Espejismo
The works selected for tonight’s concert result from the research and conversations in the voice class. They are chamber music pieces, mainly from the last 20 years, created by women composers. Also, writing these notes, I realized that most composers you will listen to emigrated from their countries. 
Navigating this repertory brought me thoughts, emotions, and ideas that allowed me to discover, reformulate, and realize different aspects of myself as a singer, vocalist, performer, musician, and human being. 

Program:

Mirage (2007) - Kaija Saariaho (Finland, France. 1953 - )
Text: Maria Sabina (1896-1985)
For voice, cello, and piano
15 min approx

Meadow Song (2010 / 2013) - Iris Szeghy (Slovak, Switzerland. 1956 -) 
For voice and violin
Text: From Slovak hay-harvesting song
5 min approx

De las hojas secas del verano (1967) - Jacqueline Nova (Colombia, Belgium.1935-1975)
For voice and piano 
Text: Jose Puben (1936-1996)
4 min approx

Only The Words Themselves Say What They Say (2011) - Kate Soper (USA. 1981- )
For voice and flute
Text: Lydia Davis (1947-)
13 min approx

Lullaby (2016) - Nasim Khorassani (Iran. 1987- )
For voice and piano
Text: From Iranian folk lullaby
6 min approx

Artefact #2 (2019) - Sara Glojnaric (Croatia, Germany. 1991- )
For voice drum set and electronics
10 min approx

Collaborators
Piano: Kyle Adam Blair 
Drums: Eric Derr 
Flute: Teresa Diaz De Cossio
Cello: Peter Ko
Violin: Ilana Waniuk
 

Program Notes

Mirage is a work for voice, piano, and cello written by Kaija Saariaho in 2007, commissioned originally by the Orchestre de Paris, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and adapted a couple of years later to her friends Pia Freud, Anssi Karttunen, and Tuija Hakkila.

Working on the piece, I learned about Maria Sabina. She was a healer, wise, oral poet, and Shaman from Mexico who introduced the use of psilocybin mushrooms and their sacred and healing power to help her community. Unfortunately, her practice was taken by the Western world, and this issue affected her and her community profoundly. 

Meadow Song is a piece by Iris Szeghy that I listened to for the first time around 2015 in the two voices version. After that, I wrote the composer on social media and could access the scores of different versions of the same piece, like the voice and flute, voice and saxophone, and voice and violin version you would listen to tonight. After some conversations via email, she sent me her piece for solo voice, Psalm, which I had the pleasure to perform and record in my album Resonancias Entrelazadas in 2021. Although we have not met in person, I feel grateful to collaborate with her in all these fantastic works.

Jaqueline Nova was a pioneer in electroacoustic music in Colombia and Latin America. She was the first woman to graduate from the Colombia National Conservatory of Music as a composer. The first piece I listened to her was Creacion de la Tierra (Creation of the Earth) at elementary school when my music teacher showed us an excerpt of the piece to exemplify Contemporary Music. It was probably the first electro-acoustic piece that I listened to. De las hojas secas del verano is one of her songs closer to an experimental and contemporary language. Other songs by her have more rhythmic structures with patterns and tonal sounds. In the piece you will listen to, the rhythm has more space and freedom, and the melody is created more atonally.

Lydia Davis is one of my favorite American writers and poets, and the way the composer Kate Soper used her text in the piece Only the Words Themselves Say What They Say is incredible. Soper is a talented composer who explores voice in many different ways. Being a singer allowed her to impregnate the piece of many explorations of the instrument that made the performance pleasant and exciting. Additionally, how the flute and the voice create textures and meanings is very simple regarding the tools but rich in the complexity both make simultaneously. 

I met Nasim Khorassani when I started my Doctorate last Fall. A couple of months later, I learned about her project MOAASER, in which she teaches composition online to support and promote the works of young Persian composers, engaging them with all her energy, creativity, discipline, and big heart. When planning this recital, I wanted to include a piece by her. Right after I mentioned it, she sent me the score, and we talked about the work. Lullaby is a song she composed one night when she couldn't fall asleep. It is a melody to calm the mind, and the soul, to lull the thoughts, fears, and sadness. 

Sara Glojnaric is interested in the aesthetics and socio/political consequences of pop culture, among other topics. We met during my Master's at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany. In Artifact #2, she wants to evoke nostalgia from pop music, using drum intros from renamed rock songs from the 90s and 80s and doing different electronic treatments to create new sonorities and meanings. 

Bio Natalia Merlano Gomez: 

Musician, singer, improviser, and creator. She has been captivated by Experimental Music, worldwide Folk Music, improvisation, graphical notation, and extended vocal sounds. Additionally, she is curious about theater and explorations around video and photography. She studied an M.A in Contemporary Music - Singing at Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, being part of different multidisciplinary projects combining music, theater, dance, literature, and visual arts. Yielding good results, she did her undergraduate program at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogota, Colombia. She is pursuing a Doctorate in Music Arts at the University of California San Diego. Since 2009, she has premiered many works by composers worldwide and commissioned new pieces. In 2021, she presented her first album called: Resonancias Entrelazadas. It includes 15 works written by women composers and improvisations with female performers. Also, in 2022, she premiered the project CINCO with audiovisual pieces by Latin American composers written primarily for her.

Mitchell Carlstrom's 2nd DMA Recital, featuring works by Zubel, Stockhausen, Matalon, and Saariaho.

Surface for solo hammered dulcimer was composed in 2023. In this work, I perform a timbral exploration of the body of this traditionally folk instrument through articulation of its various unique resonant surfaces, highlighting aspects of the instrument’s pitched and percussive nature, and bringing about a multitude of gradually unfolding sonorities.

Influx for string quartet was originally composed for the Mivos quartet in 2022. This piece aims to explore a continual straddling of the boundary between identifiably pitched and noisy complexes through a collage of distinctive interspersed textural identities.

Constellations was composed in 2023 for three vibraphones, viola, cello and contrabass. The work explores various textural environments, each composed of a limited set of idiosyncratic behaviors. These behavioral elements are reconceived in each textural circumstance through a variety of transformational processes. This compositional approach examines the unique effect which space and time confer on one’s perception and experience of reality. To me, this entertains our ability to capture distinctive dimensional perspectives, each of which offers their own beauty.

- Zachary Konick

All Performers:
Violin I – Myra Hinrichs
Violin II – Pauline Ng
Viola – Alex Taylor
Cello – Robert Bui
Contrabass – Matthew Henson
Vibraphone I – Camilo Zamudio
Vibraphone II – Kosuke Matsuda
Vibraphone III – Mitchell Carlstrom
Hammered Dulcimer – Zachary Konick
Conductor – Berk Schneider

Biography:

Zachary Konick is a San Diego based composer, percussionist, hammered dulcimerist and music instructor. He received his BM from the University of Maryland and his MM degree at the University of South Florida in music composition. He has received notable performances by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the newEar Ensemble, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the Florida Orchestra, The Conjunct Contemporani del CSMIB (Palma, Spain), the McCormick Percussion Group, the JACK, Ethel, Spektral, and Mivos String Quartets, as well as solo performances by Lee Hinkle, and Alice Weinreb. His music has been conducted under the baton of Oliver Knussen, Aleck Karis, Michael Francis and Steven Schick. He is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where he primarily studies with Roger Reynolds. His past mentors have included Thomas DeLio, Chinary Ung, Lei Liang, Katharina Rosenberger, Baljinder Sekhon, and Paul Reller.

Ken Anderson, San Diego's leading proponent of gospel, directs UC San Diego's Gospel Choir in a concert of African-American spirituals, blues, and traditional songs.

In its final concert of the season, the UC San Diego Wind Ensemble performs works by inti figgis-vizueta, Carlos Chávez, John Barnes Chance, Hailey Myers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Leonard Bernstein.

Directed by Mike Jones

The UC San Diego Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Alex Taylor, present their final concert for the 2023-24 season features Beethoven's iconic fifth symphony with its revolutionary motto and powerful instrumentation, expanding the symphony orchestra with trombones, piccolo and contrabassoon. We are delighted to collaborate with graduating DMA pianist Shaoai Ashley Zhang on Mozart's sparkling piano concerto in E-flat, and also showcase the atmospheric music of one of UC San Diego's talented graduate composers, Akari Komura. Wenpeng Gao, preparing his conducting portfolio for graduate school, will lead Weber's der Freischütz overture, a characterful opener by turns pastoral and demonic. 

Akari Komura - Weaving Air (world premiere)
Carl Maria von Weber - Overture to Der Freischütz (conducted by Wenpeng Gao)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concerto no. 22 in E-flat major - Shaoai Ashley Zhang soloist
Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony no. 5 in C minor

JUNE 10-11, 2023 SACRED AND SUBLIME

ARIAN KHAEFI, SALLY & EINAR GALL CHORUS DIRECTOR, CONDUCTOR

Arian Khaefi takes the podium to conduct this program of rich choral and symphonic repertoire. We’ll open with R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee, a spell-binding oratorio that is “deep rooted in Spirituals and folklore.” We’ll then present Young Artists Competition winner from 2021, Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, as soloist in Mendelssohn’s gorgeous Violin Concerto. The program will conclude with Ernst Bloch’s monumental Avodat Hakodesh. Rarely performed, this epic sacred work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra represents the full maturity of Bloch’s music in the Jewish tradition.

R. Nathaniel Dett                                 The Chariot Jubilee

Felix Mendelssohn                               Violin Concerto

YAC Winner 2021: Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, violin

Ernst Bloch                                            Avodat Hakodesh

Soloist: 2021 Young Artist Competition winner Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, violin; Michael Sokol, Baritone; Richard Hodges, Tenor

More information & Tickets: https://www.ljsc.org/

JUNE 10-11, 2023 SACRED AND SUBLIME

ARIAN KHAEFI, SALLY & EINAR GALL CHORUS DIRECTOR, CONDUCTOR

Arian Khaefi takes the podium to conduct this program of rich choral and symphonic repertoire. We’ll open with R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee, a spell-binding oratorio that is “deep rooted in Spirituals and folklore.” We’ll then present Young Artists Competition winner from 2021, Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, as soloist in Mendelssohn’s gorgeous Violin Concerto. The program will conclude with Ernst Bloch’s monumental Avodat Hakodesh. Rarely performed, this epic sacred work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra represents the full maturity of Bloch’s music in the Jewish tradition.

R. Nathaniel Dett                                 The Chariot Jubilee

Felix Mendelssohn                               Violin Concerto

YAC Winner 2021: Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, violin

Ernst Bloch                                            Avodat Hakodesh

Soloist: 2021 Young Artist Competition winner Ayrton Coehlo Pisco, violin; Michael Sokol, Baritone; Richard Hodges, Tenor

More information & Tickets: https://www.ljsc.org/