The Arts Blog recommends plenty of art in the region to enjoy!
Scholar reconnects to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis and his homeland through research on San Francisco murals
Mauricio Ernesto Ram穩rez, a postdoctoral scholar in the 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, first walked through Balmy Alley when he was a student at a nearby elementary school in San Franciscos Mission District. The block-long alley contains the most concentrated collection of murals in a city thats a tapestry of murals. The alleys art which first began appearing in the early 1970s has long been about issues relevant to the many Mission residents who trace their roots to Mexico and Central America.
Mauricio Ernesto Ram穩rez, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, is researching San Francisco murals connected to Central America. (Adriana Espinoza)
As a child, Ram穩rez didnt know that in the 80s most of the murals were about U.S. military intervention in Central American wars, including in his familys homeland of El Salvador.
I didnt really know the significance until I was in college, said Ram穩rez, who earned his doctorate in Latin American and Latino studies at 51勛圖窪蹋 Santa Cruz. I became much more aware of the politics and history of the region.
Ram穩rezs interest led him to Malaqu穩as Montoya, a 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis professor emeritus who launched a mural workshop class and was founder of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), the departments Woodland-based art center. He also met Carlos Jackson, an artist who was then a faculty member in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies; and Maceo Montoya, a professor of Chicana/o studies and creative writing at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis.
Ram穩rez has returned to the murals for research on a book tentatively titled Painting Solidarity: U.S.-Central American Murals of San Francisco. The 51勛圖窪蹋 President's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Hispanic-Serving Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship has provided support for that work.
Talk about the murals
Mauricio Ernesto Ram穩rez will give a talk about his research into the Central American murals on May 23 at 4 p.m. Room 157, Everson Hall. The talk, sponsored by Chicana and Chicano studies and art history, is free and open to the public.
Read more about Ram穩rez and his research .
Artists in Residence: Lillian Gordis, harpsichord, with J矇r繫me Hanta簿, viola da gamba
May 4, 12:05 1 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert
The program includes Suite in G Major (Livre III), Sonata in G Major, BWV 1027, and selections from Partita No. 6, BWV 830, Suite in D Minor.
Lara Downes & John McWhorter: Scott Joplin & The Birth of American Music
Friday, May 5, 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall
Chart-topping American pianist Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin through a 21st-century lens, revealing its many layers of genre-blurring subtlety and nuance. Joplin is revered as the King of Ragtime" and acknowledged as a classically-trained composer of concert music whose ambitions were denied in his own time. He was also an innovator who merged traditions and histories to make music at the crossroads of the American future. His story is ready to be retold. Downes is joined by author and cultural commentator John McWhorter for an intimate evening of music and conversation about Scott Joplins story and legacy, his opera Treemonisha, a century of progress, and the contradictions that shape our American life. Together, they revisit the lineage of black music in America as Downes weaves the musical journey through Joplin's powerful music.
Find more information and purchase tickets .
51勛圖窪蹋 Davis Symphony Orchestra: Brazil and Jazz
Saturday, May 6, 7 p.m., Jackson Hall
The program includes Alberto Nepomuceno: Batuque from S矇rie Brasileira, George Gershwin: Concerto in F with Natsuki Fukasawa, piano, and Heitor Villa-Lobos: 唬堯繫娶棗莽 No. 6.
There will be a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. with 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis professors, moderated by Professor of Music Christian Baldini, who is the Barbara K. Jackson Chair in Orchestral Conducting and the Artistic Director and conductor of the 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis Symphony Orchestra. Leopoldo Bernucci is Distinguished Professor of Spanish and the Russell F. and Jean H. Fiddyment Chair in Latin American Studies. Juan Diego D穩az is asssociate professor of music and director of the 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis Hemispheric Institute on the Americas.
Find more information and purchase tickets .
Call of the Wild: Illustrated Edition
Sunday, May 7, 2 p.m., Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center
This multi-media adventure mixes the classic storytelling of Jack London with projected illustrations to tell the story of Buck, the magnificent cross-bred offspring of a St. Bernard and Scottish Collie. Kidnapped from his lavish life on a California estate and sent to work as a sled dog during the great Klondike Gold Rush, Buck fights to survive and becomes the most famous dog in the history of Alaska. The stunning presentation from the acclaimed Austin, Texas-based troupe Theatre Heroes features 180-degree projections featuring classic illustrations and new drawings created by Michael Rae.
Find more information and purchase tickets .
B蘋jam: Music Seeds featuring Carnatic musician Sikkil Gurucharan next week
Tuesday, May 9, 12:05 1:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free, a Shinkoskey noon concert
Leading Carnatic musician and youth ambassador Sikkil Gurucharan presents this concert as an artist in residence at the Davis Humanities Institute (DHI) at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis. Drawing upon both contemporary and classical texts, he will explore the using music. This initiative seeks to broadly create dialogue between the humanities and the sciences, the arts and agriculture, the university and its larger communities.
One cannot cultivate what once started as a seed. Or can they?
Sikkil C. Gurucharan is a leading musician and a youth ambassador of Carnatic Music, and is a Davis Humanities Institute Artist-in-Residence (Spring, 2023). A prime-time artist during the Chennai music season, and a recipient of numerous awardsincluding the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar Award, Kalaimamani, and Tchaikovsky Award for the best musician of the year among othersGurucharan has not only made a mark in the traditional concert paddhati style but also worked to broaden audience appeal by creating collaborative projects with world renowned musicians while retaining the spirit of the art form. In 2015, Gurucharan received a Nehru-Fulbright Excellence Award and was in residence at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis.
Gurucharan was featured on the compilation album (a celebration of the music of Miles Davis), which was nominated for the Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 51st Grammy Awards. The magazine India Today featured him among 35 Game Changers under the age of 35 in India. The Tamil Nadu Government conferred its highest honor of Kalaimamani on Gurucharan in 2020. He has also acted in two Tamil movies: and
Voice students of Zoila Mu簽oz at Pitzer
Wednesday, May 10, 4:30 5:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free
The program includes songs from the Italian Anthology: Caro m穩o ben, Se tu mami, and Tu lo sai; songs by composers: Purcell, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert, Faur矇, and Goffrey OHara; Opera Arias: Batti, Batti, Notte et giorno, and Se vuol ballare by W.A. Mozart, Quel bel sogno di Doretta by Giacomo Puccini and Una voce poco fa by Giacchino Rossini; and songs from musicals: Come to my Garden from Secret Garden and Burn from Hamilton.
Coming Up
Michael Goldberg, solo guitar, next Thursday's concert
May 11, 12:05 1 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free, a Shinkoskey noon concert
The program includes A Fancy, Farewell Fancy, and The Most Sacred Queen Elizabeth, Her Galliard (c. 1610), Tres Apuntes (1959), Fantasie Elegaic, Two Polymetric Studies (1990) and Les soirees DAuteuil
(Ethno)Musicology Forum next week
May 11, 4 5:30 p.m., Room 266, Everson Hall
Shannon Garland is lecturer in Global Arts, Media and Writing Studies at the University of California, Merced. Her research investigates the production of popular music from an ethnographic, transnational perspective, focusing on indie music in South America. It is concerned with types of labor emerging in the music industries, and ties these to affective musical response, social relations, and economic value. Dr. Garlands monograph-in-preparation, For the Love: Indie Music, Labor and Value in Brazil and Beyond, narrates the rise and transformation of the Brazilian indie music industry from 1990 to 2020, exploring the tension between social and aesthetic values created through musical labor and exchange and the need for this labor to be valorized as economic value within the capitalist social order. She is also co-editing Independence in 21st-Century Music Making: Cases from Beyond Anglo-America, with Pedro Roxo and Pedro Nunes. She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.
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Media contact: Karen Nikos-Rose, 530-219-5472/kmnikos@ucdavis.edu