What better way to spend the coolest, wettest quarter than inside at concerts, plays and exhibitions? Through its academic programs, galleries and the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, 細細篇撞 offers music from classical to experimental, theater pieces big and small, art of all kinds and visits by two Pulitzer Prize winners.
Music and Words
The , Jan. 27-31, will be one of the biggest happenings of the entire year, not just the quarter. It brings to campus Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner, the S Percussion ensemble and emerging composers from around the nation for seven concerts over four days. One of the key events will be a performance of Luciano Berios rarely-played Sinfonia for orchestra and eight amplified voices by the 細細篇撞 Symphony Orchestra with the Volti vocal group from San Francisco.
The Alumni Chorus, University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Thomas, music professor and director of the American Bach Soloists, join forces for a concert of music by Vaughan Williams, Felix Mendelssohn and Herbert Howells on March 8.
Other Department of Music concerts include Splinter Reeds, premiering student compositions; the university Concert Band, Jazz, Baroque and Gamelan ensembles; and free concerts every Thursday at noon.
Well-known Indian musician Sikkil Gurucharan, a Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies, will present Jugalbandi: Carnatic and Hindustani Music, Feb. 25, in collaboration with the music department.
The Mondavi Center presents
As usual, the has world-class visitors of all genres filling the calendar: Itzhak Perlman, one of the greatest violinists of the last 50 years, Jan.17; jazz singer Gregory Porter, who has shot to the top of every best of list during the past three years, Jan. 19; recently-retired New York City Ballet star Wendy Whelan with her evening of original duets, Restless Creature, Jan. 24; and just for fun the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Jan. 28. And thats just January.
The remainder of the quarter offers legendary South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela,; the Curtis Chamber Orchestra; Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with Charles Dutoit conducting; the London Symphony Orchestra with pianist Yuja Wang, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; pianist Lang Lang; Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq; and Julian Sands in A Celebration of Harold Pinter, directed by John Malkovich.
Cold climate, warm hearts
The , part of the Department of Native American Studies, invites visitors to explore the Arctic in Listening to the Stone: Original Inuit Art, loaned by an alumni couple, J端rg and Christel Bieri. Through June 11.
Faculty members Jessica Bissett Perea (Native American studies) and Chris Darwent (anthropology) have organized a related symposium, March 13-14. Perea and Darwent also have partnered with the Mondavi Center to present a pair of concerts by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq (both performances are sold out).
The is reviving a Valentines Day tradition that was the talk of the town and campus for several decades. The Artists Valentine Redux is an exhibition and auction of 100 works by regional artists, including several Department of Art faculty. The exhibition runs Jan. 15-Feb. 14, with the auction planned as part of a party set to start at 7 p.m. Feb. 14.
Also at the Nelson, through May 10: MAKE: A New Museum for 細細篇撞, an exhibition that invites the publics input on programs and spaces that will shape the visitor experience at the , now under construction.
Everyone is invited to the museums topping-out ceremony, March 13, after the last beam has been raised into place. People can sign a beam that will be installed and visible in the completed museum.
The presents an exhibition of red dresses created by design students over the last five years to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease among women. A joint project of the Design Collection and the , the exhibition runs Jan. 15-March 13.
Art and poetry
The continues with Anne Ellegood, senior curator at the Hammer Museum, Jan. 15; Saul Melman, a multidisciplinary artist from New York, Feb. 19; and Rico Gatson, a Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor, March 12. All talks are set for 4:30 p.m. in the .
Padma Kaimal, an art professor at Colgate University, will give this years , on the subject of the Kailasanatha Temple in India. The program is scheduled for Jan. 9 at the Nelson Gallery.
The Nelson is also the venue for a poetry event: a reading by Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Gl端ck, Feb. 24, hosted by the Department of English. She won her Pulitzer in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris, one of her 12 volumes. Shes also received a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Poetry Society of Americas William Carlos Williams Award and an Academy of American Poets prize.
Woyzeck and new dance works
The presents Woyzeck, Georg B端chners influential play from the 1830s about the dehumanizing effects of the military and medicine on a young man. , Feb. 26-March 8, is a reimagining by Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things and In the Company of Men), with direction by Granada Artist-in-Residence Bob McGrath, who led the premiere production of LeButes adaptation in 2012.
The Institute for Exploration in Theatre, Dance and Performance will present two-newly created student dance works: Underbelly, by Tiffany Martin, March 2; and Disequilibria, by Raissa Simpson, who is collaborating with the PUSH Dance Company, March 20.
Media Resources
Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu