This concert is guest conducted by Matilda Hofman, features
Guyanese American soprano Shawnette Sulker — acclaimed for her
“heart-breaking poignancy” by the San Francisco Chronicle
— and has on it three works that will demonstrate the UC
Davis Symphony Orchestra’s ability to present compelling music
by a variety of composers.
The program opens with Yu-Hui
Chang’s Pixelandia, a 2015 multi-movement work
inspired by the joy of first-wave 2D video games, “with graphics
so primitive that every scan line and pixel was visible.” Music
and video-game enthusiasts will be delighted to learn that the
third movement is where one meets the “Boss” and that the tempo
marking before the last movement is “Insert coin to continue.”
The other two pieces on the program are by twentieth-century
American composers Florence Price and Samuel Barber. Price’s
music didn’t enjoy the same successes as Barber’s did “on account
of [her] sex and race.” Her Third Symphony in C Minor was funded
by a Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant and was first
performed in 1940, Michigan. First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt was in attendance, but the work remained
unperformed until 2001 when the Women’s Philharmonic in San
Francisco recorded it. The work interweaves mid-century modernist
music techniques with African dance rhythms and themes.
Barber’s Knoxville uses a poem by James Agee,
sung by soprano and orchestra. The work is a musical picture of a
summer’s day in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1915, in which a boy
lays in a field listening to the sounds around him. This
performance features Guyanese American soprano Shawnette Sulker,
acclaimed for her “heart-breaking poignancy” by the San Francisco
Chronicle. Knoxville was last performed at the
Mondavi Center by Christine Brewer and the UC Davis Symphony
Orchestra in 2009 for the Barbara K. Jackson Rising Stars of
Opera program.
UC Davis Symphony Orchestra
Christian Baldini, music director and conductor
San Francisco Opera Center
Carrie-Ann Matheson, artistic director
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.
Rising Stars of Opera features several singers from the highly
regarded San Francisco Opera Center performing a wide range of
great arias with full orchestral accompaniment from our own UC
Davis Symphony Orchestra.
The selections on this program are by composers who
conscientiously worked to break the mold of the orchestral
forms of their time: Debussy rendezvoused with poets and
artists who influenced the young composer to somehow bring
impressionism into music. For Takemitsu, Western music was
itself an escape from post-war occupied Japan and he
experimented with it. Shostakovich, in over 15 symphonies,
sought to imbibe each with the most intense feelings of their
time, from revolution to despair and resilience.
In Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, a solo flute player in
the orchestra evokes the imagery of the mythical Pan and his
enchanting flute. Pan—Greek god of the fields and music—wakes up
from a nap and tries to remember his dream, only to fall asleep
again, hoping to meet his nymph friends in his next dream.
In Takemitsu’s Requiem for String Orchestra, he utilized early
20th century tonalities by Western composers such Arnold
Schoenberg and made his own experimental mark on 20th century art
music. Coincidentally, Igor Stravinsky heard this Requiem and
sang its praises to American and European classical artists.
Shostakovich wrote his Sixth Symphony in curious proportions: The
first movement is a lengthy largo (slow and yet also
serious) and features a beautiful English horn solo and haunting
solos on flute and piccolo that are reminiscent of the flute solo
in Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. The second movement by
contrast is a short scherzo filled with delightful
rhythmic tricks, and as if one scherzo wasn’t enough,
Shostakovich ends the symphony with another. It’s full of excited
string work and bombastic — almost a study for his later Festive
Overture.
Program
Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, L. 86
Relive the magic of E.T. The Extra
Terrestrial on the big screen accompanied by a
magnificent, live performance of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra,
conducted by Professor Christian Baldini.
Director Steven Spielberg’s heartwarming masterpiece is one of
the brightest stars in motion picture history. Filled with
unparalleled magic and imagination, E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial follows the moving story of a lost
little alien who befriends a 10-year-old boy named Elliott.
Experience all the mystery and fun of their unforgettable
adventure in the beloved movie that captivated audiences around
the world, complete with John Williams’ Academy Award®-winning
score performed live by the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra in sync
to the film projected on a huge high definition screen!
A celebration of the concerto form, this program unusually
presents three very different concertos on one program! Through
these specific works, composers make broader human connections
beyond the concert space.
Gershwin famously folded jazz—exploding in popularity at the
time—into the orchestra with the piano at center. Brewbaker
took inspiration from 12th-century poet Sufi, asking: Is the
violinist playing the violin or the violin playing the violinist?
Eliza Brown vividly connected, in one ten-minute soaring work,
her mother’s favorite music with Virginia Woolf’s
Orlando, with the essence of both her own (and her
mother’s) musical spirit.
Program
Eliza Brown: A Toy Boat on the Serpentine
UCDSO Competition Winner To be announced.
Daniel Brewbaker: Playing and Being Played
with Rachel Lee Priday, violin
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
with Erina Saito, piano
