UC Davis graduate student Josiah Tayaq
Catalan will have his new composition,
unravel, composed for solo piano, premiered on
the SFCMP program available April 10 through May 10,
2021. The concert is part of the Contemporary Music
Players CROSSROADS series and is accessed
via an
on-demand webcast for $8–12 beginning April 10 at
8 pm Pacific time.
Undergraduate music major Tiara Abraham performed “Quia Respexit”
from J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, and earned the
Grand Prize from the Enkor International Music
Competition. She received a score of 96.25 percent,
which is the highest received by a contestant during its six
years and won the Grand Prize among ages 10–25 in the vocal
category. Enkor is a unique music competition with a jury
board consisting of more than 500 members throughout the
world.
Delayed from fall of 2020, this year’s festival features eight
women, including co-director Jane Lenoir, in celebration of 100
years since ratification of women’s right to vote in the
United States. Concerts will be livestreamed via
the Berkeley Choro Ensemble’s YouTube
channel. Pioneering women composers of Brazil, notably
including Chiquinha Gonzaga and Carolina Cardoso de
Menezes, will be featured in this year’s festival.
Kurt Rohde, UC Davis professor of music,
will for the second year running be the composer-in-residence at
the summer festival produced by New York’s Weekend of Chamber Music in
the Catskill Mountains. The festival is titled “Into the
Light,” and will feature chamber music of Ludwig van Beethoven,
Elliott Carter, Füsun Köksal, Huijuan Ling, Kurt Rohde, Franz
Schubert, Andrew Waggoner, and Shelley Washington.
Alumna Emma Gavenda
(B.A., music, ‘10) recently appeared in New Zealand Opera’s world premiere of
Ihitai
‘Avei’a – Star Navigator. It was performed in concert by
the Manukau Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Choral and the Graduate
Choir New Zealand. Gavenda was a chorister in presentation,
which featured Amitai Pati, one of the 2016 Rising Stars of Opera
at UC Davis Robert and Magrit Mondavi Center for the Performing
Arts.
UC Davis professor of music Laurie San
Martin’s duo Zeppelin, for flute and cello, will be
performed
via livestream on Monday, April
5, 2021, at 5:30 pm Pacific Time,
from the Hamel Music Center at the Mead Witter School of Music,
University of Wisconsin. The program also includes works by David
Lang, Lou Harrison, and Astor Piazzolla.
When many people think of African music, the first ideas that
come to mind are often of rhythm, drums, and dancing. These
perceptions are rooted in emblematic African and
African-derived genres such as West African drumming, funk,
salsa, or samba and, more importantly, essentialized notions
about Africa which have been fueled over centuries of contact
between the “West,” Africa, and the African diaspora. These
notions, of course, tend to reduce and often portray Africa and
the diaspora as primitive, exotic, and monolithic.
Professor Kurt Rohde’s composition
One Wing is featured on a new
recording by the Left Coast Chamber
Ensemble. Rohde’s work is inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s
chamber work Quartet for the End of Time which is also
on the recording.
An “Aggie for life,” alumnus Bill Hollingshead (B.A.,
political science, ’60) died in early February. He and his wife
Dianne were longtime patrons of the Department of Music. Bill’s
patronage to UC Davis is showcased in article on the College of
Letters and Science website.
Graduate student composer Trey Makler was recently
interviewed by CapRadio’s classical music director Kevin
Doherty in regards to his composition Spaceman/Watchman.
Featuring text by creative writing graduate students Jordan
Dahlen and Sawyer Elms, the work was included in the recent
concert New Words and New Music with Voice.
Graduate student composer Emily Joy
Sullivan will be given the premiere performance of her
song cycle Giver of Stars by Kelci Kosin, soprano,
and Cara Chowning, piano (both of Ball State University) at the
annual Music for Women Festival, hosted by the Mississippi
University for Women. Giver of Stars features the
poetry of Amy Lowell, who is a poet, performer, editor,
and translator and has devoted her life to the cause of
modern poetry.
On Thursday, March 11, 2021, at 7:30 pm Eastern Time, The Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center will stream a previous
performance of new chamber works. Chris Froh, percussionist and
UC Davis lecturer in music, is featured in Toru
Takemitsu’sRain Tree for Percussion
Trio (1981).
The California Choral Directors
Association (CCDA) has awarded UC Davis alumna Susanna
Peeples with a 2021 Early Career Choral Conductor award. The
award was given at this year’s CASMEC conference (virtually, of
course). Peeples graduated from UC Davis in 2009 and earned her
master of music degree (in music education) from the University
of the Pacific. She teaches choir, piano, and guitar, at Granite
Bay High School, where she was named that school’s Teacher of the
Year by her peers in 2020.
The Society for American Music has chosen UC Davis
Associate Professor of Music Beth Levy as their Vice President.
They have also elected members at large Mark Burford and Marian
Wilson Kimber.
Her book Frontier Figures: American Music and the
Mythology of the American West (UC Press) was published
in 2012. Her other interests include eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century aesthetics, reception history, and
representations of music in literature.
UC Davis graduate student Josiah Tayaq
Catalan has been awarded the 2021 commission for a new
work, which will be composed for solo piano. The commission
provides for a “private score reading and feedback session with
the Contemporary Players and SF Search panelists, a premiere of
the commissioned work on [their] at the
CROSSROADS series concert held in San Francisco on
April 10, 2021, plus an archival recording.”
A new work by Aida Shirazi, doctoral student in music
composition, will be premiered by the Camellia Symphony
Orchestra, under the direction of Associate Professor
Christian Baldini on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 5 p.m. (PST).
Works by Aida Shirazi, a doctoral student in music composition,
are featured on several recent and upcoming live or recorded
online concerts.
Her “albumblatt” will be part of a concert by pianist Sarah
Cahill broadcast on BBC Radio on Nov. 20. It is part of Cahill’s
“The Future
is Female” project that commissioned works by women composers
from around the world.
Tiara started at Davis this quarter and is pursuing a degree in
music, though she first started to sing when she was about four
years old.
“When I turned seven, I realized that I loved music and I loved
to sing, and it was something I was truly passionate about, so
I found a voice teacher who was willing to train me and I began
to learn the right techniques and healthy habits early on,”
Tiara said.
