In recognition of outstanding contributions to the academic
environment at UC Davis through active engagement with faculty
and fellow students, along with excellent academic achievement
and demonstrated leadership in the music major.
Sarah Messbauer has earned an Outstanding Graduate Student
Teaching Award for 2015. The award is co-sponsored by the
Graduate Council and the Office of Graduate Studies.
Jessica M. Gutierrez
is the first music and Native American studies major to receive
a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate
Research since it was established in 1994.
Each year up to two graduating seniors who have completed
outstanding research, scholarship or creative activity tied to
any academic subject while at UC Davis are awarded the
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.
One of the after-school tutoring program in Davis, known as the
Bridge Program, pairs select Davis High School and UC Davis
students with elementary school students in Davis. The mission
statement of the program is:
The Empyrean Ensemble will present the second concert in its
Young and Restless series on Monday, June 1,
at 7 pm in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at the Mondavi Center.
Richard Cionco and the UC Davis University Chorus will be
featured in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy — a work dating
from 1808. The 18-minute piece include some musical material
that would later appear (in different and grander form) in
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1824.
The American Musicological Society and the Music Division of the
Library of Congress are pleased to present a series of lectures
highlighting musicological research conducted in the division’s
collections. Open to the public, the series is held in the
Library’s famed Coolidge Auditorium in the Jefferson Building. It
is the same room that Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring
premiered in, with Martha Graham.
The concert is titled Saluting UC Davis Mondavi
Institute — Making Life Better Through Food and
Wine, a theme that will be reflected in several of the
musical selections.
Stepans grew up in northern part of East Bay
— specifically the Kensington/El Cerrito/Albany
area. “I have played horn since the fourth grade, but have
only really started practicing it in the last four years,” he
said. “Before that, I played football and wrestled in high
school so there was no time to play horn in between sports and
school.”
The second half of the program will feature Gustav Mahler’s
“Das Lied von der Erde” (“The Song of the Earth”) as arranged
by Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn. Mahler composed “Das
Lied von der Erde” between 1907 and 1909, after a trio of
personal disasters overtook him (the death of his eldest
daughter from scarlet fever and diphtheria, his forced
resignation from the Vienna Court Opera, and the diagnosis of a
fatal heart condition). He described this as his most personal
work, but he did not live long enough to hear it performed.
I originally came in as a double math and music major, but I
realized that with the way each degree is structured, it would
be difficult to finish both within four years. One of my
professors, Dr. Kern Holoman, showed
such passion and expertise in a beginning music history course
that I realized I wanted to be a music major.
UC Davis Music professor Anna Maria Busse Berger is the winner of
the Faculty Research Lecture Award for 2015. She has won top
awards for research and writing in musicology.
“It is scored for an extremely unusual orchestra: quintuple
woodwinds (including a heckelphone, similar to a bass oboe),
eight horns, six trumpets, five trombones (including a
contrabass trombone, that we are borrowing from the San
Francisco Symphony), two tubas, celesta, two harps
and 14 percussionists — including a siren — plus orchestral
strings.”
Those attending the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in
Chicago could visit a faux Javanese village, sample tea and
coffee from the Indonesian island, and hear music of the
gamelan, a large percussion ensemble.
Exposure to this exotic culture produced a “javaphilia” – a
fascination for the music and dance of Java. That long-lasting
allure, and how the music had been transformed, could be seen
nearly 100 years later at the 1986 First International Gamelan
Festival at Expo ’86 in Toronto.
The Empyrean Ensemble — the professional group at UC Davis
dedicated to performing new music — will give a concert
titled “Young and Restless” at 7 pm, Sunday, April 26, in the
Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at UC Davis.
Henry Spiller — a member of the music department faculty
at UC Davis for 10 years — has a new book out,
detailing “American love affairs with Javanese music and dance”
through the stories of four North American artists.
Spiller and the UC Davis Gamelan Ensemble will be
performing music that goes with the book’s theme on Friday
as part of the “Musics of the World” concert in the Mondavi
Center’s Vanderhoef Studio Theatre.
The Performing Arts Center is on the Sacramento City College
campus, 3835 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento. Parking is free in the
west lot.
Tickets are $30 general, $28 for seniors, $15 for students and
$8 for those age 12 and under. Tickets are available by calling
916-929-6655 or online
at www.camelliasymphony.org/tickets.