Kyle Bruckmann, lecturer in
music at UC Davis in oboe, is giving a live-streamed
Quarantine Concert from 5:30 to 6:00 pm on Friday, April 17. The
short performance will be live-streamed
on Twitch and will also be made available for viewing
afterwards. Donations made during the program are given to that
particular performer. The Quarantine
Concerts are a series of short programs organized by the
Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) in Chicago in order to provide
performers a space to share their work and also earn money in
this period of COVID-19-related cancellations.
It sure has been helping sustain me, being a fly on the
walls of so many dear experimental music colleagues across the
country, as we try to make sense of continuing our creativity,
and the sharing thereof. —Kyle Bruckmann
The ESS has a mission that ”nurtures artists, heralds new
works, and builds a broad, supportive community of makers,
enthusiasts, and creative partners through production,
presentation, education, and preservation.”
UC Davis Professor of Music Kurt Rohde has new a CD, it wasn’t a
dream, released by Albany Records featuring two major
chamber compositions. The first work, it wasn’t a
dream, sets a sequence of poems by Diane Seuss to
music performed by soprano Charlotte Mundy, tenor Andrew Fuchs,
and pianists Michael Brofman and Miori Sugiyama.
The Sacramento
Saturday Club has awarded UC Davis undergraduate music major
V. Leone Rivers—a percussionist—a $500 scholarship. The
Sacramento Saturday Club was organized on December 9, 1893. It is
the oldest musical organization in Sacramento—and one of the
oldest west of the Rockies.
The Department of Music has cancelled all performances and
lectures for the academic Spring Quarter. We have made this
decision because we truly believe it is in the best interest of
our students, musicians, faculty, and the community at
large.
Choruses, orchestra, and our different bands will reschedule
repertoire and visiting musicians, as able, to one of their
existing future dates in 2020–21. Other events will be
rescheduled when possible. Ticket holders of concerts in April,
May, and June will automatically be offered a refund.
Please allow for some extra processing time for this to take
place.
We know this is a difficult moment to comprehend. We hope that by
taking these measures we will be actively participating in
slowing the virus’s spread, allowing for a quicker recovery
period, and we can then return to normal presentations as soon as
possible.
Thank you—and we hope to see you sooner rather than later.
—Staff and Faculty, UC Davis
Department of Music
The concert will include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with
soloist and former Davis resident Andrei Baumann,
and Christ on the Mount of Olives, and San
Martin’s what remains, written for the UC Davis
orchestra and chorus.
The production features regional folk songs, classical Indonesian
ballads and Sundanese and American pop music; dancers from the
group Padepokan Seni Jugala; and the multi-media program “Learn
from Pring” (pring refers to the wisdom of bamboo). The
audience will be invited to participate.
UC Davis Graduate Student in Music Esther DeLozier has been
named Student of the Month for February, 2020, by the Society for Ethnomusicology
(SEM). SEM will feature Esther as Student of the
Month on their website and Facebook page. Begun in
January of 2019, the recognition highlights research and
accomplishments of its members to the public. Esther’s
dissertation examines the live interactions between artists
and their audiences.
Leaving my country of birth [Venezuela] has expanded my vision
of what it means to be a citizen in and of the world while
pursuing a doctorate in ethnomusicology has increased my
enthusiasm and respect for the cultural and artistic diversity
that is part of that world. As a citizen and a scholar, I
strive to share my appreciation for the arts by promoting their
richness and importance within and beyond [academia].
As part of the California Women Composers series, the new chamber
music ensemble Earplay shared the premiere performance
of Fray, written by Professor Laurie San Martin.
The work, which was commissioned by Earplay, can be viewed on Earplay’s YouTube
channel.
UC Davis Graduate Student in Music Hannah Adamy has been using
her Mellon Public Scholarship to build alliances among women and
gender-expansive musicians in Sacramento.
Reviewer Lilly O’Brien of the San Francisco Classical Voice sat
down with pianists Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmermann to
talk about their upcoming performance of their
Pictures-at-an-Exhibition-like performance project
called “Zofo-Moma,” which they will perform at UC Davis on
Friday, February 14.
West Edge Opera’s “Snapshot”
Festival program was comprised of four short operas,
including UC Davis Graduate student Ryan
Suleiman’s Moon, Bride, Dogs, which was set to
a libretto by UC Davis graduate student in creative writing
Cristina Fríes. Michael Zwiebach of the San Francisco
Classical Voice reviewed the performance and said of it—
The very title of “Moon, Bride, Dogs,” an eerily beautiful new
chamber opera by composer Ryan Suleiman and librettist Cristina
Fríes, serves as both the cast of characters and a hint at the
piece’s terse M.O. There’s nothing in this 20-minute opus that
doesn’t need to be there, but it covers plenty of ground in
just a few deft strokes.
West Edge Opera’s “Snapshot”
Festival program was comprised of four short operas,
including UC Davis Graduate student Ryan
Suleiman’s Moon, Bride, Dogs, which was set to
a libretto by UC Davis graduate student in creative writing
Cristina Fríes. The work was originally premiered at UC
Davis in May 2018 by the Brooklyn Art Song Society along with
five other pieces for voice and piano in collaboration with
the Program in Creative Writing.
A collaboration between writer Cristina Fríes—alumna of UC
Davis’s Creative Writing program—and current doctoral candidate
in UC Davis’s music composition program will premiere Bones
of Girls in Sacramento January 24–25.
Taproot new music festival offers a lineup of new music groups
and commissioned works over four days. “The festival is
rooted in this place and produces unique works,” said Sam Nichols, festival coordinator, composer and
music department faculty member. “The different groups and people
come together and meet one another and share. We didn’t just want
groups parachuting in and performing what they might perform
elsewhere and then leave.”
Music major Matthew Rasmussen ‘20 will play the Weber
Bassoon Concerto with the Solano Symphony
Orchestra. He is one of three winners of the orchestra’s
2019 Young Artist’s Competition. Matthew is the
principal bassoonist in the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and
studies with UC Davis lecturer in music David Granger.
Taproot new music festival offers a lineup of new music groups
and commissioned works over four days. “The festival is
rooted in this place and produces unique works,” said Sam Nichols, festival coordinator, composer and
music department faculty member. “The different groups and people
come together and meet one another and share. We didn’t just want
groups parachuting in and performing what they might perform
elsewhere and then leave.”
Two versions of a miniature opera by Ryan Suleiman, a doctoral
student in music composition and theory, and Cristina Fríes, who
earned an M.A. in creative writing from the English department,
will have performances in Sacramento, Berkeley and San Francisco
this month.
In addition to teaching horn and the concert bands at UC Davis,
lecturer in music Pete Nowlen is director of the Rancho Cordova’s
Civic Light Orchestra called “Symphony d’Oro.” Through this
orchestra he builds on local connections.
Graduate student Ryan
Suleiman’s short opera Moon, Bride,
Dogs will be performed twice in a partnership with Bay
Area new music ensembles EARplay and West Edge Opera called
“Snapshot.” His opera is written to a libretto by UC Davis
graduate student in creative writing Cristina Fríes and was
premiered at UC Davis in May 2018 by the Brooklyn Art Song
Society along with five other pieces for voice and piano in
collaboration with the Program in
Creative Writing.
The Howard
Mayer Brown Fellowship for a minority graduate study in
musicology for 2019 was awarded to UC Davis music graduate
student Serena
Yang.She is the first UC Davis
student to earn the Brown fellowship from the American
Musicological Society.
