The time is 11:45 on a Wednesday night in the bowels of Morrison Hall. Campus is mostly quiet, the lone sounds come from a few students trudging south after studying at Doe Library. Fog off the Golden Gate envelops Berkeley into an silence. But in a Music Department’s practice room Zhoushu Ziporyn ’17 is fighting the … Continue Reading »
Mathew’s 2016 includes Townsend Fellowship and Takács Quartet Residency
UC Berkeley Associate Professor of Music Nicholas Mathew’s schedule is pretty full most semesters. Between teaching a range of research and performance courses, maintaining a schedule of piano performances, and continuing to publish new research on late eighteenth-century music there is not much time for anything else in his professional calendar. But this year Mathew … Continue Reading »
5 Questions: Music Alumni Alexander Kahn ’08
Alexander Kahn graduated from UC Berkeley Music with his Ph.D. in 2008. After a stint at Gettysburg College, Kahn now serves as Director of Orchestral Activities at Sonoma State University. 1- You note your father Eugene was a big influence on your passion for music. How did he and your family nurture your interest? I come from … Continue Reading »
Pacific Rim Music Festival Ensemble Korea, new music
A recent April noon concert featured Pacific Rim Music Festival Ensemble Korea, in the Bay Area for this and additional concerts at UC Santa Cruz, to be followed by a performance at the Italian Academy, Columbia University in New York. The program featured both preview concerts of new compositions by composer Shi-Hui Chen, chair and professor … Continue Reading »
Naomi in the news
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik about Angélique Kidjo’s concert at the Nourse Theater: : “(The concert) was as expected, a leap-from-your -seat and shake your booty op, and by the time she sang her last song, the audience had swarmed the stage and the aisles. Near the end of the show, she sang while walking through … Continue Reading »
Robert Commanday, colleagues and friends say farewell
Robert Commanday, prominent critic in the San Francisco Bay Area, died at age 93 on September 3, 2015 at his home in Oakland. Initial responses to his passing came in from all over the world, but within the San Francisco Classical Voice online music website, the man who established and ran SFCV 17 years ago … Continue Reading »
Elevating Berkeley's creative culture, an idea whose time has come.
Students from many academic disciplines at Berkeley are the focus of a new arts and design immersive initiative that introduces science, technology, engineering, and math students to arts and design, via a new Big Ideas course, “Thinking Across the Arts and Design at Berkeley,” but of a major new effort at Berkeley called the Arts + Design Initiative. … Continue Reading »
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Under the artistic direction of composer Matthias Pintscher, the 31-member ensemble lent its “bracing expertise” (The Guardian, London) to two programs of 20th-century gems on November 6 & 7 in a concert sponsored by Cal Performances. Included in the concert programs were the American premiere of a new work, We met as Sparks, by Music Department faculty … Continue Reading »
Cal Day 2016
The Music Department was pleased to display a wide range of musical activities for Cal Day visitors. Concert manager Quelani Penland programmed this annual open house for UC Berkeley with exciting events located both inside and outside Hertz Memorial Concert Hall and Morrison Hall, for all to enjoy. Inside events included the kid-friendly Music Connection instrument workshop, … Continue Reading »
The Mendelssohn Project at the Magnes
Spring 2016 marks the opening and launch of the Mendelssohn Project at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. One exhibition, two historic pianos, and fourteen lectures/performances sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities, the Departments of History and Music, and the Magnes Collection. An exhibit curated by Francesco Spagnolo, “From … Continue Reading »
John Roberts identifies new music by Handel
Professor Emeritus John Roberts recently tripped over an important discovery that others had missed, an early version of Handel’s cantata Tu fedel? tu costante?, HWV 171, when examining a manuscript from a collection belonging to Dutch keyboard player, conductor, and collector of music scores Ton Koopman. Three of the four arias in the cantata were completely … Continue Reading »
Orchestra musicians perform with the Danish String Quartet
Cal Performances invited the Danish String Quartet to perform at Zellerbach Hall in February. Quartet members also performed with UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra principals for an appreciative capacity crowd in a free Friday noon concert. The program included the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Octet in E-flat major, op. 20. The talented and fortunate few orchestra members who … Continue Reading »