Jazz Big bands perform fall concert
The Jazz Big Bands of UC Davis, directed by faculty member Otto Lee, will play the music of Benny Moten, Wayne Shorter, Gordon Goodwin, Benny Golson and others at its Nov. 28 concert at the Ann E. Pitzer Center on the UC Davis campus.
The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $24 for adults and $12 for students and youth, and are available at the Mondavi Center Ticket Office in person or by calling 530-754-2787, Tuesday-Friday, 12–5 p.m. Tickets are also available online at tickets.mondaviarts.org.
For more information about music department concerts in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, visit music.ucdavis.edu.
Concert band and Yolo Community Band perform
The UC Davis Concert Band, directed by faculty member Pete Nowlen, and the Yolo Community Band will perform a concert program that includes a new work “Luminance,” which inspires listeners to embrace their inner light. The performance will be on Nov. 29 at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
“Luminance,” by Sacramento-based composer Shuying Li, was commissioned by a consortium of bands — including the UC Davis Concert Band — and was premiered by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band in October. This performance is the work’s West Coast premiere.
“At its core, the work addresses issues relevant to contemporary society,” says Li. “By exploring themes of hope and despair, inclusion and exclusion, and power and powerlessness, the piece seeks to provide a platform for reflection and conversation. Through its use of evocative tonalities and dynamic contrasts, ‘Luminance’ aims to inspire audiences to find strength in moments of darkness and embrace the light within themselves.”
Li, an assistant professor at Sacramento State University, has won many awards and her compositions have been performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Ningbo Symphony Orchestra in China, the Orkest De Ereprijs in the Netherlands and others.
The concert will also include Leonard Bernstein’s “Four Dances from ‘West Side Story,’’’ and Joe Hisaishi and Yumi Kimura’s “Spirited Away.”
The Yolo Band, directed by Michael Loya, joins the Concert Band on Alfred Reed’s “Russian Christmas Music.” The Yolo Band will premiere Marcus T. Loya’s “Indomitable Blaze” and perform Malcolm Arnold’s “Prelude, Siciliano, and Rondo,” along with Martin Ellerby’s “Silent Movie Suite.” Marcus T. Loya is a composer, songwriter and flutist from Sacramento.
The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $24 for adults and $12 for students and youth, and are available at the Mondavi Center Ticket Office in person or by calling 530-754-2787, Tuesday-Friday, 12–5 p.m. Tickets are also available online at tickets.mondaviarts.org.
For more information about music department concerts in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, visit music.ucdavis.edu.