Orchestral ConductingPh.D., Composition, State University of New York at BuffaloM.A., Conducting, Pennsylvania State UniversityB.A., Conducting and Composition, Catholic University of Argentina
Josiah Tayag Catalan is a Filipino-American born
in New York City and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He
holds a degree from the Sacramento State School of Music
where he studied composition with Stephen Blumberg and
Leo Eylar and violin with Anna Presler and Ian Swensen.
During his studies at the Sacramento State School of Music,
he was chosen to represent the music department for the
annual One World Initiative campaign to raise awareness
around current global issues.
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.
Prior to accepting the position at UC Davis, Dosman was
the Director of Choral Studies and associate professor at the
University of Southern Maine. He was also the artistic director
of the Community Chorus at South Berwick, the Chorus Master for
the Portland Symphony Orchestra’s Magic of Christmas series and
Opera Maine. He began his collegiate teaching career as the
Director of Choral and Vocal Activities at Colby College and
worked as an adjunct voice professor at Molloy University.
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.
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.
Scott Linford is a music scholar,
filmmaker, and musician who has conducted research in West
Africa, Central America, and the United States. His primary
research interests include participation and musical experience,
identity and belonging, agriculture and the environment, musical
repatriation, and colonial and post-colonial politics. Raised in
the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds a master of arts degree
and Ph.D.
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.
Michael Mannella, a native of Detroit, Michigan, joined the
faculty of UC Davis in the fall of 2023 and has been a member of
the United States Air Force Band since 2005. He currently acts as
the personnel manager for “The Commander’s” Jazz Ensemble and is
a member of the concert band.
Steinway Artist Natsuki Fukasawa’s music career has
taken her throughout U.S. cities as well as to Europe,
Scandinavia, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Japan, and China,
performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and
Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall. Fukasawa has won many accolades
and international prizes, including rave reviews
in Strad and Fanfare magazines and the Best
Chamber Music Recording of the Year from the Danish Music Awards.
Heidi Moss Erickson is a San Francisco Bay
Area performer, educator, and scientist. Noted for her “rich and
radiant soprano” (Edward Oriz, Sacramento Bee), she has performed
both in the United States and abroad.
A champion of new music, she frequently collaborates with
renowned living composers including Daron Hagen, David Conte,
Tarik O’Regan, Henry Mollicone, Jake Heggie, and her husband,
Kurt Erickson.
Faythe Vollrath, harpsichordist, performs as a soloist and
chamber musician throughout the United States. Hailed by the Wall
Street Journal for her “subtly varied tempo and rhythm
that sounds like breathing,” her solo performances include venues
such as MusicSources in Berkeley, CA, Gothem Early Music in New
York City, and Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg.
Malcolm MacKenzie is a professional
dramatic baritone with twenty-five years of performing experience
at leading opera houses throughout the United
States and Europe, having appeared with the
Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Paris Opera (Bastille),
Finland’s Savonlinna Festival, Washington National
Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, San Diego Opera,
Arizona Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Opera Colorado, Opera
Omaha, North Carolina Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera among
others. MacKenzie’s wide repertoire includes many
“Baddies”:
Simon Boccanegra, Iago, Tonio, Baron Scarpia, Don
Giovanni, Count di Luna, Renato, Jack Rance,
Marcello, Germont, and Count Almaviva. He has
extensive experience teaching young professional singers, but has
also taught beginners and non-professionals.
New England Conservatory of Music, Master of Music (2001)
UC Davis Lecturer in Music I-Hui Chen is a
compelling pianist who seamlessly radiates her music and thoughts
to the audience. Critics consider her musicality to be honest and
direct, reflecting the composer’s original intentions, yet
retaining her own creative individuality. In addition to her role
as a solo performer, she is a dedicated teacher to young
musicians and an experienced collaborative pianist.
A native of Northern California, Dagenais Smiley
earned her bachelor of music degree at Oberlin
Conservatory as a student of Milan Vitek and her master’s degree
from University of Southern California under the instruction of
Kathleen Winkler. She is proud to have worked under notable
conductors such as Leon Fleisher, David Zinman, Robert Spano,
Michael Tilson Thomas, and John Williams. She has participated in
master classes given by Yuval Yaron, Kathleen Winkler, Alexander
Barantschik, Fritz Gearhart, the Calder Quartet, and Glenn
Dicterow.
Stacey Pelinka is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and
the Eco Ensemble. She plays principal flute with San Francisco
Opera’s Merola Program productions and second flute with the
Berkeley Symphony, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the San Francisco
Chamber Orchestra, and the Midsummer Mozart Festival. A certified
Feldenkrais Method® practitioner, Stacey teaches Feldenkrais at
the San Francisco Symphony. She attended Cornell University and
the San Francisco Conservatory, where she studied with Timothy
Day.
Brian Rice is a highly acclaimed performer, educator, and
recording artist and one of the most versatile percussionists in
the Bay Area. Though best known as a specialist in Brazilian and
Cuban music, he can be heard playing a multitude of styles,
and his percussion playing graces over sixty recordings.
Currently Artist Affiliate in cello and chamber music at the
University of California, Davis, Susan Lamb Cook is an
active performer and educator in the capital region.
Bachelor of Music degree, Indiana University and Master’s degree, University of Texas, Austin
Jolán Friedhoff relocated to Davis in 2008 after serving as
assistant concertmaster of the Saar State Opera Orchestra
(Germany) for twenty years. Since her return to California, she
has performed as assistant concertmaster and concertmaster for
several orchestras in the region, including the Sacramento
Philharmonic, Modesto Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, and the Bear
Valley Music Festival. She also has been part of the
Mendocino Music Festival orchestra, Sacramento Choral
Society, and Sierra Master Chorale.
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.
Michael Goldberg, guitar, is currently playing solo and chamber
recitals throughout the United States. He has toured as part of
the Alma Duo, an ensemble of violin/viola and guitar, and is also
a longtime member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, a group
devoted to contemporary music performance. He has recorded on the
Arabesque and Kameleon labels.
Peruvian-born mezzo-soprano Zoila Muñoz teaches voice on the
faculties of UC Davis and California State University,
Sacramento, and is artistic director of Apollo Opera in the
Sierra Foothills.
Music director Pete Nowlen has been a member of the UC Davis
faculty since 1988. Nowlen has been a dynamic part of the
northern California musical scene for nearly
thirty years. He is dedicated to renewing and
sustaining classical music’s relevance in our society, and
his career has led him to surprisingly diverse
opportunities.
Michael Seth Orland has appeared extensively in the Bay Area as a
chamber musician, playing with the San Francisco Contemporary
Music Players Earplay, the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players,
New Music Theater, the Empyrean Ensemble, Other Minds, and in the
San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music Series.
A champion of contemporary music in the United States and abroad,
violist Ellen Ruth Rose is currently a member of Empyrean
Ensemble, the flagship new music ensemble in residence at UC
Davis, and Earplay, the San Francisco-based contemporary
ensemble.
Sand plays with the chamber ensemble Musical Assembly, is
director of the New York State Baroque, and appears with many Bay
Area early music groups. He has recorded for Meridian, Harmonia
Mundi (France and the U.S.), Arts and Music, KATastroPHE,
Wildboar, and Titanic.
Kevin Stewart hails from the greater metropolitan area of
Detroit. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan, where
he received a Bachelor of Woodwind Performance degree, Kevin
headed west and settled in the Bay Area, hooking up with the San
Francisco Saxophone Quartet, the Nuclear Whales Saxophone
Orchestra, and most recently the South American jazz group
Quinteto.
Research Interest(s): Eighteenth-Century Studies, Cultural
History, Music
Julia Simon specializes in eighteenth-century French
literature and culture with special emphasis on the
relevance of Enlightenment social, political, moral, and
aesthetic theory today. She also works in music,
specifically on the cultural history of the blues. She is the
author of Time in the Blues; Rousseau among the
Moderns: Music, Aesthetics,
Politics; Beyond Contractual Morality: Ethics, Law, and
Literature in Eighteenth-Century
France and Mass Enlightenment: Critical Studies in
Rousseau and Diderot. Her current book project examines
calls for justice in the blues through a historical analysis of
economic relations and, specifically, the imposition of debt on
African Americans.
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
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.
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.
Robert Samson Bloch earned a master’s degree from the University
of Chicago and a le prix avec distinction from the Royal
Conservatory of Music, Brussels. He was a violinist and violist
known equally for his performance of early and contemporary music
and was 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.
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.
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). He had been a member of the
Department of Music at UC Davis since 1972, and in
2007 became professor emeritus.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
