Meanwhile, out at the UC Santa Barbara campus, music-lovers are faced with the usual tight cluster of quarter-end concerts.
This year’s lineup includes the University Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Players, the University Wind Ensemble and the UCSB Chamber Choir.
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The University Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Players, will play at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 23, in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall.
In the first half of the concert, we’ll hear from a number of chamber ensembles.
First up are the winners of the Spring Quarter UCSB Chamber Music Competition: the Maurice Faulkner Brass Quintet (David Nakazono, trumpet; Jason Yi, trumpet; Anne Cotin, horn; Dylan Aguilera, trombone; AJ Simpao, tuba), playing the “Symphonic Dances” (arr. Gale) from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
The Young Artist Piano Quartet (Youjin Jung, violin; Jordan Warmath, viola; Larissa Fedoryka, cello; Leslie Cain, piano) will follow the “Allegro” from Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K.493.
Then Catherine Marshall, flute, and Thomas Lin Jr., cello, will perform three movements from Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Assobio a játo (The Jet Whistle), and pianists Leslie Cain and Petra Peršolja will play “Habanera” and “Feria” from Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole for Two Pianos.
After the Intermission, the UCSB Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Glen Cortese, will perform Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92.
Both halves of this program are youth-oriented, as is only fair. West Side Story, and its composer, continue to speak directly to young people, to their desire to throw off the restrictions of convention and tradition, and to find “a place for us.”
Ravel wrote Mother Goose originally for two children, aged 6 and 7, to play on the piano, and even that cigar-chomping Brazillian, Heitor Villa-Lobos, still speaks to the young most clearly of any of his Latin American contemporaries.
When I was a teenaged music lover, my friends and I loved the “Seventh” best of all Beethoven symphonies, chiefly for its second movement, lovely beyond words.
Tickets for this concert are $10 for general admission, $5 for non-UCSB students with ID and free for UCSB students with ID and children under 12.*
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The University Wind Ensemble, directed by Paul Bambach, with some assistance from graduate assistant Steven Cohen, will show their stuff at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 26, in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall.
The Winds will perform Eric Whitacre’s “Ghost Train” (1993), Aaron Copland’s Emblems (1964), Frank Ticheli’s Sanctuary (2006), Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Toccata Marziale (1924)(conducted by Cohen), Roger Cichy’s Divertimento For Winds and Percussion (1994), Ticheli’s San Antonio Dances (2010) and Morton Gould’s American Salute (1942).
It is a measure of the success of Maestro Bambach and his like-motivated colleagues around the country, raising the wind-consciousness of Americans, that more than half of this program — and largely the more popular parts — is the work of living composers — not to mention that all the pieces, save the last, were written for wind ensembles in the first place.
Tickets for the UCSB Wind Ensemble are $10 for general admission, $5 for non-UCSB students with ID and free for UCSB students with ID and children under 12.*
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The UCSB Chamber Choir and the UCSB Women’s Chorus, directed by Michel Marc Gervais and Pascal Salomon respectively, will go on at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 27, at Trinity Episcopal Church, which is located at 1500 State St.
The over-arching motto of the concert is “Not No Faceless Angel.”
The Women’s Chorus will highlight the music of British composer Robert “Bob” Chilcott, including his “Catch a Falling Star” and Five Songs for Upper Voices.
But prior to the Chilcott salute, those upper voices will open with “You Lovers that have loves astray” by John Hilton and “Now is the month of Maying” by Thomas Morley.
Following the intermission, the Chamber Choir will sing the “Ave Maria” of Paul Mealor, “Not No Faceless Angel” by Gabriel Jackson, the “De Profundis” for mixed choir and viola by Karol Beffa, “In Paradisum” by Christine Donkin and “Salve Regina” by Jackson.
The Chilcott setting of John Donne’s poem is exquisite, sublime, haunting. The Beffa is simply astounding, a spellbinder from start to finish.
Tickets for the choral concert are $15 for general admission, $10 for non-UCSB students with ID, $5 for UCSB students with ID and free for children under 12.*
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*Tickets to any of these events may be purchased at the door of the venue or at the Associated Students Ticket Office window (UCEN Room 1535, across from Corwin Pavilion), by calling the A.S. Ticket Office at 805.893.2064 or visiting www.music.ucsb.edu.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.