Film Festival at UC Davis showcases student films for 25th anniversary

Through Friday, May 30, 7-9 p.m., 1002 Cruess Hall

For the last 24 years, the Film Festival at UC Davis has showcased films under eight minutes long which have been created by undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent graduates. These short films explore a variety of genres and styles, from narrative to documentary to experimental, with a different program each evening. 

In honor of the film festival’s 25th anniversary, the festival committee has opened the event to include submissions from UC Davis alumni, current students at all UC campuses, and other Northern California colleges and universities. 

The Davis Filmmaking Society, a student organization on campus, will co-sponsor the screening on May 30. Get tickets here.

Musics of the Americas perform bluegrass, samba, mariachi

Thursday, May 29, 5-7 p.m., Recital Hall at Ann E. Pitzer Center, free

Bluegrass and Old Time String Band; Manny Mandolin, guest director

Mariachi Los Mesteños; Oscar Garibay, director

Samba School; Brian Rice, director

Program to be announced from the stage. 

There is no Shinkoskey noon concert this week.

UC Davis Video Game Orchestra presents ‘Myths & Magic’

Friday, May 30, 6 p.m., Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

The Video Game Orchestra at UC Davis was founded in 2017 with the goal of allowing college musicians to explore the wonders of video game music. What started out as a small group of nine musicians has now grown into a community of more than 100 members, including current UCD students, alumni and community members. Additionally, all of the pieces performed are arranged by Video Game Orchestra’s members. Each quarter, a theme is selected for the big concert that explores a genre of video games, allowing the orchestra to cover a diverse array of games throughout the year. In past concerts, pieces from games such as Super Mario Galaxy, Genshin Impact, and Hollow Knight have been performed.

Get tickets here.

Ongoing Art in Davis

Read about ongoing art and design exhibits here. 

This Saturday, May 31, 1-3 p.m., celebrate Harry Fonseca at the Gorman. Details in this Arts Blog. 

Above art, Coyote dancer with flute #III, 1983, Acrylic wash/paper. (Courtesy/Gorman Museum of Native American Art).

Christopher Froh directs Percussion Ensemble of UC Davis

Friday, May 30, 4 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Program:

David Crowell: Point Reyes

Nebojša Jovan Živković: Trio Per Uno for Percussion Trio

Astor Piazzolla: Verano Porteño for Marimba

Percussionist Christopher Froh specializes in promoting and influencing the creation of new music through critically acclaimed performances and dynamic lectures. To date, he has premiered over 150 chamber and solo works by composers from 17 countries. He directs the Percussion Ensemble Friday.

The San Francisco Symphony visits Davis

Saturday, May 31, 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

Famed Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen makes his long-awaited Mondavi Center debut with the San Francisco Symphony for a performance of soaring Beethoven works.

Appearing onstage alongside San Francisco Symphony is three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn, who first performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto at 16. Since then, her barrier-breaking attitude towards classical music and commitment to sharing her experiences with a global community has made her a fan favorite and 2023 Musical America “Artist of the Year” award winner.

Get tickets here.

The Crocker Art Museum’s Art Blast has interactive fun 

Saturday, May 31, noon, 216 O Street, Sacramento

Experience the Crocker Art Museum's world-renowned collection and diverse exhibitions through discussion and artmaking, and let great art of the past and present inspire creative expression.

Create a piece of art to cherish in this vibrant family workshop. From colorful paintings to kid-friendly crafts, each session offers the opportunity to make a collaborative artwork with loved ones in an hour or less. Paint a watercolor seascape for this session of Art Blast for Families. The Museum's highly trained staff and instructors are committed to providing students of all experience levels with a supportive and engaging experience

Get tickets here.

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra performs three concertos, one program

Sunday, June 1, 7-8:30 p.m., Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

A celebration of the concerto form, this program unusually presents three very different concertos on one program. Through these specific works, composers make broader human connections beyond the concert space.

The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra juxtaposes George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” a 20th Century classic, with other works that feature soloists in an evening titled “The Life of Concerto.”

Conducted by Christian Baldini, music director and professor of music, the concert is June 1 at 7 p.m. in the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

In “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924), Gershwin famously folded jazz—exploding in popularity at the time—into the orchestra with the piano at center. To quote the composer himself, “I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness…. I wanted to show that jazz is an idiom not to be limited to a mere song and chorus.”

The performance of Gershwin’s classic features guest pianist Erina Saito. A native of Tokyo, Saito is an international artist and collaborative pianist who has performed in Japan, the United States, Italy, Switzerland and on Capital Public Radio.

Eliza Brown’s “A Toy Boat on the Serpentine” was commissioned in 2019 by the Philadelphia Sinfonia Youth Orchestra. The title is a quotation from the novel “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf, which the composer and their mother discussed at length. Inspired by a moment when the title character realizes (as a toy boat bobbing on a river sends her into ecstatic reflection), Brown’s music reflected the waves of motion and emotion of the book’s scene.  

Daniel Brewbaker drew inspiration from a poem by the 12th-century poet Rumi when writing “Playing and Being Played,” which ponders the question: is the violinist playing the violin or the violin playing the violinist? The performance features guest artist Rachel Lee Priday who has appeared as a soloist with major international orchestras, among them the Chicago, Houston, National, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, Boston Pops Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Germany’s Staatskapelle Berlin.

Program:

Eliza Brown: A Toy Boat on the Serpentine

Henryk Wieniawski: Allegro moderato from Violin Concerto No. 2
with UCDSO Concerto Competition Winner Roxana Niazi, violin

Daniel Brewbaker: Playing and Being Played
with Rachel Lee Priday, violin

George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
with Erina Saito, piano

Get tickets here: UC Davis Symphony Orchestra | Mondavi Center 

Theatre project ‘Taming the Lightning’ focuses on human relationship to nature, technology

Tuesday, June 3 to Thursday, June 5, 7-10 p.m., Arena Theatre, Wright Hall 

A walk-through immersive performance installation, Taming the Lightning, conceived, directed, designed, and composed by Granada Artists-in-Residence David Adam Moore and Vita Tzykun, explores our relationship to nature and technology. This innovative project will be presented by the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance.

The title references a Silicon Valley quote about harnessing the forces of nature to create artificial intelligence: “We have tamed lightning and used it to teach sand to think.” Rather than celebrating human dominance over nature, Taming the Lightning invites audiences to question the boundaries humans construct between ourselves and the living world of which we are an integral part.

Students are collaborating with Tzykun and Moore to create an immersive, interactive, environment that blends live performance with digital and tactile elements. This multi-faceted installation incorporates cutting-edge tools such as custom-made sensor technology, plant sonification, 3D projection mapping, and multi-channel spatial audio, as well as an extended reality experience.

Disclaimer: The immersive experience uses VR headsets, which may cause discomfort such as dizziness, nausea, or disorientation. Use of these devices is strictly voluntary. 

Get tickets for June 3 here.

Get tickets for June 4 here.

Get tickets for June 5 here.

Aggie Square features murals by local artists

Aggie Square, unveiled earlier this month in Sacramento, boasts seven new murals throughout the complex.  Read about and view the creations of four artists with connections to the region here.  Chancellor Gary S. May joined local leaders, developer Wexford Science & Technology LLC, businesses and community members on May 2 to officially open Aggie Square, the $1.1 billion innovation district that merges the university’s cutting-edge research with the private sector and community. 

Attend reading of ‘Passage’

Wednesday, June 4, 7-8:30 p.m., Wyatt Pavilion Theatre

The Department of Theatre and Dance presents a reading of Christopher Chen’s Passage for a special one-night performance. The play explores themes of colonization and identity, inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.

Staged by Peter J Kuo, Passage is set in the fictional Country X, which is a neocolonial client of Country Y. B, a local doctor, and F, an expat teacher, begin to forge a friendship that is challenged after a fateful trip to a local attractionA meditation on how power imbalances affect personal and interpersonal dynamics across a spectrum of situations, the play allows a director wide latitude in casting the roles by race, ethnicity, and gender, with different casting choices highlighting different societal structures.

‘Sing With Pride’ honors the life of Matthew Shepard

Thursday, June 5, 7 p.m., Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

Choruses of UC Davis and the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, perform “Considering Matthew Shepard,” honoring and celebrating the life of Matthew Shepard at Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts next Thursday, June 5. 

Considering Matthew Shepard, first performed in 2016, is a full-concert length modern-day oratorio. The choral work is fused with different styles. The texts are from poets, including Rumi and Hildegard von Bingen, along with words from Shepard’s own journal. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “Moving among styles ranging from Lutheran hymnody to blues to Broadway, this modern-day Passion will move many listeners to tears even as it reaches beyond tragedy to peace, understanding and forgiveness.”

Get tickets here.

Catch immersive performance in Arboretum next Friday

Combines musical, sculptural, natural elements

UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, 8 p.m., Friday, June 6, on the North side of Lake Spafford, directly across the lake from the Wyatt Deck. Free.

“A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World,” a novel musical and visual work devised by students and professors in music and art seeks to address the urgency of habitat remediation and protection. The interdisciplinary work employs an imagined narrative that takes place in the arboretum before humans, during humans (the “Anthropocene”), and after humans. The performance begins at 8 p.m. in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden on Friday, June 6, on the north side of Lake Spafford directly across the lake from the Wyatt Deck.

The project show takes the participants to an imagined time after we’re gone, where the bowerbird remains, continuing on after we have left off.”

The students have been guided by Robin Hill, professor of art in the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program in the Department of Art and Art History; Kurt Rohde, professor of music in the Department of Music, and Stacey Parker, director of Public Horticulture and Engagement at the Arboretum and Public Garden.

Framed as a tour of the Arboretum, in the habitat of the fictional Arboretum Bowerbird, ‘A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World’ takes the bowerbird as a case study to examine our impact on the environment and its occupants, said Rohde and Hill, who together created upper-division courses in art and music for the project in order to create the piece from the ground up.

Additionally, Marie Lorenz, the spring 2025 artist in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies, contributed input. Guest musicians include Lina Bahn, violin, and Kate Vincent, viola.

Rohde and Hill continued to explain how it works: “Using the guided tour for prospective students as a frame, our piece includes site-specific and collaborative sculptural work, live performance of interstitial instrumental music, sonic improvisations, a boat landing from an unknown land, and pseudo-documentary film footage.” The audience will follow these tour guides at the East end of the T. Elliot Weier Redwood Grove, just after the Old Davis Road bridge.

For more information, visit arts.ucdavis.edu/bowerhaus.

The project received a grant from Global Affairs at UC Davis, which offers grants for “Advancing Sustainable Development Goals” in partnership with Grand Challenges, Sustainability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Student Recitals this week

Joshua Lee, violin: 

Friday, May 30, 7 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

with Karen Rosenak, piano

Program:

J.S. Bach: Andante and Allegro from Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003 

W.A. Mozart: Allegro from Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216 

Ludwig van Beethoven: Larghetto and Rondo from Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 61

Pablo de Sarasate: Navarra, op. 33

Henryk Wieniawski: Polonaise de Concert, op. 4 

Student Pianists of UC Davis:

Saturday, May 31, 11:30 a.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Featuring Natsuki Fukasawa, I-Hui Chen, and Michael Seth Orland

Program to be announced.

Kian Abulhosn, solo piano:

Saturday, May 31, 2 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Program:

Franz Josef Haydn: Sonata in B Minor, Hob. XVI 32

Frédéric Chopin: Nocturne in B Major, op. 9, no. 3

Olivia Chan, piano:

Saturday, May 31, 4:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Program to be announced.

Robbie Valdes, cello:

Monday, June 2, 7 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

with Karen Rosenak, piano

Program to be announced.

Student Chamber Ensemble:

Tuesday, June 3, 12:05 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

Pete Nowlen, coordinator

Program to be announced.

Want to see art at UC Davis? Check out this interactive map of art pieces to visit.