Music faculty members and husband and wife Sam Nichols and
Laurie San Martin have known cellist David Russell for 20 years
and they’ve been writing music for him nearly that long.
Nichols’ newest piece for Russell, “This Is Not a Toy For
a Child,” will have its first performance by the UC Davis
Symphony and Russell on Nov. 21. The concert is at the
Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC
Davis.
Russell, Nichols and San Martin met while they were students at
Brandeis University in the 1990s. They each have written three
pieces for Russell, who is a lecturer in music at Wellesley
College.
I heard a very nice concert by the UC Davis Early Music
Ensemble last year. “Very nice,” though, doesn’t begin to
express what I heard this past Wednesday night at the Episcopal
Church of St. Martin in Davis. Under the leadership of
its new director, Matilda Hofman, the Early Music Ensemble has
been transformed into something that demands notice.
I heard a very nice concert by the UC Davis Early Music
Ensemble last year. “Very nice,” though, doesn’t begin to
express what I heard this past Wednesday night at the Episcopal
Church of St. Martin in Davis. Under the leadership of
its new director, Matilda Hofman, the Early Music Ensemble has
been transformed into something that demands notice.
I heard a very nice concert by the UC Davis Early Music
Ensemble last year. “Very nice,” though, doesn’t begin to
express what I heard this past Wednesday night at the Episcopal
Church of St. Martin in Davis. Under the leadership of
its new director, Matilda Hofman, the Early Music Ensemble has
been transformed into something that demands notice.
I heard a very nice concert by the UC Davis Early Music
Ensemble last year. “Very nice,” though, doesn’t begin to
express what I heard this past Wednesday night at the Episcopal
Church of St. Martin in Davis. Under the leadership of
its new director, Matilda Hofman, the Early Music Ensemble has
been transformed into something that demands notice.
The Davis Sinfonietta, a new ensemble under the direction of
Jonathan Spatola-Knoll, will give its debut performance at 7
p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22, at the Episcopal Church of St. Martin,
640 Hawthorn Lane in Davis.
UC Davis Music Professor Carol A.
Hess has been awarded the Robert M.
Stevenson award for Representing the Good Neighbor:
Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream (Oxford
University Press, 2013). The book investigates the
reception of Latin American art music in the U.S. during the Pan
American movement of the 1930s and 40s. Under the Good Neighbor
Policy, crafted by the administration of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to cement hemispheric solidarity amid fears of European
fascism, Latin American art music flourished and U.S. critics
applauded it as “universal.”
Musicologist and UC Davis Professor of Music Jessie Ann Owens received the
2015 Noah Greenberg
Award for outstanding performance projects from the
American Musicological Society. Along with the Blue Heron
ensemble and its artistic director, Scott Metcalfe, Owens
will produce the first recording of Cipriano de
Rore’s I madrigali
a cinque voce (1542).
The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra performs the first orchestral
piece by French composer Olivier Messiaen, and the first
orchestral piece by UC Davis faculty composer Sam Nichols, as
well as the Third Symphony by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius,
during a performance at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, in the
Mondavi Center’s Jackson Hall. All three works have three
movements, giving the program further symmetry.
The concert also will feature a return by cellist David
Russell, who appeared with the orchestra in 2007 for the
premiere of UC Davis faculty composer Laurie San Martin’s Cello
Concerto. This time, Russell will be featured in the new
cello concerto by Nichols (who is, incidentally, San
Martin’s spouse).
…After returning to the U.S., he obtained a doctorate in 1960
at New York University. He joined the faculty of the University
of California at Davis in 1963 and became a professor of music
there in 1971…
Serena Yang (Ph.D. student in
musicology) was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Taiwanese
government to support her research and graduate studies. Her
article, “Mode and Atonality in Japanese Music: Pitch Structure
in Minoru Miki’s Jo no kyoku” was recently published in
the Music
Research Forum (University of Cincinnati).
The Empyrean Ensemble — the professional “new music” group
at UC Davis — opens its season on Sunday (Nov. 8) at 7
p.m. with a concert featuring edgy new works in the Mondavi
Center’s Vanderhoef Studio Theatre. There will also be a free
concert featuring excerpts from the program at noon on Thursday
(Nov. 5).
The concert is titled “Newly Written, Here and There,” and the
concert will feature six recent works by composers living in
different parts of the United States. On the program:
The UC Davis Jazz Ensembles, directed by Sam Griffith, perform
their fall 2015 program in the Mondavi Center’s Vanderhoef
Studio Theatre on Friday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m.
The UC Davis Early Music Ensemble will present its fall-quarter
concert at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, at St. Martin’s
Episcopal Church, 640 Hawthorn Lane in Davis. A donation of $20
general or $10 for students is suggested at the door.
A well-known jazz musician and professor at the University of
California at Davis visited American River College on Thursday
to discuss how students could succeed in the music industry in
his lecture during a jazz clinic.
Jacam Manricks said that being a successful musician is more
than just playing music. Manricks urged the students to not
only think about the artistic side of music, but the business
aspects of the industry as well.
Two classic works of chamber music by Johannes Brahms
— the Piano Trio in C Major, and the String Sextet in G
Major — will be featured in a free noon concert on
Thursday, Oct. 29, in Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center.
With 10 days to fill, Sacramento State’s Festival of New
American Music (www.csus.edu/music/fenam) has a lineup
Nov. 6-15 to please all music lovers with a variety of
forms and artists, and even includes a couple of former members
of the Grateful Dead.
FeNAM’s featured composer is Kurt Rohde, who will present a
keynote address at noon, Friday, Nov. 13. A recipient of
the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rohde
also is a founder of and performs with the Left Coast Chamber
Ensemble.
Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen will visit the Mondavi Center’s
Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26, for a free
concert. It will feature a piece titled “Manzi,” with music by
Davis composer Pablo Ortiz performed by Kartunnen on solo
cello. A dance video with choreography by Diana Theocharidis —
featuring dancers Romina Pedroli and Aníbal Jiménez, recorded
by videographer Jean-Baptiste Barrière — will accompany the
music.
