The Bacchetto / Sabey Duo is a collaborative project
of San Francisco-based composer-performers Nick Bacchetto and
Ben Sabey. The duo creates new spatial audio works for
piano and a custom modular analog synthesizer controlled by an
MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) instrument.
Ben Sabey is a composer of chamber, orchestral,
and electronic music, lately specializing in expressive
polyphonic control of analog synthesis and spatialization.
Nick Bacchetto is a composer and pianist whose
creative works derive from a tension between algorithmic and
intuitive composition, and explore concepts such as fractal
geometry and natural selection.
Composed by New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood,
Immersion (1998) for marimba and two
tam-tams was written for Dominic Donato and Frank Cassara and
arranged for the Talujon Percussion Quartet in 2001. It grew out
of a fascination with the rich beating frequencies generated by
long cluster rolls in the low register of the marimba and the
interaction between the marimba and a quartz bowl gong tuned to
F.
Composed for a flexible number of collaborative performers,
Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together was
written in response to the 1971 uprising at the Attica
Correctional Facility. Our performance of Coming
Together will feature both undergraduate and graduate
student instrumentalists, playing alongside the professional
musicians of the Empyrean Ensemble. The performance will feature
Omari Tau, voice, reciting a text written by Sam Melville
that reflects the conditions at Attica during his incarceration
there.
When it debuted Mary
Poppins dazzled theatergoers with a mix of
whimsical music, animated characters combined with live-action, a
spoonful of medicinal laughter and magical wisdom from a
mysterious nanny. Who would have thought that a cheeky
babysitter could have such an impact on a dysfunctional family .
. . and on those of us who watched too!
Mary Poppins received both popular and critical
acclaim. The movie was recognized with a total of 13 Academy
Awards nominations (which was a record for Walt Disney
Studios). It even received a nomination for Best
Picture. Of the 13 nods, it took home five Oscars: Best
Actress for Julie Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music
Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song for “Chim Chim
Cher-ee.”
Choro Famoso
Mike Marshall, mandolin
Andy Connell, clarinet and saxophone
Colin Walker, 7-string guitar
Brian Rice, pandeiro and UC Davis lecturer in music
Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso bring a bright energy and
virtuosity to their concerts, maybe matched only by the
Brazilians themselves. Choro is an important musical tradition
of Brazil with characteristic Afro-Brazilian rhythms and
European popular dance tunes. Mike—already known throughout the
world for pushing on the boundaries of many music genres—became
smitten with Choro on his first adventure in Brazil.
These new pieces for solo violin, or solo violin and
electronics, were created as part of the graduate student
workshop, in which graduate students meet with Icelandic
violinist Hrabba Atladottir each week during Fall Quarter,
refining their compositions.
In addition to performing works by our own graduate student
composers on this program, PinkNoise—known for its contemporary
improvisational performance practice—will perform its own
program, featuring the open-instrumentation work “Black as a
Hack for Cyborgification” by Jessie Cox, alongside other works,
on Friday, April 14th, at 5:00 pm.
Wendy Richman has been celebrated
internationally for her compelling sound and imaginative
interpretations in a wide range of genres. Her debut solo album,
vox/viola (New Focus Recordings, 2020), features
nine commissioned works for singing violist by leading
contemporary composers. She is a founding member of the
International Contemporary Ensemble, with whom she performs
regularly in New York City and around the world, and she has
performed regularly with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the period
instrument ensemble Tesserae. Dr. Richman is a faculty member at
both UCLA and California State University-Northridge (CSUN),
where she teaches a variety of academic music courses and applied
viola, and she is a sought-after clinician at universities and
conservatories across the country.
