On this Halloween night as we begin the Día de los Muertos
holiday, let us treat you to a free 1-hour concert. No tickets
are required; simply walk in the door! The program features
orchestral works that vividly illustrate traditional scenes of
death. In “Danse macabre” a detuned violin calls the spirits of
the dead (or even the skeletons!) into a frenzied dance on the
stroke of midnight. “Death and Transfiguration” illustrates a
slowing heart (or clock), a final breath, and a transfiguration
into the heavens above.
Program
Jean Sibelius: “The Death of Mélisande” from Pelléas et
Mélisande
Camille Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre
Sergei Prokofiev: “Death of Tybalt” from Romeo and
Juliet
UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
and Singers from the San Francisco Opera
Center
Since its inception in 2010, Rising Stars of Opera has featured
vocal artistry, stirring arias and a glimpse at the opera stars
of tomorrow; and every ticket has been free to the public
thanks to Barbara K. Jackson. Today, Rising Stars of Opera
features several singers from the acclaimed San Francisco Opera
Center performing a wide range of great arias in one complete
opera act.
A thunderclap which begins a piano concerto. A symphony
anxiously written over 21 years. A first performance of a new
work commissioned by the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra by an
“interdisciplinary artist … not constrained to logic and
reason.” These are the ‘new frontiers’ the UC Davis Symphony
Orchestra will explore in this program.
Program
Maya Miro Johnson: New Work (World Premiere)
On a commission from the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra,
Miro Johnson is writing a new work to be premiered on this
concert. She approaches music composition from an
interdisciplinary space, without restraint, and often
concerning unanswerable questions about the human condition
and its biological systems.
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
with Roger Xia
Ravel used virtuosity as the main ingredient in his G-Major Piano
Concerto, with—at times—flavors of jazz, and elements of
Stravinsky and Saint-Saëns.
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1
It took Johannes Brahms, living in the shadow of Beethoven, more
than two decades to write his First Symphony. The result was a
new symphonic form that arced towards the final movement rather
than entirely rising from the first movement.
featuring the voices of Volti (San Francisco) • Robert
Geary, Artistic Director
and UC Davis Professor of Music Pierpaolo Polzonetti, narrator
Italian composer Luciano Berio pioneered electronic elements in
his scores, and in his homage to the 13th-century poet Dante
Alighieri, he laid a musical fabric (which includes recorded
audio) against a collection of poems called “Laborintus” by
Edoardo Sanguineti, which is spoken throughout the music. The
result is Berio’s “Laborintus II.”
Program
Luciano
Berio: Laborintus II
text by Edoardo Sanguineti
