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 graduated in 2018 with a doctoral degree in
composition from UC Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in
composition and double bass from the Juilliard School.
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, University of British Columbia
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.
