Department of Music Concert and Event Listing

Celebrate the Arts - UC San Diego's annual Arts Fair on the 1st day of instruction! Thursday, September 26th at the Epstein Family Amphitheater. 

Stop by to learn about arts on campus. Talk to representatives from campus art departments, academic departments and student orgs and learn how you can be involved in the arts at UC San Diego!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28th - MEDIA ARTS CENTER SHOWCASE at UC San Diego!

MEDIA ARTS CENTER students, alumni, and guests, join UC San Diego faculty and graduate students to celebrate the end of the summer Media Center Summer classes with a FIELD TRIP and Festival of Learning at the UC San Diego campus and the Conrad Prebys Music Center & Warren Lecture Hall Recording Studios. Group activities, tours, and performance - and MORE!

Join us! Saturday, September 28th!

• 9am - Students arrive

  9:15-10am - Welcome (Experimental Theater)

  WALK Group A to Warren 

  1015-1145am - Group A & Group B activities (Experimental Theater / Studio A)
  Bring an instrument to improvise in Studio A, if you like!
  Spatialization demo in Experimental Theater
  1115-1145am: Faculty & Ambassadors Discussions in Experimental Theater 

  12-1245pm - Lunch (CPMC steps / courtyard) 

  WALK Group B to Warren 

  1-230pm - Group A & Group B activities (Experimental Theater / Studio A)
  Bring an instrument to improvise in Studio A, if you like!
  Spatialization demo in Experimental Theater
  2-2:30pm: Faculty & Ambassadors Discussions in Experimental Theater 

  245 / 3 - 4pm  Concert & Conclusion (Experimental Theater)
   

Thursday, October 10 at 7pm, Experimental Theater
A Concert of New Works for Brass Quintet by:
Stephen de Filippo, William Kuo, Aaron Mencher, Douglas Osmun, Ni Zheng, and Michelle Lou

Ensemble Apparat (Berlin)
Ensemble Bio:
Ensemble Apparat's interest and focus is on expanding the horizons of brass instruments in the context of new music and sound art. The members of Ensemble Apparat have gained extensive experience in renowned new music ensembles (including Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, MusikFabrik Köln, Collegium Novum Zürich), have performed at notable festivals of contemporary music (Donaueschinger Musiktage, Huddersfield New Music Festival, Wien Modern) and have participated in notable academies (Ensemble Modern Akademie, Lucerne Festival Akademie, Impuls Graz and Darmstädter Tage für Neue Musik). They have worked closely with numerous young composers to challenge and expand the brass quintet repertoire. 

In recent years, the ensemble has presented new programs with commissioned works (Ann Cleare, Klaus Lang, Michelle Lou, Max Murray and others) at the Rainy Days festival of the Philharmonie Luxembourg, at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and at the Klangwerkstatt Berlin festival. As part of the Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, Ensemble Apparat has performed at many important Berlin festivals for contemporary music, including Musikfest and MärzMusik at the Berliner Festspiele.
 

Henrique Portovedo performs Music for Alto Saxophone and Computer

Apneia, Dimitris Andrikopoulos 
Hotpo, Michael Edwards
emission_mayhem, Gustavo Gonçalves
Collapsed, Pierre Jodlowsky 

ElectroSax is a project presented by Henrique Portovedo for the international promotion of contemporary composers who have developed electroacoustic sonorities with the Saxophone as the solo instrument. The works explore the relationship between the sonorities of mechanical and electronic sources, and this project is supported by DGartes - Ministry of Culture of the Government of Portugal. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Henrique Portovedo was awarded with a Summa Cum Lauda PhD in the field of Science and Technology of the Arts (Performance and Computer Music) at the Portuguese Catholic University funded by FCT. Portovedo was Fulbright Researcher at the University of Santa Barbara Califonia, Erasmus Researcher at the University of Edinburgh, visiting researcher at the ZKM Karlsruhe and visiting researcher at McGill University Montreal. Master in Music Performance with Distinction by Trinity Laban London and Master in Music Pedagogy by the University of Aveiro, he was awarded with several prizes including by the Portuguese National Centre of Culture and the British Society for Education Music and Psychology. As performer and intermedia artist has presented multidisciplinary creations in festivals worldwide, while being soloist with some of the most relevant contemporary ensembles in Europe. Currently Portovedo is professor at University of Aveiro and Guest Professor at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Musica de Madrid. 

“Roomful of Teeth is revolutionizing choral music.”—New Yorker

Roomful of Teeth is a two-time GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble dedicated to the performance of new works for eight amplified voices. Through collaboration, commissioning, and new technologies, they seek to reimagine the expressive potential of the human voice.

Their latest album, Rough Magic (New Amsterdam Records, 2023) was captured using groundbreaking recording techniques and innovative spatial technology. Roomful of Teeth was recognized at the 66th GRAMMY Awards in 2024, winning Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Rough Magic; and composer William Brittelle’s work Psychedelics, which appears on the album, was nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Blacktronika: Afrofuturism in Electronic Music course, honors all the innovators of color that have contributed to the advancement of electronic music. The Club Experience is an extension of this, celebrating the impact of community and practice created by those innovators, exploring all genres created from these Black and Brown communities, Chicago House, Detroit Techno, Disco, Dub, Drum & Bass, Amapiano and much more. 
Dress to dance and sweat!

Wednesdays at 7 presents Percussion Ensemble
red fish blue fish
Directed by Steven Schick

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 7:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater

Program:
Gerard Grisey (b.1946 - 1998) - Stèle (c.1996)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b.1977) - Aura (c.2011)
Guo Wen Jing | 郭文景 (b.1956) - Parade (c.2003)
Steve Reich (b.1936) - Mallet Quartet (c.2009)

red fish blue fish features percussionists: Wesley Fowler, James Koo, Camilo Zamudio, Kosuke Matsuda, Mitchell Carlstrom and Steven Schick.

General Admission: $20 | UC San Diego Faculty, Staff, Alumni: $10 | All Students : Free with ID
Purchase Online: http://music.ucsd.edu/tickets
Streaming LIVE for FREE at http://music.ucsd.edu/live

FALL COMPOSITION COLLABORATION CONCERT (MUS 203C)

New Works by: José Hernandez, Amir Norouz Nasseri, Myles Ortiz-Green, Carlos Rosas, and Adam Zuckerman

Featuring performances by: 
Anita Chandavarkar (flutes), Carlos Rosas (oboe, English horn), Grace Talaski (clarinets), Lyra Montoya (clarinets), Amir Nasseri , Myra Hinrichs, Ilana Waniuk (violins), Robbie Bui (cello), Andrew Crapitto and Matthew Henson (double bass), and percussionists: Mitchell Carlstrom, Wesley Fowler, and Kosuke Matsuda. 

Conducted by: Steven Schick
 

Aldo Aranda: Percussion Landscapes

Percussion Landscapes presents recent Mexican repertoire for percussion and various other media. The aim of this project is to present a fresh approach on the audiovisual aspect of electro-acoustic music through diverse works written for percussion with video, live electronics or pre-recorded tape, and the inclusion of contemporary music-theater and improvisation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: 

Aldo Aranda is a multifaceted percussionist and virtuoso marimba player, quoted as “The Mexican drum-wonder” by renowned artist and director Jan Fabre. His performances take the percussion to a new level of expression, bringing together different techniques and disciplines like music-theater, improvisation, dance and technology, revolutionizing the concept of interpretation and performance. He has performed in the most prestigious festivals around the world such as “Festival d’Avignon," “Edinburgh Fringe Festival," “Gaudeamus Music Week," “Cervantino International Festival," and venues such as Fine Arts Palace of Mexico City, Seoul Arts Center, Palais de Papes in France and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam. Aldo collaborated with acclaimed artists and ensembles in classical and contemporary music such as Placido Domingo, Neeme Jarvi, Jan Fabre, Louis Andriessen, Gabriela Ortiz, Heiner Gobbels, Asko-Schoenberg Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, DeFilarmonie of Belgium, Symphonic Orchestra of Guanajuato and Mexican Fine Arts Opera. He has toured worldwide with the theater company “Troubleyn” and the artist, sculptor and director Jan Fabre with the production “History of Tears”.

As a soloist, he has premiered more than 30 different pieces from American, Latin American, Asian and European composers and has commissioned new pieces for chamber ensemble, marimba and percussion with renowned young composers from all over the world. He won honorable mentions in the 1st and 2nd Competition of the International Festival of Marimba Players in the state of Chiapas, Mexico in 1999 and 2001. He has also participated
in several master-classes, workshops and courses in Mexico, United States and Europe with renowned artists, such as Keiko Abe, Evelien Glennie, Pedro Carneiro, Ney Rosauro, Collin Currie and Steven Schick.

Graduated from the Royal conservatory of Den Haag, The Netherlands in contemporary percussion, sonology and composition and the Royal conservatory of Antwerp, Belgium where he studied a Masters degree in marimba. Aldo is the artistic director of The Modern Troubadours Company, which produces performances combining music, theater, dance and storytelling. The company’s motto is connecting people through music and stories, and learning about each other’s cultures and backgrounds to coexist in harmony. Recently he has been awarded with Creadores Escenicos, funded by The Ministry of Culture of the Mexican Government, to promote Mexican contemporary percussion music.

Blacktronika: Afrofuturism in Electronic Music course, honors all the innovators of color that have contributed to the advancement of electronic music. The Club Experience is an extension of this, celebrating the impact of community and practice created by those innovators, exploring all genres created from these Black and Brown communities, Chicago House, Detroit Techno, Disco, Dub, Drum & Bass, Amapiano and much more. 
Dress to dance and sweat!

Wednesdays @ 7 presents UC San Diego Professor of Music, DAVID BORGO, performing original compositions from his most recent albums, Persistence and Relational. He is joined by Derek Cannon on trumpet, Victor Baker on guitar, Tobin Chodos on piano, Doug Walker on bass, and Mark Ferber on drums.

More about David Borgo: University biography, YouTube channel.

Violinist Amir Norouz Nasseri performs Kunsu Shim's Expanding Space in Limited Time. 
 
AMIR NOROUZ NASSERI
Amir Norouz Nasseri is a composer and violinist who has collaborated with orchestras like the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Parsian Chamber Orchestra, as well as ensembles such as Balance Campaign, Tehran Baroque Music Atelier, and red fish blue fish. They have performed in venues including the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the National Gallery of Art, Rhizome DC, 2640 Space, Conrad Prebys Music Center, Zebulon, and Aix Cathedral. Amir is a two-time awardee at the Nahal Short Film Festival for their film compositions and the first-prize winner at the National Festival of Youth Music in Tehran. Recently, they served as a fellow at the Roshan Institute of Persian Studies, focusing on Khorasani Maqam music. Currently, they are pursuing a DMA at the University of California, San Diego.

Double bassist and composer Andrew Crapitto presents his second DMA recital with a program of works for solo double bass with electronics. Featuring a two part original composition alongside pieces by Francisco Alvarado, Daniel Bonilla, Julia Mermelstein, and Joji Yuasa. With spatialized fixed media tracks, live processing of the bass's sound, and a wide palette of non-standard techniques (not to mention two beautiful tamtams), this program takes an intimate look at what bass playing and music making mean as technology continues to encroach on every aspect of our lives.

ANDREW CRAPITTO is a double bassist and composer originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at Oberlin College and Conservatory with Derek Zadinsky, where he earned both a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance and a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science. Passionate about new music, he has performed in numerous U.S. and world premieres, both as a member of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and in solo recitals. As a composer and performer, Andrew has always sought to push the technical and musical boundaries of the double bass, writing music that explores creative new ways in which the instrument can be used in both solo and ensemble settings. He is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in Contemporary Performance studying under Mark Dresser at the University of California San Diego.

The Undergraduate Forum is a quarterly concert series that showcases various works composed and/or performed by undergraduate music students. 

This quarter's undergraduate forum features performances by: 
Ke Chen (Piano), Keene Cheung (Flute), Alice Guo (Violin), Eugene Kong (Piano), Mac Lee (Piano), Raymond Li (Violin), Cho Cho Liu (Piano), Vivian Liu (Flute), Kaylyn Majers (Violin), Annabel Metcalf (Harpsichord), Kristina Tran (Voice), David Zheng (Cello), and Andrew Zhou (Piano)

Organized by: Keene Cheung

Bridge Music Series presents principal players from Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra

The Bridge Music Series focuses on bridging the classical and contemporary music genres and working across disciplines to create cultural connections.

Shannon Shuen Chieh, harp
Hao-Tun Teng, Ting-Fang Lee, violin
Jubel Chen, viola
Yi-Shien Lien, cello
Anita Chandavarkar, flute
Kirsten Ashley Wiest, soprano

Ching-Mei Lin: Enchanted Forest Whispers for string quartet and harp
(commissioned by Hakka Affairs Council, world premiere)
Lei Liang: Song Recollections (string quartet, based on Taiwanese aboriginal songs)
Earl Kim: Now and Then for soprano, flute, and strings
R. Murray Schafer: Theseus for harp and string quartet

"yours in the process of being absorbed" - Matthew Henson, double bass - DMA Recital

A chamber music concert presented by Alinéa and members of the UC San Diego Department of Music.

                Czernowin - Ayre: Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of

                McCormack - yours in the process of being absorbed

The UC San Diego Chamber Orchestra presents:

Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger
Puccini: Selections from Act I of La Boheme
Dvorak: Symphony No. 8

Conducted by Matthew Henson

Pianist Jack Yarbrough visits the UC San Diego campus to perform Ti McCormack's concert-length piano solo mine but for its sublimation. Written in collaboration with Yarbrough throughout much of 2020-21, the piece uses register, resonance, and touch to create a hermetic but expansive listening experience. Yarbrough's studio recording of the piece is forthcoming on the record label Another Timbre. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Jack Yarbrough is a pianist working in the fields of contemporary and experimental music. Largely devoted to the solo piano recital as a means of temporal and perceptual expansion, Jack has commissioned several large scale works with the goal of revitalizing piano repertoire in the face of its increasing obsolescence. He has collaborated closely with composers including Timothy McCormack, Bunita Marcus, Richard Barrett, Marti Epstein, Victoria Cheah, Jack Langdon, John Eagle, Kory Reeder, and Bahar Royaee. Active as a chamber musician as well, he has performed with and alongside ensembles including Ensemble intercontemperain, Yarn/Wire and Ensemble X. Jack has received recognition from journalists including Alex Ross, Tim Rutherford-Johnson and Steve Smith. As a member of Alinéa, he has received press coverage as well as a nomination for the Royal Philharmonic Society awards. Born outside of Birmingham, Alabama, Jack currently resides in Ithaca, NY. He holds a Masters of Music in contemporary chamber music performance from the Boston Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Kansas. Jack is currently completing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in performance practice at Cornell University, where he is a Sage fellow and teaches an active piano studio. Jack’s teachers include Stephen Drury, Xak Bjerken, Michael Kirkendoll and Jack Winerock. Future projects include a CD release of Timothy McCormack’s mine but for its sublimation as well as a reconstruction of Maryanne Amacher’s Petra with Thomas Feng. His recordings can be heard on Sawyer Editions. 

ABOUT THE COMPOSER:

Ti McCormack writes haptic, viscous music which makes audible the tactile, physical relationship between a performer and their instrument. Sometimes ecstatic, sometimes hermetic, their music threads an intimacy between tone and noise to create strangely affecting sonic ecologies which alter one’s perception of time. They also engage with contemporary queer aesthetics: hæmal ancestries, incurable disease and its histories, mourning, listening, and the erotics of form. McCormack is the recipient of the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composers’ Prize (2018), as well as the Impuls International Composition Competition (2019). 

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Albane Tamagna discovered music in Corsica, immersed in the heart of the polyphonic singing. At the age of seven, she chose the flute as a vehicle to live her passion.

A curious and passionate teacher, she focused her dissertation on the notion of the performer’s commitment: Entre essence de soi et essence de l’œuvre – comment guider l’élève vers ce lien indissociable ? (Between the essence of the self and the essence of the work – how to guide the student towards this inseparable link?). In order to experiment with even more facets of her pedagogy, she created with Lucile Gasciarino, a professor of flute at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Départemental of Carcassonne, the Stage Musical en Pays Audois which is held since 2016 in the South of France.

Chamber music has a very important place in her musical development. She is a musician and founder of the Flautisti Trio, which allows her to further explore the repertoire of her instrument, and of the DuoSolima, which focuses on contemporary music.

In 2018 she joined the Hopper Ensemble and also became first flute of the Tunisian Symphony Orchestra. 

Treatise - Music 201B Final Concert

Works by Cornelius Cardew and Abraham González Bejarano

Performed by Andrew Crapitto, Ana Díaz de Cossío, Natalia Merlano Gómez, Lyra Montoya, Carlos Rosas Coronado, Wilfrido Terrazas, and Adam Zuckerman

An artificial intelligence (Music Diffusion and ChatGPT) generated performance prompted by Shlomo Dubnov, in collaboration with Keren Shao and Tornike Karchkhadze

Artistic direction: Wilfrido Terrazas

One of the quintessential experimental works of the second half of the 20th century, Cornelius Cardew's Treatise is a massive graphic score with no instructions that requires extensive creative input on the performers' parts. Music 201B is up to this enormous challenge never before attempted in our campus! Completing the program, the ensemble will also perform the hauntingly beautiful score Sinestesia B, by Mexican composer Abraham González Bejarano.  

Following a highly successful performance at the Birch Aquarium in May 2024, co-presented by Art of Elan and ArtPower, the internationally renowned JACK Quartet returns to San Diego with an exciting program that features the world premiere of a new work by UC San Diego faculty member and composer, Rand Steiger, as well as the gorgeous lines made by walking string quartet by John Luther Adams. This one-night-only special event will take place in the acoustically superb Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on campus at UC San Diego and will offer a chance to meet the composer and musicians immediately following the performance.

"Compositional Collaborations" presented by Art of Elan and the UCSD Dept of Music
Sponsored by the Eric L. Lasley Music Student Composition Fund.

Mus 33A is the first course in a three-part introductory sequence. It is designed for both music majors and non-music majors with a musical background.

The course offers practical, hands-on experience in composition, aimed at enhancing students' skills as composers while introducing them to a diverse range of compositional practices. These practices will connect not only to historical traditions but also to modern music. Topics covered include notation, instrumentation, orchestration, and 20th-century music literature.

This quarter, students are writing three solo pieces for flute, cello, and trombone, each of which is being read by members of the ensemble Art of Elan. Students will then select one of their pieces to be performed by members of Art of Elan during the final concert on 12/12.

Performers:

Alex Greenbaum, Cello
Rose Lombardo, Flute
Eric Starr, Trombone

Students:
Jene Yang, Jonathan Lundgren, Kaden Cho, Caitlyn Hoang, Yage Grace Xin, Julian Fayman, Christian Jacobson, Annabel Metcalf, Anton Dimafelix, Xinyu Wang, Miguel Alvarez-Michel, Amit Roth, Spencer Ellison, Mohit Dutta, Kabir Batra, Celest Santaolaya, & Priya Srinivasan

Kosuke Matsuda’s Third DMA Recital

Kosuke Matsuda presents his Third Recital, an exploration of Japanese-inspired music and the profound role of silence in musical expression. The program features "Ryoanji" by John Cage, performed in collaboration with Anita Chandavarkar, "Six Japanese Gardens" by Kaija Saariaho, "Five Scenes from the Snow Country" by Hans Werner Henze, and "XY" by Michael Gordon.

With gratitude to the UC San Diego Music Department, his colleagues, Professor Steven Schick, and his family, Matsuda concludes his degree recital with a selection of challenging yet evocative works, showcasing his research into the aesthetic and transformative impact of silence in music.

Victoria Cheah’s A wasp, some wax, an outline of the valley over us a fall mines the deep sensual impact of slow moving harmonies. After several minutes of full scoring for the ensemble, the texture thins down to a bare major seventh between trombone and flute, a stark pillar of uneasy dissonance. A climactic passage intensifies the acoustic density before the texture diffuses again for a weightless ending. - Dan Lippel

Performers:

Anita Chandavarkar - flute, Grace Talaski - clarinet, Lyra Montoya - saxophone, Carlos Rosas Coronado - oboe, Janet Sit - electric organ, Jeremy Hyrkas - electric guitar, Ash Graham - synthesizer, Amir Norouz Nasseri - violin, Myra Hinrichs - viola, Andrew Crappito - bass

Over the past few years, the UC San Diego Department of Music, with support from the Gluck Foundation, has hosted concerts at various senior centers and community organizations, such as Los Años Dorados. These events are designed to allow older adults to enjoy music, companionship, and new sounds. Graduate students from different disciplines have been able to perform and share their music with these audiences. 

Los Años Dorados is a vibrant community of primarily older women who cherish the opportunity to connect. They share delightful meals, craft beautiful knitted garments—many of which have been showcased in exhibitions—and engage in heartfelt discussions about their families and life experiences. This project aims to gather their poignant stories of migration and life in San Diego and San Ysidro while highlighting Mary Rodriguez's remarkable efforts to nurture and strengthen this invaluable community. 

These heartfelt life stories offer us a glimpse into immigrants' incredible resilience and determination. They highlight the joys and achievements that come with hard work while illuminating the challenges and heartaches faced when leaving behind their homeland to pursue a new life. For over 4 decades, these women have demonstrated to themselves that their roots can grow in any land.

In the summer of 2024, David Aguila, Robert Bui, Teresa Díaz de Cossío, Pablo Dodero, and Natalia Merlano Gómez, came together to create this documentation project. This initiative received valuable support from the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego, along with the backing of the Gluck Family Foundation and Conrad Prebys Foundation. Their collaboration is set to make a significant impact in the community.

This event will be a screening of videos with two performance sets, along with a guest panel of the women highlighted in the project.

Heart Chamber is an opera by Chaya Czernowin that "focuses on the elements of falling in love that expose us to our most intense beauty but also to our most intense vulnerabilities and insecurities." Read more here...

A special presentation of alumna Chaya Czernowin’s “Poetica,” an innovative new work that merges percussion, strings, voice and electronics. Soloist Schick will perform the nearly 60-minute piece with red fish blue fish percussionists alongside a recorded string trio. Founded by Schick in 1995, red fish blue fish has collaborated with composers from every continent and produced numerous award-winning recordings. Many alumni of the ensemble now hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.

The Jan. 15 concert will also feature “Six Japanese Gardens” by composer Kaija Saariaho, performed by Schick. Saariaho is known for her contributions to contemporary music, particularly the integration of spectral techniques, electronics and lyrical expressiveness. Read more here...

PROGRAM

Edgard Varèse, Poème Électronique

Kaija Saariaho, Six Japanese Gardens

     I Tenju-an Garden of Nanzen-ji Temple

     II Many Pleasures (Garden of the Kinkaku-ji)

     III Dry Mountain Stream

     IV Rock Garden of Ryoan-ji

     V Moss Garde of Saiho-ji

     VI Stone Bridges

Chaya Czernowin, Poetica

Charles Deluga: Soundfield Ecologies
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater

Soundfield Ecologies is an immersive installation placing you at the center of ecological soundscapes from across the Western Hemisphere. Curated from over 300 hours of ambisonic field recordings, soundscapes have been selected for the acoustic clarity of their biodiversity and intricacies of their natural rhythms. Spatialized in 40-channel surround sound using 7th-order ambisonics, this work allows you to experience nature in ways you’ve never heard it before.

Installation Times:
Tuesday, January 21st: 10AM - 10PM
Wednesday, January 22nd: 10AM - 10PM
Thursday, January 23rd: 10AM - 10PM

Charles Deluga: Soundfield Ecologies
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater

Soundfield Ecologies is an immersive installation placing you at the center of ecological soundscapes from across the Western Hemisphere. Curated from over 300 hours of ambisonic field recordings, soundscapes have been selected for the acoustic clarity of their biodiversity and intricacies of their natural rhythms. Spatialized in 40-channel surround sound using 7th-order ambisonics, this work allows you to experience nature in ways you’ve never heard it before.

Installation Times:
Tuesday, January 21st: 10AM - 10PM
Wednesday, January 22nd: 10AM - 10PM
Thursday, January 23rd: 10AM - 10PM

The signature event in the series merges the talents of faculty, students and alumni for a set of four performances in the world-class Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. The event will feature two compositions by alum Sarah Hennies, a contemporary composer and percussionist. In “Clock Dies,” themes of time and perception are explored through subtle rhythms and textures, challenging conventional listening expectations and offering an almost hypnotic experience. This performance will be followed by “Settle,” a minimalist work that Hennies and Schick will perform on vibraphone.

The Reed Family Concert is also an opportunity for graduate student composers to shine. The event will open with a work by composition doctoral candidate Delong Wang, whose work reflects deep engagement with experimental practice. In addition, performance doctoral student Myra Hinrichs will perform György Ligeti’s “Violin Concerto.”

PROGRAM

Sarah Hennies (Sarah Hennies & Steven Schick, vibraphone), Settle

Delong Wang (Mariana Flores, voice), Echoes of Ganzi

Sarah Hennies, Clock Dies

INTERMISSION

György Ligeti (Myra Hinrichs, violin), Violin Concerto

     I. Praeludium

     II. Aria, Hoquetus, Chorale

     III.Intermezzo

     IV.Passacaglia

     V. Appassionato

Charles Deluga: Soundfield Ecologies
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater

Soundfield Ecologies is an immersive installation placing you at the center of ecological soundscapes from across the Western Hemisphere. Curated from over 300 hours of ambisonic field recordings, soundscapes have been selected for the acoustic clarity of their biodiversity and intricacies of their natural rhythms. Spatialized in 40-channel surround sound using 7th-order ambisonics, this work allows you to experience nature in ways you’ve never heard it before.

Installation Times:
Tuesday, January 21st: 10AM - 10PM
Wednesday, January 22nd: 10AM - 10PM
Thursday, January 23rd: 10AM - 10PM

On Thursday, January 23, the Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS series continues its season with “Latent Visions”, presenting three short films by Emily Greenberg.

Emily Greenberg is a media artist, filmmaker, and writer whose work examines the fictions we mistake for realities and the realities we mistake for fictions. Her work has shown at the Sie Film Center, Screener Short Films, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Columbus International Film & Animation Festival, The New Film Underground, The Comeback Festival, and Festival ECRA. She holds an MFA from UC San Diego.

Deep Drew:

During the summer and fall of 2023, screenwriters went on strike to protest, among other concerns, the use of generative AI in the commercial film and television industry. In September 2023, when Drew Barrymore announced her talk show would resume production during the ongoing strike, she was heavily criticized by Writers Guild of America members. In response, Barrymore posted an Instagram video “deeply” apologizing that was also widely derided on social media. Deep Drew uses deepfakes to offer a speculative and satirical continuation of this story. Surprisingly philosophical and vulnerable, this “deep” version of Drew confronts her own complicities and traumas while reflecting on the harms generative AI poses to writers, actors, and one’s own sense of self.

In the summer of 1895, Freud had a dream about a former patient, now known as “Irma’s Injection,” that helped him understand the role of the unconscious in dreaming. According to Freud, our unconscious constructs dreams to express our deepest wishes and then distorts those expressions to protect us. By this logic, a dream is therefore a form of wish fulfillment and suppression.

Fulfillment of a Wish:

Although Freud’s theories have long since been rejected by clinicians, they provide a useful framework for thinking about dreaming and the often psychedelic, biased imagery produced by artificial neural networks. In the same way that one never fully understands a dream’s latent content, artificial neural network architects do not fully understand why neural networks make the decisions they do. Does this lack of understanding act as a form of dream distortion, shielding us from our deepest wishes? When we build technologies that “dream,” what wishes are we trying to fulfill, and why must we protect ourselves from fully expressing those wishes? Artificial neural networks are modeled after our own and trained on the internet of images we have produced. Given that these models “see” with the same biases of mainstream culture, what are so-called “neural net dreams” telling us about our own dreams and unconscious desires? Are generative AI images the “disguised fulfillment of a suppressed, repressed wish”?

On Exactitude in Science:

Filmed almost entirely in Google Earth, On Exactitude in Science is a three-part video work melding fact and fiction, archive and allegory into a speculative documentary about the rise of digital mapmaking among technology companies.

The series is named after Jorge Luis Borges’s famed short story about an empire’s failed attempt to build a perfect 1:1 map and picks up where the story ended. A new, tech-savvy generation stumbles upon the map’s ruins and begins piecing them back together, confident they can rebuild and even improve upon the perfect map without also recreating the empire. Narrated by an AI speech synthesizer whose style and tone match that of Borges’s fictional chronicler, the video revives the classic map-territory fable for the digital age.

Part I: On Exactitude in Science” follows the new generation as they develop Street View-esque surveillance technologies (“new Eyes that saw further and in more detail than mere Human Eyes”) and smart phones (“portable Curios”) while “Part II: On Exactitude in Business & Government”) chronicles the map’s commercialization and subsequent involvement in diplomacy, trade relations, policing, and surveillance. Finally, in “Part III: A Most Unfortunate Incident,” the mapmakers thoughtlessly shift a border, inadvertently causing a territorial dispute.

In staging fantastical, darkly comic scenes within Google Earth, the work fractures Google’s hegemonic cartography, inviting audiences to imagine new scales of resistance.

Content warning: Deep Drew contains discussions of suicide and domestic violence.

Acknowledgment: The films in this program received financial support from the Qualcomm Institute, Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, and the Russell Foundation.

House on Fire is a new music ensemble consisting of Wells Leng, Richard An, and Andrew Anderson. Though centered around their shared focus as pianists, each member’s multi-instrumentalism allows for expanded repertoire including cello, percussion, toy piano and other keyboard instruments.

The concert program include works by Kyle Gann, Akari Komura, Adam Zuckerman, and Wells Leng.

PROGRAM

Heartwood (2024), Akari Komura (b.1996) 

Trieste (2023), Kyle Gann (b. 1955) 

The snail. The long branch. (2024), Adam Zuckerman (b.1992) 

sonata (2024), Wells Leng (b. 1994)  

GRAMMY and Emmy award-winning pianist GLORIA CHENG performs at the invitation of Anthony Davis, Cecil Lytle Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in African and African American Music.

PROGRAM: 

Lei Liang, My Windows 

         i. Tian (heaven)

         iv. Pausing, Awaiting the Wind to Rise...

Kaija Saariaho, Prelude

James Newton, Eight Calla Lilies

Pierre Boulez, courtes dérives à partir d’Éclat

Rand Steiger, Simple Gifts

Anthony Cheung, Recombinant

Anthony Davis, Piano Heaven

          i. Spheroid

          ii. Turquoise

          iii. Shards for C.T.

Come join us at the Conrad Prebys Experimental Theater to listen to works composed and performed by students from the UC San Diego Department of Music!

"Voices below: waves from then and now." 

ft. Amir Norouz Nasseri, Robert Bui, Camilo Zamudio, Wilfrido Terrazas and Myles Ortiz-Green

Works by Isang Yun, Ignacio Baca Lobera and Carlos F Rosas 

As part of its visit at the University of California San Diego, Copenhagen-based experimental music ensemble NEKO3 hosts a concert-presentation at the Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater. The performance features two semi-staged multimedia works by San Diego-based Ni Zheng and Hamburg-based Michael Brailey, dealing with topics such as physicality, violence, internet cultures and knowledge co-optation. The presentation focuses on the ensemble's history from past to present and its flexible philosophy of co-collaborating with artists.

Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist, writer, and member of TAK Ensemble. Their solo practice, exstatic  resonances, explores phenomenological, material and spatial expressivities of sound through richly noisy  timbral actions, often performed at a high volume. Madison performs across the US and internationally as  a soloist and chamber musician. They have been presented by the New York Philharmonic, Blank Forms, LAMPO, KM28, ISSUE Project Room, the Vigeland Mausoleum, Night of Surprise, and Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center. As a writer, Madison has contributed critical essays on experimental music to Blank  Forms, Museum of Art and History of Neuchâtel, Contemporary Music Review, and LAMPO  Publications. They can be heard on Important Records, Relative Pitch, Longform Editions, Another Timbre, Greyfade, Wandelweiser Editions, and Impakt Kollektiv among others. Madison resides in  Brooklyn.

PROGRAM

Silent paradox of expression pt. 1 (2024-), Madison Greenstone

FLASHING UP (2025), Madison Greenstone

          for clarinet and fixed media

Whisper/Najva

Kurdish Tanbur Music of Iran

Aliakbar Moradi: Tanbur

Pejman Hadadi: Tombak and Daf

Trilogía del Dolor (2022-2024), An Investigation of Human Pain in Three Parts

Trilogía del Dolor is an exploration of human pain through music and poetry. It aims to musically portray a real human experience of pain, one that goes beyond its idealizations, helps open conversations about it, and contributes to transcend misunderstandings and taboos around it. The trilogy features the poetry of Mexican contemporary poets Nuria Manzur-Wirth, Ricardo Cázares, Tania Favela, Nadia Mondragón, and Mónica Morales Rocha, plus texts written by the composer. The performance will feature vocalists Mariana Flores Bucio and Miguel Zazueta, clarinetist Madison Greenstone, cellist Rocío Sánchez, percussionist Camilo Zamudio, and flutist/composer/narrator Wilfrido Terrazas. Additionally, artist Esther Gámez Rubio will be projecting visuals and stage directing.    

Splinter Reeds presents an evening of contemporary composition with new works by UCSD students alongside the world premiere of Karola Obermüller's speleothems, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation.

PROGRAM

The Cast, Saul Arana 
Appendages, Aaron Mencher
Dying from the Snow's Memory, Yifan Guo 
Torre del Oeste, Wilfrido Terrazas

Intermission

Blitz Circuit, Kevin Day
Daniel Corral
speleothems, Karola Obermüller
Auditory Scene Analysis II (2016), Eric Wubbels 

On Friday, February 14 and 15th, the Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS series continues with the Crossing Boundaries.

The Crossing Boundaries course supervised by Professors Shahrokh Yadegari and Victoria Petrovich invites emerging graduate students from UC San Diego’s music, theater, and visual arts departments to collaborate and collectively create a novel performative experience through the fall and winter quarters. This year, the performance will explore themes of community, movement, and migration. The collective show was inspired by six pieces that work in tandem to create a unique experience about care, love, and our political landscape today.

Doors at 4:45. Performances at 5:00 PM.

Reception to follow Friday’s perfomances.

Second performances Saturday 5:00 PM.

Peformances and projects by: 

Andrew Crapitto
Camilo Zamudio
Doreen Ríos
Emir Chacra
Ess Whiteley
Han Zhang
Heidi Yin-Hsuan Tai
Kimberly Kocol
Lyra Montoya
Mariana Flores Bucio
Maya Garcia
Miguel Zazueta
Natalia Merlano Gomez
Taylor Olson

On Friday, February 14 and 15th, the Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS series continues with the Crossing Boundaries.

The Crossing Boundaries course supervised by Professors Shahrokh Yadegari and Victoria Petrovich invites emerging graduate students from UC San Diego’s music, theater, and visual arts departments to collaborate and collectively create a novel performative experience through the fall and winter quarters. This year, the performance will explore themes of community, movement, and migration. The collective show was inspired by six pieces that work in tandem to create a unique experience about care, love, and our political landscape today.

Doors at 4:45. Performances at 5:00 PM.

Reception to follow Friday’s perfomances.

Second performances Saturday 5:00 PM.

Peformances and projects by: 

Andrew Crapitto
Camilo Zamudio
Doreen Ríos
Emir Chacra
Ess Whiteley
Han Zhang
Heidi Yin-Hsuan Tai
Kimberly Kocol
Lyra Montoya
Mariana Flores Bucio
Maya Garcia
Miguel Zazueta
Natalia Merlano Gomez
Taylor Olson

Aleck Karis - piano

with Cory Smythe and Miller Puckette 

Featuring the local premiere of Philippe Manoury’s Third Sonata for piano and live electronics

_.noocambriidæ._ is a collaborative audiovisual work from ess whiteley and Andrew Wharton. In 1924 Vladamir Vernadsky coined the term the noosphere in conversations with Teilhard de Chardin and Edouard Le Roy to refer to the third stage in the earth’s development where the emergence of human cognition will fundamentally alter the geosphere and biosphere of the earth. noocambriidæ positions the noosphere not just as an emergent field but a substrate where entities can come into being. Synthetic/organic, digital/biological, virtual/actual, these monstrous entities are born out of the compost pile of the collective unconscious as it operates through cyberspace. noocambriidæ speculates on a second cambrian explosion of autonomous creatural forms born out of primordial cyborg potentials. Through 3D animation and 10-channel spatialized interactive sound, noocambriidæ acts as a nooscope into this realm of more-than-human behaviours and transmutations.

_.noocambriidæ._ is a collaborative audiovisual work from ess whiteley and Andrew Wharton. In 1924 Vladamir Vernadsky coined the term the noosphere in conversations with Teilhard de Chardin and Edouard Le Roy to refer to the third stage in the earth’s development where the emergence of human cognition will fundamentally alter the geosphere and biosphere of the earth. noocambriidæ positions the noosphere not just as an emergent field but a substrate where entities can come into being. Synthetic/organic, digital/biological, virtual/actual, these monstrous entities are born out of the compost pile of the collective unconscious as it operates through cyberspace. noocambriidæ speculates on a second cambrian explosion of autonomous creatural forms born out of primordial cyborg potentials. Through 3D animation and 10-channel spatialized interactive sound, noocambriidæ acts as a nooscope into this realm of more-than-human behaviours and transmutations.

A Farewell Lament for the Solitary Locust - Rishika Mehrishi

Abstract: Between 2019 and 2021, vast swathes of Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent experienced one of the worst locust infestations in more than half a century. Traversing about twenty-five nations in the Global South, the locusts dramatized a geopolitical spectacle that intersects our present environmental exigencies with colonial pasts and transnational futures. My talk will focus on folkloric performances by Nath Jogis and Kalbelias – communities of ascetic-householders and nomadic performers from the Western desert and border state of Rajasthan, India, that has historically been the ground zero for locust infestations. Nath Jogis and Kalbelias serve as custodians of a rich nonhuman-centric performance repertoire, immense entomological knowledge, and deep mythical-material connections with the genealogies of ecological catastrophe. Bringing together colonial legacies of locust control, entomology-centered philosophies that have inspired performance studies scholarship, and contemporary interspecies performances in the Global South, I interrogate how performance can account for ecological change in the light of that which is pervasive, recurrent, and annihilative.

Bio: Rishika Mehrishi is assistant professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies department, MA from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and BA (honors) from Delhi University. Her research on more-than-human performances intersects multispecies ethnography, ecocriticism, anti-caste pedagogies and activism, and performances in/from the Global South.

PROGRAM

B.T. 92, Rand Steiger
arbol, gabriel soberón nelson
Recollection process, discontent, Matthew Henson
vierfach gefaltet : fourfold (2024-25), Karola Obermüeller
How it Feels, Andrew Crapitto

I. to drown in a dream

II. to wait for the stars to fall

III. to be without

IV. to belong

Featuring: Emily Barger & Julia Anne Cordani -voices

Gloaming (arranged for 4 basses), Mark Dresser

—----------

Bass Ensemble
Andrew Crapitto
Matthew Henson,
Luke Holley
Mark Dresser

Susan Narucki soprano and Donald Berman piano 

Light in deepest darkness:  A concert celebrating 2025 Women’s History Month
Music of Marti Epstein, Claire Delbos and Georgina Derbez.

The UC San Diego Wind Ensemble performs diverse repertoire for woodwinds, brass, and percussion, and is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and community members. The ensemble’s members participate in a number of musical activities within and beyond the Department of Music and boast a variety of academic majors across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields.

This quarter’s concert demonstrates the ensemble’s flexibility with different performance formats and highlights the performers’ musicality and ability to shine in chamber ensemble settings. Tonight’s concert was fully prepared by the performers, from repertoire selection to rehearsals and performance. Selections for this evening’s concert range from reimaginings of classical repertoire to contemporary chamber works. From these small and diverse ensembles, you will encounter beautiful timbral combinations, tight harmonic blends,  and dynamic range that we hope will afford a rarely intimate listening experience for wind ensemble concert goers. 

The Undergraduate Forum is a quarterly concert series that showcases various works composed and/or performed by undergraduate music students.

This quarter's undergraduate forum features performances by:
Aleck Adriano (Piano), Grace Baldwin (Harpsichord), Ke Chen (Piano), Kaden Cho (Piano) Luke Holley (Double Bass), Mac Lee (Piano), Randy Lew (Clarinet), Annabel Metcalf (Harpsichord/Piano), Luke Carmichael Valmadrid (Viola), Ivan Wong (Violin), and The Arkangels (Arion Starks - Guitar/Vocals, Isaias Marin - Guitar, Asher Hardy - Bass/Vocals, Jerson Perez - Drums)

Organized by: Keene Cheung

This concert has been canceled.

ON ZOOM

Contact acimini@ucsd.edu for more info

The Musical Vocation of Yoko Ono

From the beginning of her career, Yoko Ono enlisted musical terms to designate multimedia performances that audiences would not intuitively recognize as musical. She dubbed the far-out triptych of her 1961 Carnegie Recital Hall debut as a trio of “operas”—works that would eventually be seen as forerunners of the performance art movement. This work would lead to a fiercely experimental musical practice that scrambled genres from blues to kabuki to EDM across 22 albums over the course of nearly fifty years. Nonetheless remarkably little scholarship recognizes Ono’s musical thought and creativity as a cornerstone of her artistic vocation. In redress for this gap, I show how Ono’s early life would in fact have predisposed her to see music as a privileged space for working through vexed political and philosophical problems. Classically trained in piano and voice, Ono articulated a compelling desire to become a composer as an adolescent in World War II-era Japan. Drawing on archives, oral history, and close interpretation of Ono’s words, sounds, and actions, this talk rethinks the musical dimension of Ono’s artistic vocation—vocation as calling, as career, as persona, and as personal and political voice.

Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of musics and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile, and minoritized citizenship. This intellectual program stems from her conviction that music assumes special value under the pressure of conditions of uprooting. Music serves as a mode of self-fashioning, secures new (and old) community bonds, and brings individuals together in listening, speech, and action. It also interacts in variegated ways with the silences that emerge from troubled sites of memory. 

Cohen has published extensively on the politics of 20th-century avant-gardes, archive theory, histories of cosmopolitanism, postcolonial studies, 20th-century German-Jewish diasporic thought, and intersections of music, literature, and the visual arts. Her most recent book, Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes (University of Chicago Press, 2022), explores questions of displacement and citizenship through a study of New York concert avant-gardes, jazz, electronic music, and performance art in the 1950s and 1960s. This book trains its focus on the cultural-political dilemmas navigated by uprooted creators in New York as a capital of empire during the Cold War. The book addresses well-known but little understood figures (e.g., Charles Mingus, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas), alongside less well-known composers (e. g., Halim El-Dabh, Michiko Toyama, Vladimir Ussachevsky). Cohen’s emphasis on displacement began with her first book, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2012). This book is both a study of the German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972) and a history of modernism that focuses on experiences of migration and cross-cultural encounter— from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College. The monograph won the Lewis Lockwood Prize of the American Musicological Society for best monograph of the year by a scholar at an early career stage.

In Fall 2023, Cohen was a visiting scholar at the Humboldt University in Berlin where she engaged in the early stages of writing two new monographs. The first, a short book manuscript, “The Musical Vocation of Yoko Ono,” which offers musically, conceptually, and historically textured account of Yoko Ono’s self-identified vocation as a composer—an identity that others often refused to acknowledge because of racial and gender bias. This manuscript expands upon themes and historical research from Cohen’s existing writings on Ono. Her other book project, “Salon, Varieté, Archive: Sounding Empire in Berlin, 1820-1933,” offers a historiography of German music beyond the homogenizing idea of culture, or Kulturnation, through which is has often been defined. Toward that end, it focuses on three underexplored musical spaces as sites for thinking through processes of Orientalism, imperialism, migration, and hierarchies of citizenship. This book will examine musical salons, varieté theater, and phonogram archives as intercultural sites vital for the imagination of Germany’s “others” on its path to empire (and eventually totalitarianism) from the 19th century onward. 

In addition to having published numerous articles, Cohen was the convener of the round table “Edward Said and Musicology Today” in Journal of the Royal Musical Association (2016). In recent years, her research has been supported by the Max Planck Institute for History of Science (2017, 2018), the National Endowment for the Humanities (2014-15), Wellesley College (2014-15), and the American Academy in Berlin (2010).
 

Join us at Mandeville Auditorium next Tuesday, March 11th at 8:00 pm for a night of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works, performed by the UC San Diego Chamber Orchestra!

PROGRAM

Romeo and Juliet

- Brief Pause -

Symphony No. 4

i. Andante sostenuto — Moderato con anima
ii. Andantino in modo di canzona
iii. Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato — Allegro
iv. Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Bach Ensemble. They will be performing Four Seasons.

Come watch the UC San Diego Concert Choir at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, performing their winter concert: Shall We Dream?

Music Director & Conductor: Mariana Flores Bucio

Pianist Accompanist: Anna Prakina

Come see the UC San Diego Chamber Ensemble! They will be performing works from many renowned composers, including Mozart, Debussy, Beethoven, Brahms, and many more. Get ready for a nice evening in. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

PROGRAM

Instructor: Dr. Takae Ohnishi
Teaching Assistant: Matthew Henson

R. Schumann

Piano Quintet Op.44, Allegro Brillante

Piano: Andrew Zhou, Violin: Grace Baldwin, Manasvini Komandur

Viola: Harmony Schwartz, Cello: David Zheng

J.Brahms

Hungarian Dance for four hands No.4, No.5 and Allegretto from No.7

Piano: Angelina Huang and Sopia Yermolenko

C.Debussy
Beau Soir

W.A.Mozart

Un moto di gioia (from Le Nozze do Figaro)
Soprano: Annika Bastin, Piano Yuelei Li

A.Dvorak

Piano Quartet Op.23, Allegro moderato
Piano: Kerry Xu, Violin: Laura Liang
Viola: Juliana Tran, Double Bass: Luke Holley

C.Saint-Saëns

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Allegretto

M. Mangani
Executive

Clarinet: Krish Jagasia, Piano: Chloe Hartanto

J.Brahms

Piano Trio Op.8 No.1, Allegro con molto
Piano: Kaden Cho, Violin: Ivan Wong, Cello: Luke Mercado

A.Dvorak

String Quartet "American" , Molto Vivace and Finale

Violin: Alice Guo, Tara Porter
Viola: Alan Wang, Cello: David Zheng

L-V. Beethoven

String Quartet "Razumovsky" No.1, Allegro
Violin: Raymond Li, Kaylyn Majers,
Viola: Alexandros Alexiou, Cello: Leander Goessling

From Mariana Flores Bucio:

MEXPERIMENTAL: Reimagining roots, identity and singing is a project that emerges from my
journey at UC San Diego. It is an exploration of the ongoing question: "Who am I?" and an
expression of my personal identity under constant discovery and transformation.

Born in Mexico, I identify as Mexican. Yet, being part of a country as vast and culturally
diverse as Mexico makes understanding Mexicanness—or Mexican identity—a complex
journey. Chavela Vargas, a Costa Rican-born singer once said, "Los mexicanos nacemos dondenos da la chingada gana" ("Mexicans are born wherever the hell they please"). This phraseresonates deeply, as it expresses how flexible, adaptable, and intentional identity is. I believe Mexican identity is something learned, chosen, and shared, not necessarily in this order, andis an ongoing concept in transformation.

Since childhood, I have sung Mexican traditional music shaped by the nationalism that influenced Mexico during my grandfather's youth, a repertoire deeply rooted in my family tradition. This repertoire has profoundly contributed to shaping my musical taste and practice. Through the years, I have been exposed to a wide range of musics, from Latin genres, pop, rock, jazz, and electronic music among different genres, through mass media and my borderline context (Tijuana and Ensenada), together with classical music and experimental music through educational contexts.

Inspired by the creative UC San Diego Music Department Community, and as a deep personal response, born from reflecting on what resonates most with my identity, I started developing what I called Experimental Mexican Traditional Music, or MEXPERIMENTAL. This project seeks to explore traditional musics from different cultures of Mexico by bringing experimental musical idioms to dialog with them. What fascinates me most is pushing the boundaries of how Mexican traditional music is experienced and performed.

For this concert, I chose to perform experimental arrangements of a selection of my favorite songs from diverse Mexican cultures: Son de Artesa, Son Jarocho, Son Istmeño, Bolero, Ranchera, and Modern Mariachi. In addition to these, I ventured into composition by creating an experimental corrido inspired by the life of my grandfather, Cuco, and writing an introductory décimas, a traditional poetic form.

The arrangements for this concert emerged from a year-long creative journey, shaped through musical workshops with my collaborators. While I, Mariana Flores, provided the structure and initial musical ideas to explore each song, the final arrangements are the result of a collective creative process, with a significant amount of improvisation, reflecting the unique contributions of everyone involved. I’m deeply grateful for their creativity and dedication, which brought these pieces truly to life.

Jump N Funk is an immersive multimedia experience honoring the sonic legacy of Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer and activist, Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti. This celebration captures the essence of Fela’s groundbreaking fusion of traditional Nigerian rhythms and American Funk, a sound that continues to resonate globally across generations.

Since 2001, international DJ, producer, and scholar Rich Medina has served as the main conduit for connecting this rich Pan-African sound to dance floors worldwide. His passion and expertise have kept Fela’s legacy alive, bringing the Afrobeat movement into new cultural spaces.

This San Diego debut is presented in partnership with Professor King Britt through his Blacktronika course at UC San Diego, which honors the contributions of innovators of color in electronic and dance music. This collaboration creates a powerful bridge between history, education, and dance floor energy, celebrating Fela’s enduring influence on global music culture.

DJ’s:

Rich Medina

King Britt

Visual: Visualeyz

Roger Reynolds collaborated with Kosuke Matsuda to compose a new solo percussion piece titled "Sleight of Hand." This version of work is derived from Reynolds' earlier interdisciplinary music project "Knowing/Not Knowing" (2022-2024).

Come join us at the Conrad Prebys Music Center's Experimental Theater to see Triton composer Daniel Corral present his dissertation concert, featuring music written by Corral, himself.

PROGRAM - by Daniel Corral
1. 9 of Wands
2. 3 of Pentacles (Rotation 9)
3. Ace of Pentacles
4. Candoro
5. 3 of Pentacles (Rotation 6)

Learn more about Daniel Corral at https://danielcorral.com/about/bio/

New Music for Two Voices is a collaboration between sopranos Susan Narucki and Kirsten Ashley Wiest, featuring performances of commissioned works alongside iconic modern works from the 20th century and from earlier historical periods.  

The April 16 concert features the world premiere of  NauðaR Níu [The Nine Needs] for two sopranos and percussion by American composer Jeffrey Holmes.  

Nauðar Níu refers to a particular magic charm, evoked through ancient Runic ritual and incantation. Holmes' text utilizes Runic inscriptions and carvings from the 5th to 12th centuries, eliciting an icy landscape of mythical beings, evoked through a unique compositional language: modal melodies, unique microtonal tunings and writing for the singing voice that is compelling and powerful. Both singers will play a variety of small percussion instruments made of natural materials upon which Runic inscriptions were carved: wood, stone, skin, iron, and bone. 

Nauðar Níu [The Nine Needs] weaves together past and present, logic and magic, in an otherworldly musical journey.

The concert also includes music by Hildegard von Bingen, selections from Pascal Dusapin's Two Walking, and music by Henry Purcell accompanied by pianist Kyle Adam Blair .

Installation is open Thursday, April 17 from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM and Friday, April 18, from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Visit https://qi.ucsd.edu/events/ideas-performance-resonant-images/ for more info.

With Flying Colors Presents "Dreams Dyed Blue: A Journey Through Dreams In Sound & Color"

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025

Time: Performance @ 7pm PST

Location: Conrad Prebys Music Center's Experimental Theater @ UC-San Diego

Price: Free but space is limited

Directions: https://music-cms.ucsd.edu/about/directions.html

About:

“There is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars….and in the memories of those we love.”

"Dreams Dyed Blue" is a spatialized electroacoustic/hip-hop audiovisual performance that explores the beauty, sadness, joy and loss of reaching toward a dream. This collaborative experience features visual contributions from Ben Guerrette, Mingyong Cheng, and LUX|LUMN, as well as musical contributions from Anita Chandavarkar, Natalia Merlano Gomez, David Aguila and Timothy “Ill Poetic” Gmeiner.



Artist bios:

With Flying Colors // https://www.soundrzn.com/ and https://www.benguerrette.info/

With Flying colors is comprised of audiovisual duo Timothy Gmeiner and Ben Guerrette. Tim has toured internationally as a hip-hop artist under the name “ill poetic”, and is currently a PhD student in UC-San Diego’s Computer Music program with a focus on spatialized and interactive compositions in virtual reality and audiovisual live performance. Ben Guerrette is an immersive experience designer who creates environments that transport you into a state of play and wonder. Through light, visuals, and sound, he crafts environments that tell a story and bring people together. He is co-producer of 'City Lights' a winter light event that takes place at Quartyard in the East Village.



Mingyong Cheng // https://www.mingyongcheng.com/

Mingyong Cheng is an interdisciplinary artist at the intersection of AI, generative art, and environmental research. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Art Practice and Art History at UC-San Diego with a specialization in interdisciplinary environmental research. Her work combines visual arts with speculative ecology, treating AI as a collaborative force in the creative process.



LUX | LUMN // https://www.luxlumn.com/

LUX | LUMN is a San Diego-based digital art studio specializing in creating vibrant visual experiences through projection mapping and immersive digital art. Their work weaves visual narrative layers into live music and stage performances, as well as crafting unexpected, magical environments for private events. Renowned for their innovation and creative approach, LUX | LUMN transforms spaces into an unforgettable environment.



Anita Chandavarkar // https://anitachandavarkar.com/

Anita Chandavarkar is a flutist, improviser, and composer living in San Diego, California. In addition to playing Western flute in a contemporary context, Anita plays bansuri bamboo flute in the Hindustani classical tradition, and was a featured performer at the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. She studies with Lyon Leifer, disciple of Pandit Devendra Murdeshwar.



Natalia Merlano Gomez // https://nataliamerlanogomez.bandcamp.com/

Natalia Merlano Gomez is an experimental music performer and creator who explores extended vocal techniques, graphical notation, improvisation, text, visuals, and electronic sounds. Her research examines the performative aspects of voice and text beyond traditional singing and interdisciplinary vocal performance from a decolonial perspective.



David Aguila // https://www.davidaguila.com/

David Aguila is a performer and composer, who’s multifaceted practice focuses on the intersection of trumpet, electronics and music production; working in the fields of contemporary, experimental, electro-acoustic and improvised music. His research is focused on parametric, gestural notation, performance, sound projection practices, and alternative approaches to trumpet pedagogy.

Shifting Textures is a series of "wind chimes" lining the Conrad Prebys Music Center - Experimental Theater. These are arrayed in a gradual shift of sonic qualities making chimes on opposite ends of the room vastly different, while still being similar to the neighboring instruments. This sound installation is periodically broken by 2 life performance events each day, at 3 PM & 7 PM. While Shifting Textures is intended to create a space where participants can move through the chimes at their own pace and find minute subtleties between each set, the concerts are intended to present intentionally crafted music that highlights subtleties as imagined by a composer and performer. It is the hope that the sound installation prepares an audience to find small distinctions in the musical works that may have gone otherwise unnoticed, as well as to contrast the different experiences between slow sonic exploration and a crafted work of music.

This concert is a presentation of Sarah Hennies' Thought Sectors, a piece that cycles through various instruments and implements to highlight the vast range of sounds capable from only a few sources.

one fish two fish is presenting two works, one concerning space and random placement of rhythm, and the other concerning gradually changing tonal structures while being very strict with rhythm.

PROGRAM

Fragile (1973), Arne Mellnäs (1933-2002)

in C (1964), Terry Riley (b. 1935)

The players: 

Maxwell Beckman, Joanne Bove, Mitchell Carlstrom, Mel Conti Chen, Sean Franks,Tucker George, Noa Gonzalez, Andrew Hu, Kyle Huang, Duncan Lapkin, Alex Leong, Jiawei Li, Elizabeth Luevand, Miguel Angel Alvarez Michel, Maximilian Pham, Thatcher Rexach, Ezequiel Rodrigues, Sara Senzaki, Nick Tamayo, Zimo Zhuang

Shifting Textures is a series of "wind chimes" lining the Conrad Prebys Music Center - Experimental Theater. These are arrayed in a gradual shift of sonic qualities making chimes on opposite ends of the room vastly different, while still being similar to the neighboring instruments. This sound installation is periodically broken by 2 life performance events each day, at 3 PM & 7 PM. While Shifting Textures is intended to create a space where participants can move through the chimes at their own pace and find minute subtleties between each set, the concerts are intended to present intentionally crafted music that highlights subtleties as imagined by a composer and performer. It is the hope that the sound installation prepares an audience to find small distinctions in the musical works that may have gone otherwise unnoticed, as well as to contrast the different experiences between slow sonic exploration and a crafted work of music.

This concert is a presentation of Tom Johnson's Nine Bells, which is a work that takes a simple structure and lays it on top of a different simple structure and lets them work through permutations until the point of origin is reached.

red fish blue fish is performing Xenakis's persephassa, and Steve Schick performing a new work by Rand as well as a different work of Xenakis. 

PROGRAM

Steven Schick leads rfbf discussion

Psappha (1975), Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), performed by Steven Schick

For Robert Erickson* (2025), Rand Steiger (b. 1957), performed by Steven Schick

Concret PH (1958), Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

persephassa (1969), Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

Shifting Textures is a series of "wind chimes" lining the Conrad Prebys Music Center - Experimental Theater. These are arrayed in a gradual shift of sonic qualities making chimes on opposite ends of the room vastly different, while still being similar to the neighboring instruments. This sound installation is periodically broken by 2 life performance events each day, at 3 PM & 7 PM. While Shifting Textures is intended to create a space where participants can move through the chimes at their own pace and find minute subtleties between each set, the concerts are intended to present intentionally crafted music that highlights subtleties as imagined by a composer and performer. It is the hope that the sound installation prepares an audience to find small distinctions in the musical works that may have gone otherwise unnoticed, as well as to contrast the different experiences between slow sonic exploration and a crafted work of music.

This concert is a series of solos members of red fish blue fish, each one highlights a different set of instruments and sonic qualities.

PROGRAM

Phantom EP (2025), Ash Graham (b.1992), performed by Kosuke Matsuda

Parson’s Piece (1967/68), William Hibbard (1939-1988), performed by Wesley Fowler

Directionless (2023), Luís Bittencourt (1986), performed by James Koo

Calculo Secreto (1993), José Manuel López López (b.1956), performed by James Koo

AS THOUGH (1994), Thomas DeLio (b.1951), performed by Mitchell Carlstrom

De sur a norte (2025), Hernan Camilo Zamudio Romero (b.1995), performed by Camilo Zamudio

UC San Diego’s Music Department has been a participating institution in a seven-year  musical research project (ACTOR), which is culminating on this weekend with a small, focused conference. The featured event is a concert by the celebrated New York based Talea Ensemble.

They will premiere six works composed by graduate students from North America and Europe  (our own Ni Zheng is included), as well as two UCSD music faculty: Steiger and Reynolds. Please join us for this late afternoon window into how timbre research and musical innovation can combine in interesting and useful ways.

BIO

The Talea Ensemble’s mission is to champion musical creativity, cultivate curious listeners, and bring visionary new works to life with vibrant performances that remain in the audience’s imagination long after a concert. Recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, Talea has brought to life at least 80 commissions of major new works since it was founded in 2008, including bold and inventive productions combining music and other genres such as theater and visual art. Highlights from Talea’s most recent performance seasons have included world premieres by Wang Lu, Tyshawn Sorey, Sarah Hennies, Natacha Diels, Anthony Cheung, Agata Zubel, Mark Applebaum, Sanae Ishida, and more, as well as numerous US and New York premieres.

Engagements include performances at Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Time of Music Finland, TIME:SPANS, NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series, and many more. Talea’s recordings have been distributed worldwide on the Kairos, Wergo, Gravina Musica, Tzadik, Innova, and New World Records labels, and been broadcast on ORF (Austria), HRF (Germany), and WQXR’s Q2.

Talea assumes an ongoing role in supporting a new generation of composers, and has undertaken residencies in music departments around the country. Since 2020, Talea has targeted support to early career composers through the growing Talea Access Project, which includes a commissioning program and free composer recording workshop. www.taleaensemble.org 

This evening presents world-recommended maestro Kartik Seshadri in concert  (sitar) accompanied by Anubrata Chatterjee on tabla.

Mr. Seshadri will be announcing the selections for the evening.

Part of the four-day La Jolla Playhouse WOW Festival, the Green Memories installation is an immersive experience that blends evocative real and algorithmically generated visuals and music, creating a sad yet hopeful meditation on the fragile relationship between humanity and nature. The piece is inspired by the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, who has been hailed as one of the most important contemporary poets of Iran.

Please arrive on the hour or half hour to be let in or sign up for the next showing. This project includes flashing visuals and immersive sound indoors. This is a 25-minute experience for 8-10 people at a time. Recommended for 8+. No R.S.V.P. required.

Shahrokh Yadegari, associate director of the Qualcomm Institute (QI), is an Iranian-American composer, sound artist, and researcher known for his work in interactive music, live electronic performance and interdisciplinary collaborations. With a background in electrical engineering and music, he explores the intersection of technology and artistic expression. Yadegari has collaborated with artists such as Peter Sellars, Robert Woodruff, Ann Hamilton, Christine Brewer and Gabor Tompa. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Music at UC San Diego. At QI, he directs the Sonic Arts Research and Development group.

Memo Akten is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher investigating the intricacies of human-machine entanglements. His work explores perception and states of consciousness, and the tensions between ecology, technology, science and spirituality. He writes code and uses algorithmic / data-driven design and aesthetics to create moving images, sounds, large-scale responsive installations and performances. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London, specializing in artistic and creative applications of Artificial Intelligence, and he is currently Assistant Professor at UC San Diego. Akten has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica.

GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. ALEX BLUE V, Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Media and Technology in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies  (McGill University)

A Matter of Death and Life: Necrographies of Hip-Hop in Contemporary Detroit 

Blue’s book project is a necrographic study of how participants in Detroit’s hip-hop scene respond to various narratives of death and dying about Detroit and in Detroit, how they might use a supposedly dead city as inspiration, how they create from seemingly dead spaces, and how all of these things are colored by both race and place. His work orbits around narratives of death and dying and numerous ways they are addressed by Black Detroiters with a primary interest in responses to various forms of death and dying through the creation and consumption of hip-hop. As this project shows, studying Detroit hip-hop can help us understand more deeply the ways in which Black people navigate, respond to, and live with the various forms of death that are prematurely forced upon us in the US and around the world. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon various methods from ethnomusicology, Black studies, urban studies, sound studies, and more, Blue interprets the myriad ways both practitioners and participants in Detroit use the creation, performance, and consumption of hip-hop in a rapidly-changing city. 

Biography: Alex Blue V is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies in Media and Technology in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His research examines the intersections of race, sound, space, and place, often employing heavily ethnographic methods to demonstrate the influence of race on sound, and the influence of sound on race. Additionally, he is interested in narratives of death, dying, and afterlives in relation to Black sound and musical culture. Blue is currently working on two book projects. The first, titled A Matter of Death and Life, is an ethnographic (or “necrographic”) study of the narratives of death and dying in contemporary Detroit hip-hop, and how artists employ various forms of death as praxis in music making. The second, which he is co-authoring with Dr. Kyle DeCoste (Tulane University), is an ethnographic study of country rap, also known as “hick hop,” that examines issues of race, gender, class, nationalism, and identity, primarily (but not entirely) in the southern United States. 

Blue received his MM in Jazz Studies from University of North Texas, and his PhD in Ethnomusicology from University of California - Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the AHCS faculty at McGill, he was an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at William & Mary, the Thurgood Marshall Postdoctoral Fellow in African and African American Studies at Dartmouth College, and a Predoctoral Fellow in Music at Ithaca College. 

Composer and UC San Diego PhD alumnus, Wojtek Blecharz will be visiting Composition Focus on Tuesday, April 29th, from 6 - 8 p.m. (CMPC 231, right after the IS presentation) and will be giving a talk on their opera installations. PARK OPERA was commissioned by Theater Powszechny in Warsaw (2016) and been performed in public parks in Poland, Switzerland, and Austria. Project [BLANK] will be bringing this work to Balboa Park in San Diego for its US Premiere on May 10th from 4 - 7 p.m.

Please, please come through. I'll see you there!

Biography:
Born in Gdynia (Poland) in 1981, in 2006 he graduated with honors from Frederic Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw (Master of Arts), in 2015 received a Ph. D. in music composition at University of California San Diego, living in Berlin since 2015. Between 2012-2019 Blecharz had been curating the Instalacje music festival at Warsaw’s Nowy Theater, featuring non-concert music: sound installations, performance installations, sound sculptures, music videos, music theater and others. Blecharz’s music often redefines the traditional concert format and proposes different relations between the listener/viewer and the sound. His music involves site specific projects, participatory audience, elements of music and instrumental theater as well as immersion and embodiment of sound. 
 

Grace Talaski, clarinetist, will present her 3rd DMA recital featuring a program of premieres of self-composed works for clarinets.

The program includes:

Soliloquy for bass clarinet with vocalizations
Despondency for contrabass clarinet
Four Pieces for double incomplete clarinets

kallisti Chamber Opera - An Evening of One Act Operas 

May 7 & May 9, 2025  7 p.m. 
Experimental Theater 

All Wounds Bleed - Christopher Cerrone  (2013), Tony Asaro (librettist)
The Medium - Peter Maxwell Davies (1981)

American composer Christopher Cerrone's All Wounds Bleed  (with librettist Tony Asaro) is a contemporary retelling of the legend of Echo and Narcissus, the abandoned goddess Hera, and the price of unrequited love.  The thirty minute work for three voices and small ensemble features singers Emily Barger, Julia Anne Cordani, and Miguel Zazueta.

Peter Maxwell Davies' The Medium is a portrait of a character whose life is shrouded in mystery.  Is she a mystic, a person without a country, the victim of an unspeakable crime?  Davies' monodrama, featuring mezzo soprano Julia Anne Cordani, is a vocal and emotional tour-de-force that is timely and unforgettable. 

Join Zoom Meeting https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/94099431080 

Meeting ID: 940 9943 1080
Also in CSE 4109!

Your Voice and the Machine: A Creators' Panel on Making Music with AI

AI music tools like Suno break open the gates of music creation—anyone can turn a prompt into a full-blown track.
But go deeper, and you'll find that playing these instruments is an art in itself - and creators have been pushing these tools to reflect them—their tastes, music, and sound.

Join us for a panel discussion with some of the boldest AI musicians—artists who work with AI to create something unmistakably their own.

We'll discuss the creators' journeys into AI music, share examples, and discuss their techniques for controlling and collaborating with AI.

Meet the Creators:

Alikan / Alex: Multi-Prize winning artist, with top Instrumental track in Suno's first contest and the Inventor of the "Alikan Overlap" method. A known explorer in the Suno community. Cross-Genre experimental artist, but really likes Metal. 

Sebastiaan VW: Organizer of community events like the "Suno Song Contest" and "Suno Explorer's Challenge," promoting creative experimentation. Favorite mood: Emo 

Teemuth: Winner of Suno's remix contest and leader of a global community of AI creators. Specializes in experimental hip-hop, experimental rock, and soulful grooves. Panel Moderator: 

I+AI / Itai Leibowitz: Co-organizer of the Suno Song Contest and winner of Suno's remix contest. Favorite style: Poetry

kallisti Chamber Opera - An Evening of One Act Operas 

May 7 & May 9, 2025  7 p.m. 
Experimental Theater 

All Wounds Bleed - Christopher Cerrone  (2013), Tony Asaro (librettist)
The Medium - Peter Maxwell Davies (1981)

American composer Christopher Cerrone's All Wounds Bleed  (with librettist Tony Asaro) is a contemporary retelling of the legend of Echo and Narcissus, the abandoned goddess Hera, and the price of unrequited love.  The thirty minute work for three voices and small ensemble features singers Emily Barger, Julia Anne Cordani, and Miguel Zazueta.

Peter Maxwell Davies' The Medium is a portrait of a character whose life is shrouded in mystery.  Is she a mystic, a person without a country, the victim of an unspeakable crime?  Davies' monodrama, featuring mezzo soprano Julia Anne Cordani, is a vocal and emotional tour-de-force that is timely and unforgettable. 

Title: Transducing Creative Practices: Collaboration Across Sonic Knowledges

For the past several years, my scholarship, creative practice, and lived experience have become entangled through a series of collaborative projects that have coalesced in academic publications. This has come after a long process of reflection regarding my personal and musical upbringing in Colombia, my unorthodox scholarly training in the US, and the realities of academic labor. In this talk, I center some of these collaborations to explore the enrichening and reparative relations afforded by thinking, listening, and writing with others. Whether mobilizing my embodied drummerly knowledge or tapping into familiar aural spaces, these projects have enriched my scholarship, afforded human relations that strive for reciprocity, and created safe spaces to navigate academia.

Biography: 
Juan David Rubio Restrepo is an artist/scholar focusing on Latin American popular musics and contemporary experimental practices. He is currently Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley.
 

The Bridge Music Series focuses on bridging the classical and contemporary music genres and working across disciplines to create cultural connections.

Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri Human and Machine N1 (for percussion solo)

Jukka Tienssu Plus II for clarinet and cello (for clarinet and cello)

Lei Liang Trio (for piano, cello and percussion)

Ash Fure therefore i was (for piano, cello and percussion)

Marc Neikrug Fantasy (for clarinet, cello, viola and percussion) world premiere

Artists: Aiyun Huang (percussion), Felix Fan (cello), Cory Smythe (piano), Joshua Rubin (clarinet), Chi-Yuan Chen (viola)

About IDEAS: Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences:
The Initiative aims to encourage interdisciplinary performing, visual, and literary-artists, as well as engineers and scientists, to take advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s advanced audio-visual facilities, services and personnel in staging performances and presentations of new and experimental works and research.

The Courtyard
12:00-12:20    Skyline
12:35-1:00    Honeytones
1:30-1:45    Kickback

2:45-3:00    A Stitch in Time
3:15-3:30    Less Thank Lethal
3:45-4:00    Uncertain Lies

5:00-5:30    Asayake Taiko

6:00-6:15     The Arkangels
6:20-6:30     Kate
6:35-6:50     akmakes
6:55-7:10     killanddieonce
7:15-7:30     When Sunsets Fall

~~

Please be advised that lyrics may contain mature content.

The Concert Hall

1:00-1:10 Welcoming Remarks

1:10-1:50 The Intermission Orchestra

2:45-3:05 Chamber Orchestra

3:20-3:30 Bass Ensemble

3:45-4:00 Persian Ensemble

5:15-6:15 Jazz: The Widening Circle

Room 136 - Songwriters’ Circle

1:30-1:40 Quarter Dozen

1:50-2:00 Stargazer

2:05-2:20 uglyfruit

2:25-2:40 Sapphire Gray

2:45-3:00 Kalea Porter

3:10-3:25 Halfway There

3:35-3:50 Soft Serve

4:00-4:15 Lauren Ong

4:20-4:35 Matt

4:45-5:00 earfall

~~

Please be advised that lyrics may contain mature content.

The Recital Hall - Classical Chamber Music

1:30-1:50    Classical and Computers
1:55-2:10    Salon Music
2:15-2:35    Cantori Cinque
2:40-3:00    Andrew Kim, piano
3:05-3:15    Duly Noted
3:25-3:45    Hopkins Sax Jam
4:00-4:20    Reminiscence 
4:40-5:00    Room 264 Chamber Music Club 
5:15-5:40    one fish two fish, percussion ensemble

The Experimental Theater

2:00-3:00    Bridge Music Trio: New Compositions by Undergraduate Composers
4:00-5:00    DIDO & AENEAS, an OPERA BY HENRY PURCELL 
5:30-6:30    Sound Installation: continuum iii

ON ZOOM
Meeting ID: 863 6130 1209
Passcode: 9Vnag9

“A Stitch In Time”: Thinking Magnetic Tape as Seam

Abstract:

This paper explores how the labors, sounds, and creative practices associated with magnetic tape recording resist a comprehensive, integrated theory for the recording format. Instead, I propose a poetic orientation toward tape as and at a seam, building on theoretical work by sociologists of science and technology who trouble the promises of seamless computing and philosophers of textile whose insights center the body. On these terms, tape offers the possibility to knit eclectic musical/sonic examples together. From the significantly mundane (answering machine micro-cassettes) to well-worn tales (the reel-to-reel tapes beneath the surface of Folkways LPs) and lasting contentious debates (about the relative annoyance of hiss), my examples show tape to rise and fade from material significance. Thinking about tape as seam thus ultimately orients me to think about tape’s materiality on a human, or local, scale to engage different cultural meanings the sounds of tape have come to hold.

Bio:

An associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Andrea Bohlman studies the political stakes of music making and sound in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Much of Bohlman’s work builds on her expertise on music in East Central Europe, cultures of protest, and everyday histories of sound recording. Her 2020 monograph, Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland, grows out of a decade of research on work of sound and music for the opposition to state socialism in Poland. She is currently writing a book that engages the history of tape recording as a site of knowledge production to ask questions about sound, listening, and the idea—and practice—of consent.

PROGRAM

the interior of objects (2019), Seth Cluett (b 1976)

INTERMISSION

small eddies of interlocking lives (2024), Seth Cluett (b 1976)

NOTES

the interior of objects (2019):

“…if communications are the elements that compose social systems, then communications refer only to other communications and never anything outside of themselves. Here communication is not something that takes place between systems but is strictly something that takes place in a system. Another way of putting this would be to say that a system cannot communicate with its environment and an environment cannot communicate with a system.” – Levi Bryant, The Democracy of Objects

small eddies of interlocking lives (2024):

small eddies of interlocking lives explores forms of interaction drawn from ecological systems responding to climate change and extraction-capitalism. Disturbance enables remarkable growth, generating new forms, renewing structures, and exposing buried strata, which offers a small optimism for the resiliency of the natural world.

“People and trees are caught in irreversible histories of disturbance. But some kinds of disturbance have been followed by regrowth of a sort that nurtures many lives. Peasant oak-pine forests have been eddies of stability and cohabitation. Yet they are often put into motion by great cataclysms, such as the deforestation that accompanies national industrialization. Small eddies of interlocking lives within great rivers of disturbance: these are surely sites for thinking about human talents for remediation. But there is also the forest’s point of view. Despite all insults, resurgence has not yet ceased.” - Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World

BIO

Seth Cluett is an internationally active composer  and artist whose quiet, patient music explores the territory between the senses, with a compelling attention to perception. His work is driven by themes of ecological collapse and resilience, often expressed through materials found in nature. Cluett's “subtle…seductive, immersive” (Artforum) work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). His research interests and critical writings investigate embodied cognition, sound in virtual and augmented reality, computational creativity, the media history of the loudspeaker, and speculative acoustics. Cluett is on the composition faculty at Columbia University, where he is Director of the Computer Music Center and Assistant Director of the Sound Art MFA Program, and is affiliate faculty in the Data Science Instutitute and the Center for Comparative Media. Since 2017 he has served as Artist-in-Residence at Nokia Bell Labs.
 

YOU CAN ALSO ATTEND HIS COMPUTER MUSIC SEMINAR

Monday, May 19th, 2025 5:00 PM

Conrad Prebys Music Center Room 231

"Como si todo fuera canción began in collaboration with Mariana Flores, shaped by a shared resonance with the voice of Mexican singer Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). It was never just about how she sounded, but about what her voice did—how it moved us, how it insisted on presence, on vulnerability, on a raw, embodied intensity that refused containment. 

Her voice evoked a deeply affective and bodily experience, a direct channel to grief, longing, defiance, and ultimately, healing. Chavela’s voice became a site of sonic memory, carrying in its texture the weight of exile, heartbreak, and displacement. But it was also an act of experimentation: she stretched the limits of phrasing, resisted ornamental excess, and expanded what a voice, especially a ranchera female voice, could hold and do. Through this experimental trace, Chavela created transgenerational networks of belonging and opened space for imagining other futures. 

This concert grows out ofthatecho ofexperimentation. Itemerges through memory and the affective force of timbre. In it, I search for alternative sites to reshape the expectations surrounding the oboe, not by resisting its limits but by stepping into the embodied act of sound-making. 

The four songs I composed for Como si todo fuera canción—austera pero no gris (austere but not gray), como si todo fuera canción (as if everything were song), lullaby para no dormir (lullaby to stay awake), and let the rests groove—become unfolding spaces for listening, mourning, healing, and reimagining. Like Chavela’s voice, they carry heartbreak and displacement while also reaching toward new affectiveintensities, toward sounding otherwise. 

Throughout, the four of us (Mariana, Kathryn, Juan, and I) embrace the possibility of intentionally intensifying sound, emotion, and vulnerability as a way of being in sound."

~ Juliana Gaona

Dreams and Dreamers is a concert curated around the idea of dreams as an equalizer for society.

The first pice "Three Dreams" composed by Alex Taylor is a song cycle that emerges from the poetry of four poets of the American continent, in which the topic of dreams resonate throughout different cultures, creating a sense of unity. This piece will be performed by Quartet Noveau, and Dr. Kyle Adam Blair. 

The second piece "Aunque es de noche - a musical exploration" is the result of a creative collaboration between in^set trio, and Miguel Zazueta. This piece is inspired in the homologous novel written by Montserrat Rodríguez Ruelas, which tells the story of Ulises, a young teenager who is thrown into the canalization of the Tijuana River and has to make his way through into the sea under precarious conditions, holding on to a promise he made to his mother, and a story she used to tell him about a little girl and her piñata that visited the stars.

It is my hope that this concert will evocate a sense of compassion and unity for all the attendees, as I believe we all are in much need of these values in these trying times. 

~ Miguel Zazueta

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION & RELATED INFO:

Improviser and composer Jessica Pavone will share an informal talk and workshop, focused on the embodied experience of resonance, intuition and suspended approaches to time in performance as key creative methods. Pavone will speak about her creative work, which spans solo instrumental practice, rock bands, chamber music and works for large ensembles. She will engage us in improvisations that build on the sensation of vibration and concepts of collaboration. All are welcome. The event is free and open to the public. Please bring any instrument (including your voice) that you’d like to activate during the workshop. 

On Thursday, May 22, Pavone will also meet one-on-one with students between 10am-12pm. Please email acimini@ucsd.edu to reserve a 30-minute time slot.

BIOGRAPHY: 

Violist and composer, Jessica Pavone, explores the tactile and sensory experience of music as a vibration-based medium. Inspired by processes centered on intuition and instinct, her music channels these ideas by focusing on how music feels when played and heard, integrating her experiences as an instrumentalist into works that transcend time. Although her primary training was in classical music, Pavone has dedicated her practice to exploring alternative avenues for creative musical expression and “has made a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log). Pavone has premiered new music at prominent NYC venues, including the Noguchi Museum, Abrons Art Center, Roulette Intermedium, the Museum of Art and Design, Pioneer Works, Socrates Sculpture Park, National Sawdust, and the Kitchen. Pavone’s albums have been produced by Tzadik, Taiga Records, Thirsty Ear, Out of Your Head Records, Astral Spirits, and Relative Pitch Records. 

Additionally, she has released four collaborative duo recordings with guitarist Mary Halvorson. In 2011, she was featured in NPR’s “The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40.” The New York Times wrote that her music is distinct and beguiling; its core is steely, and its execution clear,” and in Wire Magazine, Julian Cowley noted that Pavone [is] not like other composers, she is uniquely herself, and from that stems the improbable strength of her music.“ From ’05 to ’12, she toured regularly with Anthony Braxton’s Sextet and 12+1tet and appears on his discography from that time.Grants and Commissions: NYSCA (2024), Queens Arts Council (2024, 2022, 2020), NYFA NYC Women’s Fund (2023), MATA Festival (2023), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Emergency Grant, 2021), New Music USA (2015), Tri-Centric Foundation (2015), Experiments in Opera (2013), and the Jerome Foundation (2011). Residencies and Fellowships: Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize (2024), Marble House (2024), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center (2024), I-Park Foundation (2024), Hambidge Fellowship (2024), Loghaven (2023), Ragdale (2022), and Ucross (2020).
 

Part 1 Network Concert: Jon Rose- Australia, Vladimir Tarsov- Lithuania, DoYeon Kim New York, and Mark Dresser, Cory Smythe, Steph Richards -San Diego:  

Part 2  Live: Anthony Davis, Michael Dessen, Steph Richards, Mark Dresser, UC Bass Ensemble

The Undergraduate Forum is a quarterly concert series that showcases various works composed and/or performed by undergraduate music students.

This quarter's undergraduate forum features performances by:
Miguel Alvarez (Harpsichord), Grace Baldwin (Harpsichord/Violin), Kaden Cho (Piano), Sam Choi (Piano), Andrew Crapitto (Double Bass), Clarissah Ko (Piano), Luke Holley (Double Bass), Mac Lee (Piano), Randy Lew (Clarinet), Raymond Li (Violin), ing Li (Oboe), Eric Lu (Cello), Kaylyn Majers (Violin/Viola), Luke Mercado (Cello), Annabel Metcalf (Harpsichord), Luke Carmichael Valmadrid (Viola), Ivan Wong (Violin), Lucas Yan (Piano), Baizhou Zhang (Piano), Andrew Zhou (Piano), The Arkangels (Arion Starks - Guitar/Vocals, Isaias Marin - Guitar, Asher Hardy - Bass/Vocals, Jerson Perez - Drums, Kate Halperin (Vocals)), and Triple Point (Julius Castillo (Drums), Kayla Doan (Lead Vocals), Frank Drugge (Trumpet), Niha Ghosh (Backing Vocals), Arend Hekma (Guitar), Vivek Jayaraman (Piano), Jagger NNelson (Tenor Sax), Philip Pincencia (Tenor Sax), Carly Villongo (Backing Vocals), Rueben Zinner (Bass))

Organized by: Keene Cheung

Examining what we do at the landmarks of our lives, in the face of loss, grief, and pain, emerging/changed is a love letter to transformation. This program is centered around Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, a monument in the atonal song literature that takes performer and listener on a journey through the suffering of scorned love by way of a murky and violent garden walk. Tania León’s To and Fro sets the scene of this garden—a place of ritualistic metamorphosis, reminding us that the earth’s seasons themselves invite us to embrace constant fluidity. The Nightingale by Vivian Fine reflects on the freedom of this natural world through the eyes of a bird, migrating to distant lands and guided by instinct, further refracted through the words of a person who longs for such liberation but dualistically sees merit in traditional life. Finally, Tomiko Kohjiba’s The Letters of a Portuguese Nun returns us to the pain of a lost love embittered by abandonment, and asks us the question: what happens when someone refuses the opportunity to emerge, changed?

Life offers us many chances to transform ourselves, often triggered by painful experiences and complicated by conflicting emotions. Such experiences lead us to a fork in the road of our lives, giving us the choice to move forward through learning and be rewarded for its strife, or to remain in the past and face the consequences of our refusal to grow. As this program wanders through love and loss, freedom and captivity, and the natural flux of the world around us, it invites the performer and listener to ruminate on their own chances at change—seized or deserted—and the ever-present invitation towards emerging stronger.

emerging/changed is a recital presented by Julia Anne Cordani, a doctoral student in voice performance. With assistance by Kyle Adam Blair, piano, and James Koo, percussion. From the studio of Susan Narucki.

PROGRAM

D'un soir triste, Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
El Salón México, Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

-Intermission-

Symphony No. 2, Jean Sibelius (1840-1893)

i. Allegretto
ii. Tempo andante ma rubato
iii. Vivacissimo - Lento e suave
iv. Finale: Allegro moderat

These Truths We Hold is a durational sound art installation that unfolds through speech, repetition, and the slow disintegration of sounds. Activated over a 5 hour extended period, the work uses the body as a site of endurance and disruption, engaging with the myths and fractures of national identity.

This is iteration 2 of multidisciplinary artist Matana Roberts’ We Hold These Truths (2021), a 50-speaker sound and multi-channel video installation originally conceived in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. Time becomes a central material, testing the limits of attention, voice, and memory.

Dedicated to the memory of William Pope.L (1955–2023).
Instructions for optional audience participation will be available in the space.

Featuring Saul Arana (alto saxophone), 2025 Concerto Competition Winner
 

The culmination of Emma Parrott's work as an undergraduate studying Vocal Performance. She will perform a selection of music for Soprano voice spanning centuries of music composition.

Senior students in the ICAM-Music major program presents their projects during the Spring Quarter of their final year at UC San Diego. 

Learn more...