Back to School
by Gerald Carpenter
MUSICAL SPRING HAS SPRUNG: This next week,
music lovers will have to take themselves out to UCSB, for that is
apparently where all the action is — starting tonight (Thursday,
June 1), when the University Wind Ensemble, conducted by
Paul Bambach, presents its Virtual World Tour
concert at 8 p.m.in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. The ensemble
invariably performs works you wish you had heard before and want to
hear again. Tonight’s program features the Mosher Woodwind Quintet
in David R. Gillingham’s Concerto for Woodwind
Quintet and Wind Ensemble, plus suites by Béla
Bartók, Heitor Villa-Lobos,
Darius Milhaud, and Aram
Khachaturian. Tickets are $12 general admission, $7 for
students, and may be purchased at the door.
Then there’s a concert for those whose approach to music is
colored by the verse of the Upanishads: “The sharp edge of
the razor is difficult to pass over; thus, the wise say the path of
salvation is hard.” UCSB’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music, under
the direction of Jeremy Haladyna, has just about
the sharpest cutting edge in town and it will be offering its last
event of the 2005-06 school year at 8 p.m. next Tuesday, June 6, in
Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. Haladyna will lead the ECM finale, with
a program that includes composer-in-residence Ursula
Mamlok’s Polarities and From My Garden
(with violist Leah Lucas), plus works by some of
UCSB’s many talented young Turks, such as Pursuit of Truth
by Tim Beutler and Scott Perry’s
Eviscerations.
Haladyna himself is, of course, a composer of considerable
significance, and the concert will feature a performance of his
Descent of Kukulcan, written for faculty bassoonist
Andrew Radford. Haladyna carries forward the
standard originally passed on to him by William
Kraft, but he has been more than a custodian or
placeholder. As a composer, he is an original and intriguing voice
in contemporary American music. As a performer, he puts an
insightful and open mind at the service of whatever music comes his
way, be it his own, a student’s or colleague’s, or the work of some
legendary radical. As a teacher, he is clearly un-dogmatic and
generous. We are lucky to have him among us, and lucky that he is
still young. Tickets to the ECM concert are $12 general admission,
$7 for students, and will be available at the door on the night of
the concert.
Those with free afternoons and a taste for music’s lighter
moments should mosey on out to Lotte Lehmann at 2:30 p.m. next
Wednesday, June 7, for the UCSB Opera Workshop’s presentation of
student performances of comic scenes from operas by W.
A. Mozart, Giuseppe
Verdi, Benjamin Britten, and
Gioacchino Rossini. Musical direction is by Dr.
Steven Kronauer, stage direction by
Michele Farr, and Erin Bronski,
pianist. The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Thursday, June 8,
in the same venue. Admission is $12 general, $7 for students, with
tickets at the door.
Finally, the University Symphony, conducted by Sean
Newhouse, offers its annual Spring Concert, with the UCSB
music department’s concerto competition winners, at 8 p.m. on
Wednesday, June 7, in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. On the program
are François Borne’s Fantasie brillante for
Flute and Orchestra on themes of “Carmen,” with Alison
Hazen, flute; Paul Creston’s
Concertino for Marimba and Orchestra, with Haig
Shirinian, marimba; and Ernest Bloch’s
Suite for Viola and Orchestra, with Leah
Lucas, viola; plus Symphony No. 8 in B Minor,
“Unfinished,” by Franz Schubert and
Overture to the Opera Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter), by
Carl Maria von Weber. As above, the tariff is $12
general, $7 student, with tickets sold at the door.
