Wednesdays@7 presents


Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater
Steve Reich 's Drumming is widely considered a masterpiece of minimalism by both critics and fans. Minimalism flourished in symphonic music in the 1960s and '70s. Composers like Reich broke music down to its most elemental forms — a single chord, even a single tone or a simple pulse — and then weaved those elements back together to create a new musical structure, often using the same motif over and over again. -- Mark Mobley , NPR

Drumming was the longest piece Steve Reich has ever composed, lasting from 55 to 75 minutes and is divided into four parts that are performed without pause. The first part is for four pairs of tuned bongo drums, stand-mounted and played with sticks; the second, for three marimbas played by nine players together with two women’s voices; the third, for three glockenspiels played by four players together with whistling and piccolo; and the fourth section is for all these instruments and voices combined. The sections are joined together by the new instruments doubling the exact pattern of the instruments already playing. Drumming shows that it is possible to keep going in the same key for quite a while if there are instead considerable rhythmic developments together with occasional, but complete, changes of timbre to supply variety. -- Steve Reich's composer notes.

The New York Times  calls  red fish blue fish  a "dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California." Founded over 20 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego-based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion's rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent.

Percussionists: James Beauton, Fiona Digney, Sean Dowgray, Erin Graham, Kalle Hakosalo, Michael Jones, Matthew LeVeque, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Jack Nevin, Steven Schick
Voices: Mariana Flores Bucio, Jasper Sussman
Piccolo: Alexander Ishov

$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$10.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students


Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 - Sergei Rachmaninoff
Cello Sonata in C, Op. 65 - Benjamin Britten

Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
 Conrad Prebys Concert Hall
Cellist Michael Nicolas and pianist Aleck Karis  will perform  Sergei Rachmaninoff's magnificent Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 (1901) along with the Cello Sonata in C, Op. 65 (1961), by the English composer Benjamin Britten . 

Aleck Karis , piano:
Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two discs on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. Last month, Bridge released his most recent disc, Feldman's haunting last work Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello. Karis has studied with William Daghlian, Artur Balsam and Beveridge Webster. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California San Diego, and former Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

Michael Nicolas , cello:
A “long-admired figure on the New York scene” (New Yorker), cellist Michael Nicolas enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and improvisor. His eclectic tastes and adventurous spirit have led him to forge a musical path of uncommon breadth, where his activities range from performing the masterpieces of the past in the world's most prestigious concert halls, to free improvisation in a downtown New York experimental venue with giants of the genre, to working with contemporary composers of all styles, pushing the boundaries of musical expression and meaning.
The ensembles Michael plays in illustrate his commitment to diversity. He is the cellist of the intrepid and genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which has drawn praise from classical, world music, and rock critics alike. As a member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), he has worked with countless composers from around the world, premiering and recording dozens of new works. Another group, Third Sound, which Michael helped found, made its debut with an historic residency at the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival, in Cuba.

As a soloist, Michael performs recitals and concertos across the globe. His album Transitions, available on the Sono Luminus label, was named Q2 Music Album of the Week at WQXR upon release, and it has since garnered critical acclaim across North America. His chamber music playing can also be found on the Naxos, Tzadik, and Universal Korea labels.

Of mixed French-Canadian and Taiwanese heritage, Michael was born in Canada, and currently resides in New York City. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School.


$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$10.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students
Wednesdays@7 presents

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Concert Hall
Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean , performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, Charles Curtis, Rhodri Davies, and Robin Hayward. Occam Ocean tour is part of Éliane Radigue: Intermediate States, a retrospective curated by Lawrence Kumpf and Charles Curtis and developed in collaboration with Éliane Radigue for Blank Forms in New York. The retrospective seeks to present Radigue's practice in a richly contexualized, holistic manner to draw out important connections between her early and late periods of work, examining the breadth of her practice and juxtaposing her compositions with new interpretations and experimental re-stagings by contemporary composers.

Éliane Radigue  (b. 1932) is a pioneering French composer of undulating continuous music marked by patient, virtually imperceptible transformations that purposefully unfold to reveal the intangible, radiant contents of minimal sound—its partials, harmonics, subharmonics and inherent distortions. As a student and assistant to musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Radigue mastered tape splicing techniques, but preferred the creation of fluid, delicately balanced feedback works to the spasmodic dissonance of her teachers’ music. Finding peers among minimalist composers in America, Radigue began working with synthesis in 1970, eventually discovering the ARP 2500 synthesizer, which she would use exclusively for her celebrated electronic works to come. With remarkable restraint, Radigue spent years on each piece, painstakingly assembling series of subtle, pulsating ARP recordings to be later mixed meticulously into hourlong suites of precise, perpetual mutation, including masterpieces Trilogie de la mort and Adnos I-III. In 2001, Radigue adapted an early feedback work to live performance on electric bass, Elemental II, and in 2004, with the encouragement of ongoing collaborator Charles Curtis, she permanently abandoned electronics for acoustic composition, beginning with Naldjorlak for solo cello, composed for Curtis. As within each individual work, Radigue has maintained an obstinate focus throughout the flow of her career, her dedication to the materiality of sound earning her numerous accolades and ensuring her place as one of the most important composers of our time.

Occam Ocean  is an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces composed by Radigue for individual instrumentalists in which a performer’s personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece. The “knights of the Occam,” as Radigue refers to the performers participating in the project, are therefore musicians who have developed individualistic, creative approaches to their instruments; and the resulting compositions are not transferable to other performers on that instrument. Citing the ocean as a calming antidote to the overwhelming nature of our vibratory wave-filled surroundings, Radigue has named the tributary components of her Occam series with the image of fluid water in mind. Solo pieces are Occams, duo pieces Rivers, and larger ensemble pieces Deltas. The process of combining or over-laying the solos as small ensemble pieces, with only minor adjustments in the solos themselves, recalls Radigue’s procedure in the early feedback works made as sound installations, in which individual feedback loops are to combined freely in slight non-synchronization such that combinations of loops rarely or never repeat. With the extreme simplicity of Occam’s razor, continuous pieces that are iridescent on their own achieve a new radiance of interacting pulsation in their River and Delta configurations. The Occam series began in 2011 with a solo for harpist Rhodri Davies and has continued steadily to the present, counting now well over fifty individual solos and ensemble pieces.


$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$10.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students


Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater
A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, the [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation and performance of new works for chamber ensemble and multimedia. At the core of each performance is their commitment to the total integration of technology and live musicians. They strive for compelling artistry achieved through the seamless creation, production, and execution of new music.

They believe that working directly with composers throughout their creative process–in a medium where the score is a departure point rather than a finish line–allows for new and thrilling musical possibilities. Their collaborative practices are optimized for needs that differ radically from the creation and rehearsal of acoustic music, allowing for continuous experimentation and refinement.

They have enjoyed fruitful collaborations with both emerging and established composers, including Anna-Louise Walton, Alican Çamci, Igor Santos, Katherine Young, Stefano Gervasoni, Stefan Prins, Wojtek Blecharz, Anthony Vine, Rand Steiger, Philippe Leroux, and many others. Additionally, they have performed the American premieres of works by Alexander Schubert, Elvira Garifzyanova, Santiago Diez-Fischer, Lisa Streich, and Anthony Pateras.

[Switch~] contributes to the future of the genre by strongly advocating for and commissioning the music of a new generation of emerging young composers. They have commissioned new works by Timothy McCormack, James Bean. Our 2017-2018 season includes the premiere of new works by Matt Sargent, Esaias Järnegard, and Adrien Trybucki, residencies at Cornell University, Ithaca College, Bard College, and Buffalo State, as well as performances and recitals in New York City and San Francisco, including repertoire by Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Tonia Ko, and Sivan Eldar.

In the summer of 2016, the [Switch~ Ensemble] served as ensemble-in-residence at the Valencia International Performance Academy in Spain. At VIPA, [Switch~] worked alongside faculty and participant composers, led workshops and masterclasses, and premiered over a dozen new works. In May of 2017, [Switch~] premiered works for ensemble and electronics by seven doctoral students as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago. Other recent highlights and invitations include a residency at Avaloch Farms Music Institute, the CD release of Christopher Chandler’s Smoke and Mirrors on the SEAMUS label, and featured concerts on the MATA Interval Series, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the Queens New Music Festival, the Vanguard New Music Series at Kent State University.

Founded in 2012 at the Eastman School of Music, the [Switch~ Ensemble] looks toward the future of contemporary music. They are dedicated to performing high-level chamber music integrated with cutting-edge technology and supporting emerging and early career composers. They are passionate about helping to build a diverse canon of 21st century works that leaves space for all voices—especially those that have historically been excluded from our field.

The [Switch~ Ensemble] is presented by Department of Music Professor, composer Katharina Rosenberger, in support of her 2019 Guggenheim Award.


FREE
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Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Mandeville Auditorium
Under the direction of James Beauton, the UC San Diego Wind Ensemble will present their Fall concert in Mandeville Auditorium.

$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$5.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
Mandeville Auditorium
Directed by Ken Anderson, the choir combines hundreds of voices to fill the auditorium with the uplifting sound of African American spirituals, blues, traditional songs, and gospel.

$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$5.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students
Tuesday, December 3, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.
Mandeville Auditorium
Directed by Matthew Kline, the Chamber Orchestra presents their Fall performance of Emilie Mayer's Overture in D Minor and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 35 in D Major "Haffner" at the Mandeville Auditorium. 

$15.50 - General Admission |  Ticket Link
$5.50 - UC San Diego Faculty, Staff and Alumni
FREE - All Students
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Parking
Visitor parking permits are available for purchase at the Gilman Parking Structure, located across the street from the Conrad Prebys Music Center at 3100 Gilman Drive

To purchase advanced parking passes click here .

Read our news updates on the Department of Music website:  music.ucsd.edu .
For a complete listing of concerts and events, please visit   music.ucsd.edu/concerts   and purchase tickets   here .


Media Contact
Sherry An
Marketing & Promotions Coordinator
UC San Diego Music
(858) 822-0160

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UC San Diego Music is a leading program known for its innovative research and support for the creation and performance of experimental music.

About UC San Diego
At the University of California San Diego, we constantly push boundaries and challenge expectations. Established in 1960, UC San Diego has been shaped by exceptional scholars who aren't afraid to take risks and redefine conventional wisdom. Today, as one of the top 15 research universities in the world, we are driving innovation and change to advance society, propel economic growth and make our world a better place. Learn more at  www.ucsd.edu .