneful as it is virtuosic. For all the piano soloist’s
dazzling passages, Rachmaninov wrote unforgettable melodies for
the strings. The piece’s success is one of the many reasons
Rachmaninov is remembered for his concertos more than his other
works. The soloist, Leyla Kabuli, is a
previous member of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, albeit as a
violinist. She was for three seasons pianist of the prestigious
San Francisco Youth Orchestra, and is pursuing her undergraduate
degree at UC Berkeley in electrical engineering and computer
science as a Regent’s and Chancellor’s Scholar. Kabuli has
performed extensively on piano, including as a soloist with
several California symphony orchestras and on National Public
Radio’s program for accomplished young performers called “From
the Top.” She currently studies with Yoshikazu Nagai at the
San Francisco Conservatory of Music and
with Michael Seth Orland, who teaches at UC Berkeley and UC
Davis.
Sacramento-born violinist Maximilian
Haft performs the solo violin role
in Chain II. Lutosławski wrote
three major works late in his life by the name “Chain,”
which illustrates the musical idea in the composition that each
element overlaps and also sequences in a specific
order. Chain II is the most concerto-like of
the three, and at several points the orchestra reacts (at the
direction of the conductor), but not exactly in time. In this way
the work has the feeling of a dialogue. Max Haft recently he
performed Chain II with the Noord
Nederlands Orkest, which was well received. He performs with
several important contemporary ensembles in Europe, but also
plays jazz and pop music. He often performs with White
Hinterland, The Eef van Breen Group, and HHHJ, a group devoted to
splicing together chamber music and free jazz.
Robert & Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, Davis, CA
Empyrean Ensemble will premiere two new works
by Taproot Festival Participating Composers
Inga Chinilina and Yuting Tan, and both
Quince and Spektral Quartet
will perform a work to be announced.
Empyrean Ensemble Mika Pelo, director
UC Davis Professor of Music
Two new string quartets by Taproot Festival
Participating Composers, a new quartet by
a UC Davis Graduate Student in Music,
and a new quartet by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Christian Baldini, music director and
conductor
UC Davis Professor of Music
Ravel:Pavane pour une infante
défunte
The haegeum is a two-stringed fiddle
of Korea. The physical nature of the haegeum allows it to
produce a diverse variety of timbres making it a popular
instrument for court, folk, and contemporary music. It is even
being used in Korean pop music.
Jean Ahn:The Woven Silk for
Haegeum and Orchestra
with Soo Yeon Lyuh
Christian Baldini: New Work for Haegeum and
Orchestra
with Soo Yeon Lyuh
