Violin, cello and piano, Brazilian composers, at noon concert

Ian Jessee, violin, Susan Lamb Cook, cello and Paulo Steinberg, piano 

Thursday, Feb. 16, 12:05 – 1 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert​, Free

The program includes 20th-century works by Brazilian composers Camargo Guarnieri, Edmundo Villani-Côrtes, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce.

Cuban musical iconography featured in lecture

Valente Lecture: “The Afro-Cuban Celebration of the Three Kings’ Day. The Importance of Prints in the Study of 19th Century Cuban Musical Iconography”

Miriam Escudero (University of San Gerónimo, La Havana, Cuba)

Thursday, Feb. 16, 4 – 5:30 p.m., Room 266, Everson Hall, UC Davis

In the 19th Century, the economic power of the sugar and tobacco industries gave impetus to the periodical press in Cuba, as well as to the art of printing, particularly lithography. Although the rise of the printing press in its various forms has been documented, there are hardly any studies that exploit the resulting images as an iconographic source to document musical performance. To the usual genre-timbre historiographical characterization, we must add the use of those iconographic sources to recognize instruments associated with the main musical practices in 19th Century Havana. For this purpose, it is necessary to have an analytical interpretation of these sources, in order to distinguish between fact and fiction. Such is in the case of the print “Día de Reyes” (Three Kings’ Day) originating in a drawing made during 1840s, by one of the leading artists on the island: Federico Mialhe.

Recognized as one of Cuba’s leading musicologists, Miriam Escudero is Director of the “Esteban Salas” Musical Heritage Cabinet of the Havana City Historian Office. She is also Professor at Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo, where she coordinates graduate studies in musical heritage preservation, and at The University of Arts of Cuba (ISA), where she teaches graduate-level courses. Among her recent publications is Música Sacra de Cuba, Siglo XVIII, a nine-volume annotated collection of transcriptions of works by Esteban Salas (1725–1803) and Cayetano Pagueras (18th and 19th centuries). Escudero’s research has earned her important national awards such as Premio Casa de las Americas, Premio de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba and, most recently, the 2013 Premio Academia Cubana de la Lengua.

Currently, Miriam Escudero is Director and Editor of the two ongoing series: Patrimonio Musical Cubano, published by CIDMUC, and Documentos Sonoros del Patrimonio Musical Cubano. For fifteen years she was a member of the internationally known Ars Longa, an early music ensemble that pioneered historical performances in Cuba. She holds a doctoral degree from the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in musicology from the The University of Arts of Cuba (ISA).

Student recital: Rebecca Wang, percussion

Friday, Feb. 17, 4 – 4:45 p.m., Anne E. Pitzer Center, Junior Recital, Free

The program includes Casey Cangelosi: Meditation No. 1 for Snare Drum, Elliott Carter: March for Timpani, Terry Longshore and Brett Reed: Boom with Jackson Orlando and Keiko Abe: Memories of the Seashore for Marimba.

Ongoing Exhibitions at UC Davis

From Concept to Creation: Inspired Shoe Design by Chris Francis

Through April 23, UC Davis Design Museum

The UC Davis Design Museum takes a bold step with the exhibition “From Concept to Creation: Inspired Shoe Design by Chris Francis,” which showcases the colorful and imaginative footwear created by the Los Angeles-based shoe designer.

Co-curated by Professor Susan T. Avila and Cristina Gomez, graduate student in design, the installation spotlights creations by shoemaker and designer Francis. His work combines global shoemaking traditions and techniques, with references to the built environment such as industrial design and brutalist architecture as well as 20th-century art movements and punk rock. His narrative-based, unique hand-constructed shoes theatrically bridge contemporary art and wearable design.

Visit the Design Museum for map and parking information.

Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965–1985 at Manetti Shrem

Through June 25, Manetti Shrem Museum

UC Davis Professor Emeritus Mike Henderson’s first solo U.S. museum exhibition in 20 years brings to light the pioneering artist’s rarely seen contributions to the history of contemporary painting and filmmaking, radical Black politics, and to the story of California art. The exhibition integrates paintings and films by Henderson that offer new ideas about Black life in the visual languages of protest, Afro-futurism and surrealism. Challenging the protocols and propriety of art-making in the 20th century, these works depict scenes of anti-Black violence as well as utopian visions and questions of self-making. Curated by Sampada Aranke (Ph.D. ’13) and Dan Nadel.

Read more about Henderson and this exhibition here.

 

‘Art of Athletes’ is at the Manetti Shrem Museum next week

Wednesday, Feb. 22, 6 – 7:30 p.m., Manetti Shrem Museum

Art of Athletes celebrates the multifaceted talents and identities of UC Davis’ Division I student athletes. In this 14th year of the show, explore the artwork of student athletes across the university’s 25 teams featuring different artistic mediums, meet many of the artists and make artwork of your own. 

Organized by UC Davis Athletics. Co-sponsored by the Manetti Shrem Museum.

 

Steve Briscoe’s ‘The Object is The Subject: The Salesman’s Samples, 1988-1991’ in San Francisco

Opening Reception: Sunday, Feb. 19, 2 – 5 p.m., Transmission Gallery;  Feb. 17 - March 25, 2023

Transmission Gallery San Francisco is proud to present photographic/sculptural works by Steve Briscoe. The exhibition will show a selection of his Salesman’s Samples, a body of work from the late 1980s. Against the backdrop of a hot art market, artists were beginning to look at the presentation of art as the art itself. These works situate themselves in that milieu as a mashup of sculpture, photography, and even painting.

​Working from the consumer detritus found at an Oakland “As-Is” yard, Briscoe assembled parts of lamps, planters, buckets, spheres, even a truck door and guitar, and photographed them in black and white. He then hand-printed a photographic image on a stretched canvas at 1:1 scale. The resulting photographs, flat, splotchy, even painterly, were paired with the original as a diptych, confronting the viewer with both versions for comparison. The eye goes back and forth. Which is “better?” What is gained or lost in the translation? There is a reference to portrait painting as well as still life.

The state of photography at the time was decidedly analog. These large-scale prints were not easy to make, and Briscoe developed a specialized technique so that the images could be developed on the stretched canvas. There was also an interest in the photograph as object and alternative processes. Artists like the Starn twins were using the photography in more conceptual ways. F.64 was out the door, make way for Neo-expressionism, Appropriation and Semiotics!

Catalogs of the works on view as well as other bodies of work will be available at the gallery.

Also see work by Lynn Beldner in “Expeditions,” showing in a concurrent solo exhibition at Transmission San Francisco, Feb. 17 – March 25.

Coming Up

Magela Herrera Quartet concert

Thursday, Feb. 23, 12:05 – 1 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert, free

The program includes Magela Herrera, flute and voice; Yorgis Garcia, bass; Yissy Calzadilla, drums; and Edgar Pantoja-Aleman, piano.

Singer, flutist and composer Magela Herrera brings her quartet to campus for a Thursday Shinkoskey Noon Concert of her music and a concert of new pieces by doctoral music composition students (Friday). A native of Cuba, Herrera grew up immersed in her family’s deep ties to Afro Cuban music and also studied classical music at the Conservatory of Music in Havana. She earned degrees in jazz performance from the Norwegian Academy of Music. Herrera is known for bringing those influences together.

Shuying Li, composer will give Valente lecture

Valente Lecture: Shuying Li, Composer (Assistant Professor of Music, California State University, Sacramento)

Feb. 23, 4 – 5:30 p.m., Room 266, Everson Hall

Praised by the Seattle Times as “a real talent” with “skillful orchestral writing, very colorful language and huge waves of sound,” Shuying Li is an award-winning composer who began her musical education in her native China. In her sophomore year at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she won a scholarship to continue her undergraduate studies at The Hartt School in Connecticut. She holds doctoral and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan and is a research faculty member at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. A passionate educator, Shuying has taught and directed the Composition/Music Theory Program at Gonzaga University. She joined the faculty at California State University, Sacramento in fall 2022.


Recent or upcoming projects include performances by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Chelsea Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia; an opera commissioned by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music with librettist Julian Crouch in development with the Houston Grand Opera supported by OPERA America; an orchestra consortium commission by ten orchestras; and two band consortium commissions including a CBDNA West/Northwest Region “Bridgework” Commission. For more information, visit her website.

2023 Templeton Colloquium in Art History: Pacific Encounters

Friday, Feb. 24, 4 – 7 p.m., Manetti Shrem Museum

This year’s colloquium takes as its theme an ocean as an art-historical space. Pacific peoples have for centuries connected to one another and to the bigger world, despite vast expanses involved in traversing this region of the globe. The emphasis will be on Hawaiian and Māori societies, which invite deeper consideration of this fascinating global sector and its visual culture.

The speakers are Dr. Ngarino Ellis, University of Auckland, New Zealand (Aotearoa); and Dr. Stacy Kamehiro and Dr. Kailani Polzak, both of UC Santa Cruz. Manetti Shrem Museum Academic Liaison Jennifer Wagelie, whose area of study is the art of the Pacific Islands, specifically Māori, will be the respondent.

Organized and moderated by Professor Michael Yonan. Co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Manetti Shrem Museum. See the full story on the College of Letters and Science website here.

Get tickets now for Ballet Preljocaj: March 5