A distinctive series of events featuring collaborative efforts
between a number of UC Davis composers, as well as writers and
musicians from UC Davis and elsewhere, will take place
during May. Included will be recent works by UC Davis faculty
composer and violist Kurt Rohde; poet Diane Seuss, visiting
from Michigan…”
Fries and Sulieman are one of six duos from the College of
Letters and Science music and English departments that have
collaborated on works for voice, piano and some electronics.
The pieces will be premiered by the Brooklyn Art Song Society
at the “Creative
Writing” concert May 10.
The [violin] concerto is known for its mix of Hungarian folk
melodies, Bulgarian dance rhythms, modern microtonality and
references to Medieval and Renaissance music — including the
composer’s use of scordatura (an alternate tuning of the violin
that was used by Baroque composer H.I.F. Biber in some of his
violin sonatas).
UC Davis graduate student Josiah Catalan
won first place in the 2017 NACUSA (National
Association of Composers/USA) Composition Competition for
his piece titled Wanderlust, written
for flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and
percussion.
Laurie San Martin, professor of music, will
receive the Andrew Imbrie Award in music given by
the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. San Martin is
among the eighteen recipients of this year’s
awards in music, which total $225,000.
Aida Shirazi, graduate student in composition, will have her
“Vestiges” for strings and flute premieres on March 12
by the Left Coast
Chamber Ensemble in an evening titled “Sonnets to
Orpheus.” The performance takes place in the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be repeated on March 17 at Berkeley Hillside
Club at 7:30 p.m.
Esther DeLozier, a graduate student in music, has been appointed
to the 2018 cohort of Mellon Public Scholars. She will be working
with the California Arts Council on a review of their public arts
grant-making programs.
To explain his Visions, Messiaen wrote about
multiple definitions of what “Amen” might mean. These various
meanings loosely inspire his seven-movement piece. A little
like these multiple meanings, the short pieces by Castro and
Acimovic appealed to different aspects of Messiaen’s
idiosyncratic compositional style.
Conductor Jeffrey Thomas, a longtime member of the UCD music
faculty, will lead the performance of the Schubert Mass in G,
which was composed early in Schubert’s all-too-brief career…
The program also includes two orchestral works by English
composer Elgar, both of which will be conducted by doctoral
candidate Jonathan Spatola-Knoll.
Compositions by graduate students Philip Acimovic and Christopher
Castro are to have their world premieres in an upcoming Left
Coast Chamber Ensemble concert. Acimovic’s Reverent
Murmurs for Two Pianos and Castro’s
IV-I for Two Pianos are included in the
program Visions de l’Amen.
The concert will be performed in two Bay area venues,
first on Feb. 1 and 3 at the Berkeley Piano Club, then
on Feb. 5 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Professor Christopher Reynolds was elected an honorary
member of the American Musicological Society (AMS) at their 2017
meeting in Rochester, New York, along with Thomas
Forrest Kelly, Malena Kuss, and Judy Tsou.
According to the AMS By-laws, Honorary and Corresponding members
of the AMS are those scholars “who have made outstanding
contributions to furthering its stated object and whom the
Society wishes to honor.”
And there will be a piece titled “Binge Delirium” for solo
percussion by Yu-Hui Chang (born 1970), a native of Taiwan who
taught at UC Davis for seven years, then joined the music
faculty at Brandeis University, where she had previously earned
her Ph.D. in 2006.
Experience an afternoon and evening of jazz at UC Davis on
Thursday Nov. 30 when the College of Letters and Science’s
Department of Music’s jazz bands perform two concerts at the Ann
E. Pitzer Center.
The evening program will feature a variety of Afro-Cuban
classics and modern standards. Tickets are $20 general, $10 for
students, available at www.MondaviArts.org, 530-754-2787
or at the door.
Professor of Music Kurt Rohde has been busy exploring new
territory in recent years – the voice. “I like the voice, be it
sung, spoken, snoring or muttering,” said the composer, who has
been at UC Davis for 11 years. His one-act opera Death
With Interruptions takes place at the Ann E. Pitzer
Center on Nov. 11.
Classical works that were inspired by humanity and nature form
the basis of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Sunday,
Nov. 5. Jeffrey Thomas, Barbara K. Jackson Professor of Music and
director of the American Bach Soloists, will conduct.
The program includes Edward Elgar’s “Sospiri,” Claude
Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune,” Gustav
Mahler’s “Blumine” and Ottorino
Respighi’s “Pini di Roma.” Ellen Ruth Rose, viola, and
the University Chorus join the orchestra for a performance of
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Flos Campi.”
Music composition doctoral candidate Daniel Godsil has been
awarded the 2017 Earplay Donald Aird Composers Competition. His
Aeropittura for flute, viola, cello, and piano,
will be performed by the Earplay chamber ensemble in March in San
Francisco.
Music composition doctoral student Aida Shirazi’s “Trio for
Violin, Horn, and Piano” is being performed by the
Sierra Ensemble on Friday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. in
the Presidio Officers’ Club, 50 Moraga Avenue, San
Francisco.