Friday is the last day of instruction of UCSB’s Winter Quarter, which ends March 20. This week, the UCSB Music Department is having what amounts to a music festival.
Those who prefer music a little more up to date should seriously consider the concert by UCSB’s ECM (Ensemble For Contemporary Music) at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on campus. The program bears the motto “Speaking Personally …” and it has been organized from works that reveal more than is usual of the personalities of the composer. ECM violist Jacob Adams is featured in several panels from Morton Feldman’s multiopus “The Viola in My Life.” This seems a suitable dose of Feldman, whose works tend to require the audience to set aside hours — not to say days — to hear them in their entirety. For all that Feldman frequently tests my patience (it is as if he inhabited another temporal existence, where one minute of his lasts 10 of ours), I have considerable respect and affection for his music. Graduate flutist Tracy Goodwin will perform “Cadeau” (French for “present” or “gift”) by the former Corwin Chair, co-founder of ECM and all-around wonderful guy, William Kraft. Also on the bill, the “Diary of a Journey” by American composer Samuel Adler (b. 1928), the “Requiescat” by prominent American composer George Tsontakis (b. 1951), as well as a work presented, as it were, in memoriam: the “Textes of Marcel Milhalovici (1898-1985).” Tickets are $20 general admission and $9 for students, and will be available at the door.
The suite from Michael Giacchino’s score for the recent UCSB Symphony Orchestra concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, but the concert bears the rubric “Up with Solos!” since the event will also feature winners of the 2010 UCSB Concerto Competition. Assistant conductor Anthony Kim will lead the band in the Overture to Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” which will segue into soprano Alissa Favero singing the aria “Glitter and be Gay” from the same operetta. Flautist Carina Jette will take the solo part in Jacques Ibert’s “Flute Concerto” from 1934. In addition, violists Kimberly Fitch and Jacob Adams will play one movement each from concertos by Bela Bartók and Paul Hindemith. It appears that this ensemble is looking toward Easter on April 4, and the symphony will round off its concert with a performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s stirring “Russian Easter Overture” (this year, Russian Easter is the same day, April 4, as everybody else’s). Maestro Richard Rintoul will conduct all the selections except for the Bernstein. Rintoul, like most musicians of any accomplishment, has multiple gigs, one of them — since he is a world-class violist — is as a Hollywood studio musician: he actually played on the soundtrack of UP! The suite of Giacchino’s score, receiving here its West Coast premiere, has won the Golden Globe, Grammy, Critics’ Choice, BAFTA and now the most prominent, the golden statuette of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There is a chance the composer will be in the audience for this performance. Tickets are $20 general admission and $9 for students, and will be available at the door.
Finally, the UCSB Men’s & Women’s Choruses present their quarterly concert at 8 p.m. Thursday at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State St. This year, the concert bears the motto “My Song Rings Out!” and will feature secular folk music, including settings of Czech folk songs by Antonin Dvořák, drinking songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams and folk renderings by Edvard Grieg. Helena von Rueden and Adam Kurihara will conduct. Once more, tickets are $20 general admission and $9 for students, and will be available at the door.
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— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com.