Orchestral ConductingPh.D., Composition, State University of New York at BuffaloM.A., Conducting, Pennsylvania State UniversityB.A., Conducting and Composition, Catholic University of Argentina
Chris Castro is a composer and double bassist from Brooklyn, New
York. His music has been described as “on par with Varèse,”
giving him the nickname “The New Colossus of Sound.” He is a
recipient of Chamber Music America’s 2021 Classical Commissioning
Award. His new work, Canções dos Desassossego (Songs of
Disquiet), will be written for the Lyris Quartet and soprano
Sharon Harms and premiered in 2023. His music has been performed
by Sharon Harms and the Composers Conference Ensemble under James
Baker (Two Songs from Brooklyn Narcissus), the St. Louis Symphony
under David Robertson (Choruses III), pianists Sarah Cahill and
Eric Zivian (IV-I), piano duo HereNowHear (Beethausenstro -
Castockhoven) and the Lydian String Quartet (Choruses IV). He is
the 2022 Guest Composer for the James Tenney Memorial Symposium,
composing and collaborating with the New Mexico Contemporary
Ensemble. He currently lectures at UC Davis and Sacramento State
University. He has a Ph.D. in composition and theory from UC
Davis and a bachelor’s in music from the Juilliard School in both
double bass and composition.
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, University of British Columbia (2014)
Juan Diego Díaz is an ethnomusicologist with a geographic
research interest in Africa and its diaspora, particularly Brazil
and West Africa. He explores how African diasporic musics
circulate and transform across the Atlantic and how they serve
individuals and communities in identity formation.
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, University of Michigan
Percussionist Christopher Froh specializes in
promoting and influencing the creation of new music through
critically acclaimed performances and dynamic lectures. To date,
he has premiered over 150 chamber and solo works by composers
from 17 countries. His collaborations include some of the most
significant composers of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, including Chaya Czernowin, David
Lang, Steve Mackey, John Adams, George Crumb, Liza Lim, Matthias
Pintcher, and Keiko Abe.
MusicologyPh.D. Musicology, University of California, Davis
Carol A. Hess has published books and articles on the music of
Spain and the Americas. Her work has been funded by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Spanish Ministry of Culture,
and the New York Public Library, among other entities. She
received the Society for American Music’s Irving Lowens Article
Award, and her book Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain,
1898–1936 (University of Chicago Press, 2001) won the
ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the American Musicological Society’s
Robert M. Stevenson Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in Iberian
Music, in addition to other prizes.
Matilda Hofman, whose conducting has been described as having “a
striking sense of purpose” and “taut and finely controlled”
(San Francisco Gate), has a busy and varied performance
schedule. She works regularly with a wide range of groups in
Europe, and in California, which she has made her home. Matilda
has performed at the Salzburg Festival, Berliner Festspiele,
Holland Festival, and Ruhrtriennale among others.
Cary Peñate is a film musicologist who
specializes in depictions of Afro-Cuban dance music in cinema
from Latin America and the United States, particularly on
intersections between popular culture, politics, and commerce.
She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in
May 2021 and was awarded an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship for a
postdoc at the University of California, Davis.
DMA, Choral Conducting, University of ArizonaMM, Choral Conducting, University of British Columbia (Vancouver)BA, Music, Lewis & Clark College
Erik Peregrine (they/them or he/him) enjoys
an active career as a conductor and educator, serving as the
Director of Choirs and Lecturer in Music at UC Davis and as the
artistic director of Ensemble Companio, an award-winning
Northeastern regional chamber choir.
Pierpaolo Polzonetti specializes in opera and eighteenth-century
music and culture. His research work has been funded by the
Earhart Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies,
and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Ph.D. Musicology, Boston University 1986Mellomfag (equivalent to M.A.), German Studies, Trondheim University, Norway 1974Staatsexamen für das Lehramt an Gymnasien (equivalent to M.A.), Music, Musikhochschule Detmold, West Germany 1971
Medieval, Renaissance History and Theory,
Historiography, Missionary Music in Africa
Robert Samson Bloch holds a master’s degree from
the University of Chicago and a le prix avec distinction from the
Royal Conservatory of Music, Brussels. A violinist and violist
known equally for his performance of early and contemporary
music, he is the recipient of the First Prize in the Young
Artists Contest of the Society of American Musicians, the
Kranichsteiner Musikpreis, and an Alfred Hertz Memorial
Fellowship.
Jonathan Elkus was born in San Francisco and attended UC Berkeley
and Stanford. He taught largely at Lehigh University and from
1992 to 2002 served as lecturer and director of bands at UC
Davis. His visiting appointments include the North Carolina
School of the Arts and the Yale School of Music.
Andrew Frank (b. Los Angeles, 1946) studied composition with
Jacob Druckman at Bard College (B.A. 1968) and with George Crumb,
George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick at the University of
Pennsylvania (M.A. 1970). Since 1972, he has been a member of the
Department of Music at UC Davis, where he is professor emeritus
(2007).
Albert John Joseph McNeil is a native Californian, born in Los
Angeles. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and did doctoral studies
at the University of Southern California, the Westminster Choir
College of Princeton, and the University of Lausanne,
Switzerland. He was director of choral activities for 21
years and headed the music education program at UC Davis.
David Nutter studied music at the Conservatorio di Musica “Luigi
Cherubini” and musicology at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School
of Fine Arts (Florence, Italy). He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Nottingham in 1977. A specialist in
16th-century Italian music, his research interests include
secular and sacred vocal music, and music for the lute.
Slawson’s compositions include works for various chamber
ensembles, chorus and orchestra. He is best known for his
theories about an aspect of timbre called “sound color” and his
compositions of computer music that apply those theories. His
programming system, SYNTAL, is an adaptation of a computer speech
synthesizer to music composition.
Bachelor of Arts in music, UC BerkeleyMaster of Arts in music composition, UC Berkeley
When the University established the Department of Music in
1958, Jerome Rosen was the chair. He helped to write
both the undergraduate and graduate degree curricula. He
retired in 1988.
While studying at UC Berkeley, Rosen became associated with
Darius Milhaud, who was teaching at Mills College. In
1949-50 he studied in Paris with Milhaud and took lessons at the
Paris Conservatoire from the leading clarinet virtuoso of the
era, Ulysse Delécluse.
He went to Paris as the recipient of a UC Berkeley prize, the
George Ladd Prix de Paris. Rosen also received Fromm Music
Foundation grants (1953, 1954, and 1960), a Guggenheim Fellowship
(1958), and a residency at the Rockefeller Study Center in
Bellagio, Italy (1982).
Rosen was a composer of sixty works of solo and chamber
music, often including clarinet or saxophone, as well as vocal
pieces, works of symphonic scope and the operas Calisto
and Melibea (1979) and Emperor Norton of the
USA (1999), both produced in Main Theatre.
William E. Valente (1934−1993) was professor of music at UC Davis
from 1950 to 1993. He taught music theory and composition,
was an undergraduate adviser for the Department, and conductor of
the University Concert Band. In honor and memory of Professor
Valente and his impact on the many students he taught, guided,
and inspired during his life as a mentor, an endowment was
established in name: The William E. Valente Music Scholarship
Fund.
He attended the University of Tulsa and Harvard University,
where he studied composition with Leon Kirchner. He was assistant
professor in music at Fisk University and visiting assistant
professor of music at Vassar College, joining the Department of
Music at UC Davis in 1972. He received numerous awards and
commissions for new compositions, including concerti for cello
and for piano with orchestra and works for symphonic band and for
chorus (including two masses).
Sydney R. Charles, professor emerita, joined the faculty of the
Department of Music in 1961 and retired in 1985. Her major fields
of research include musical practice and theory, 14th- and
15th-century English music, and musical iconography. Charles was
active in building the music collection at Shields Library, and
she served as chair of the department from 1977 to 1980.
She published the books Josquin des Prez: A Guide to
Research, The Music of the Pepys MS 1236, and A Handbook
of Music and Music Literature in Sets and Series, and she
published many articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians. She also was an editor of the journal
Notes. Charles received her bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from the Eastman School of Music and her Ph.D. from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1959.
Master's in music composition, University of Chicago
Richard Swift was a noted composer and one of the founding
editors of the UC Press journal 19th-Century Music. In
the 1970s he also served on the editorial board of this leading
scholarly publisher. He earned his master’s in music composition
at the University of Chicago in 1956, studying under Leonard
Meyer and Leland Smith, and he taught at the University of
California, Davis, from 1956 to 1991 where he was a pillar of the
arts and humanities and established the artist-in-residence
program while serving as the Music department chair from 1963 to
1971. His music compositions encompass the traditional genres,
including songs to texts by major poets in his acquaintance. He
was a rigorous composer, a valued theorist, and a gifted teacher.
