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.
We are pleased to announce that the Sacramento Business
Journal named the
Ann E. Pitzer Center a Best Real Estate Project of 2017. We
are grateful and proud of the work LPAS Architecture +
Design and Kitchell have done to bring this
building to life. The students and community of UC Davis love
using this great space.
UC Davis selected music department graduate student
Hannah Adamy (ethnomusicology) as their Graduate
Student Researcher for “Engaged Scholarship and Engaged Learning”
for 2017–18.
As part of the new strategic plan, UC Davis has a desire to fund
community-informed arts initiatives. Adamy will be helping
Michael Rios, the faculty advisor to the Provost, to design a
plan to make this happen. She will be researching other
institutions with these kinds of community-engaged arts programs
and compiling data about them.
Jessie Ann Owens, former dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural
Studies in the College of Letters and Science, and professor of
music at UC Davis, has been appointed the Robert Lehman Visiting
Professor at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for
Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, for Fall 2015. I
Tatti is the foremost research institution in the world for
Italian Renaissance art, history, literature, and music, and the
visiting professorship is an appointment of Harvard University.
Best of the Bay, San Francisco Classical Voice’s annual reader
poll, has honored the American Bach Soloists, under the director
of UC Davis’ Jeffrey Thomas, with two awards this year.
ABS won in the categories of Best Early Music/Baroque Ensemble
and Best Festival for their American Bach Soloists Summer
Festival and Academy.
Music composition doctoral student Aida Shirazi’s “Lullaby for
Shattered Angels” is being performed as part of the inaugural
“New Music
from the Islamic World” series at Music at the Anthology
(MATA) in New York July 8.
Music professor Kurt Rohde’s “Power Is
Everywhere” songs will have its world premiere in San Francisco
May 30. Rohde’s songs are a kind of companion piece to Maurice
Ravel’s Chansons madécasses that will also be part of
the “Francophilia”
concert by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
Rohde’s music in “Power is Everywhere” is set to the writings of
Michel Foucault, the 20th century philosopher and
literary critic.
“I find the writings and lectures of this groundbreaking thinker
to be direct, anything but simple, and yet always so clear,” said
Rohde. “The singer is the observer, actor and deliverer of the
message; she is not there to simply sing the text – she is there
to instigate the way the music unfolds.”
He calls it a “a surreal singspiel” influenced by opera, song
cycles and theater.
The concert, which will also be performed in Berkeley June 1,
will also include works by Debussy, Massenet and Rorem. Nikki
Edenfield will be the singer.
Rhode, a violist who is a member of Left Coast, recently
completed works for the Lyris Quartet, the Lydian String Quartet
and eighth blackbird. His opera, “Death with Interruptions,”
premiered in March 2015, will be performed at UC Davis Nov. 11
and 12.
UC Davis cello student Angelica Rojas won the Senior Division in
the local California Music Educators Association
competition. Angelica will perform in the Sacramento
Section’s Winners Recital in the fall, will be given a cash
award, and will have the opportunity to compete at the state
level in the fall of 2018. Also, UC Davis alumnus Stephanie
Sugano won best teacher in the Placer County chapter of the CMEA.
Grace and Grant Noda, long-time supporters of the UC Davis
Department of Music and the original donors for creation of the
Ann E. Pitzer Center, will be honored at a noon concert and
reception May 25.
The long-time Davis residents made the initial $1.5 million
donation that eventually led to construction of the Pitzer Center
which houses a recital hall and music department facilities. The
lobby of the center is named for them.
Philip Acimovic, a Ph.D. candidate in music composition, has
received a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Educational
Foundation Dissertation Writing Fellowship for the academic year
2017-2018.
Acimovic’s dissertation analyzes three musical works from
different eras that challenge established musical conventions of
clarity, intent and perception: “Musical Offering” by Johann
Sebastian Bach (1747), “Holiday Symphony” by Charles Ives (1913)
and “Melodien” by György Ligeti (1971).
Audio engineer Steve Bingen for the UC Davis Department of Music
has been profiled by Jeff Hudson of the Davis
Enterprise. Read
Hudson’s article that takes you behind the scenes prior to
and during a concert and the ability to watch a Pitzer Center
performance on your computer.
Graduate student Sarah Messbauer has been awarded the
coveted President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship for
academic year 2017–18. In addition to a stipend,
Messbauer has been invited to attend the prestigious
Annual Meeting of President’s Predoctoral Fellows and
Dissertation Year Fellows sponsored by the UC Office of
the President.
Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology Hannah Adamy was awarded the
Charlotte Frisbee Student Paper Prize. Adamy’s paper, “Sounding
Absence: Tanya Tagaq’s Theoretical Intervention at Polaris,” has
been awarded this prize. The prize recognizes the most
distinguished student paper in ethnomusicology of Indigenous
music research presented at the SEM annual meeting. The prize
comes with an award of $100.
