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Past News & Events

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Past Music News

Cover of Terrible Freedom. Black background, with light highlighting a women playing an instrument.

Department Chair and Professor, 
Amy C. Beal 

Please join the Music Department in congratulating Department Chair and Professor, Amy C. Beal who has been awarded an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award in the field of concert music for her monograph: Terrible Freedom: The Life and Work of Lucia Dlugoszewski, published by University of California Press. Established in 1967 to honor the memory of composer, critic, commentator and former ASCAP President Deems Taylor, The ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards are made possible by the generous support of the Virgil Thomson Foundation. Virgil Thomson (1896 – 1989) was one of the leading American composers and critics of the 20th century, and a former member of the ASCAP Board of Directors.

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Americo Paredes Prize Article

Please join the Music Department in congratulating Assistant Professor Russell Rodriguez as the 2024 Américo Paredes Prize! The Paredes Prize recognizes exemplary achievements that build upon his cross-disciplinary, socially engaged legacy which recognizes excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies.

Image description: Jay Afrisando, an Asian male artist photographed from his left side.

In Which To Trust

Assistant Professor Jay Afrisando, opened an exhibit at the Institute of Arts from January 12 – March 2, 2024. Where five aurally diverse listeners were invited to interpret sound sources from 32 audiovisual clips. The resulting open captions reflect the listeners’ various bodily conditions and experiences, revealing how the same sound sources are perceived differently by different people. Inviting us to rethink understandings of sound, the artwork questions the superiority– and reality– of so-called ‘normal’ hearing, troubling the idea that there is one accurate aural experience. 

Xylo Aria, founder of Music Production for Women (MPW); photo courtesy of MPW

EmpowHer Sound

As part of Arts Dean Celine’s Parreñas Shimizu’s division wide effort to encourage diversity in the arts, UC Santa Cruz will be hosting EmpowHer Sound, a three hour exploration of a music production for women.  The event was organized by Nicol Hammond, an associate professor of music, in collaboration with Music Production for Women (MPW) an organization started in 2019 that offers classes to women and women-adjacent people who are interested in getting involved in the music industry.

Cover photo of Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense

Of the many iconic figures who’ve come to Kresge Hall, none seem to be remembered as widely or as fondly as Talking Heads. Their 1977 performance and its history is what, in-part, led Jose Reyes-Olivas, the events and facilities general manager of the Quarry Amphitheater, to host a showing of the band’s 1984 concert filmStop Making Sense.


Past Events

An Iliad flyer showcasing the words in yellow, casting the shadow of a woman holding a briefcase on her right.

An Iliad

On May 10th – 12th, 2024 the great Patty Gallagher took the stage, with new music composed and performed by Ben Carson, in Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s AN ILIAD, a telling of the Iliad, a telling of the catastrophe of war; a telling of our ceaseless, compulsive, epic ritual of telling about war. Carson’s music is inspired by the Hellenic, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian music he teaches about in Music 120 and 201. 

Directed by Kirsten Brandt. Stage and costuming by Pamela Rodríguez Montero, lights by David Lee Cuthbert.

Flyer for barn dance at the barn, with a green background, casting two women dancing next to instruments.

Barn Dance at the Barn

Students, faculty, staff, look foward to the music department Barn Dance at the Barn. Where Dr. Tanya Merchant, teaches you the dance steps to our Celtic Music Ensemble that’s directed by director Bill Coulter.

flyer for a hindustani music concert, with an image of Sukhad Manik munde and a student.

Hindustani Music Concert

Friday, April 12, 2024 in the Music Center Recital Hall.

Guests viewed a rare genre of Hindustani music known as Dhrupad.

Featuring Uday Bhawalkar

Flyer for la alegria mariachi, casting a flower Mexican dress, being outlined by a black background.

La Alegria Mariachi

The UCSC Music Department presents La Alegría del Mariachi, a presentation of mariachi folk and popular music. Featured performances by Mariachi Eterno de UCSC and students of the MUS 12 Mariachi Ensemble course, with featured guest artist Dr. Martha E. Gonzalez of the Grammy Award-winning East Los Angeles band Quetzal.

Viva el Mariachi, flier for music 12 mariachi ensemble.

Viva el Mariachi!

Join the MUSC 12 Mariachi Ensemble in an open rehearsal of music and sentiment presenting the music of composers such as Bonifacio Collazo, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Fernando Maldonado, Juan Zaizar and others.

Flyer showcasing Maria Gaspar's, and James Gordon Williams.

Force Of Things:

Gaspar presented her artistic practice as well as a live performance from the acclaimed composer and theorist James Gordon Williams, assistant professor of music at UC Santa Cruz. Williams performed an improvised musical piece using sculptures made from the fragments of the Cook County Jail. This sprawling space of imprisonment covers ninety-six acres on Chicago’s West Side and is one of the largest concentrations of incarcerated people in the country. Long a subject of Gaspar’s work, it was the site of a series of community-engaged art projects from 2012-2016

Flyer for The WorldMaking Aura of Sonic Blackness.

Making Aura of Sonic Blackness

The audience participated in a fluid, free space where Moor Mother and James Gordon Williams recombine, recompose, and revitalize healing sound technologies in real-time.

Flyer for the "The Healing" by James Gordon Williams.

“The Healing”

UC Santa Cruz Faculty Showcase Concert, “TheHealing,” a solo piano concert by composer and UCSC Assistant Professor of Music James Gordon Williams. Featuring original music and improvisations dedicated to the theme of healing through sound.

Flyer of Amahl and the Night visitors.

Amahl and the Night Visitors!

Join director Sheila Willey for a UCSC Family Opera weekend of Amahl and the Night visitors. Accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra and the University Concert Choir.


Annual Festivals

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Pacific Rim Music Festival, cover from the website for 2017. Click link below to visit site.

Pacific Rim Festival 2017

Pacific Rim Festival

The high-profile Pacific Rim Music Festival, sponsored by the Music Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and led by composer and professor Hi Kyung Kim, has taken place six times since 1996. During its twenty-year history, the festival has presented the works of 131 composers, introduced more than a hundred world premieres, brought well-known contemporary performance groups to campus, and promoted the creation of compositions that bridge culturally diverse musical expressions and unite performers and composers from around the world.

April in Santa Cruz artists for 2023, click link below to visit site.

April In Santa Cruz Artists

2023 April In Santa Cruz

This year’s April in Santa Cruz Contemporary Music Festival takes up forces of dedication and imagination featuring wide-ranging musicians: from the San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet to sound artist/composer, Associate Professor, Film & Digital Media Anna Friz; from internationally acclaimed pianist Eric Huebner to the department’s newest faculty member Assistant Professor, Music James Gordon Williams. The UC Santa Cruz Music Department is presenting talented artists of the UC Santa Cruz and Bay Area communities, arriving from dozens of international starting points and traversing even more varied walks of life.  All performances are live, in person, and free to the public.

Artist for April in Santa Cruz 2024, click link below to visit site.

April In Santa Cruz Artists

2024 April In Santa Cruz

The annual April in Santa Cruz Festival (AiSC) returns in 2024 with UC Santa Cruz faculty and graduate students, renowned guest artists, and several visiting Minzu University dance and music faculty and students from Beijing, China. This year’s focus and theme, A Time For Change, is interdisciplinary: concerts and events feature various creative styles, approaches, and include assorted guest collaborations with UCSC performers.

Last modified: Oct 02, 2024