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W. Terrence Spiller Piano Recital
Friday, Jan. 10, 2025
7:30 p.m. Spanos Theatre
Professor Emeritus W. Terrence Spiller will perform a variety of repertoire ranging from the late-18th century into the mid-1920s, including Béla Bartók’s demanding Piano Sonata, Franz Schubert’s legendary Wanderer Fantasy, Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Sonata in D Major,
Claude Debussy’s “Children’s Corner,” and Franz Liszt's "Soirées de Vienne No. 6" based on works by Schubert.
Tickets ($22 general, $12 students)
Sungmin Shin Concert: Generation One - Music of Immigration
Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025
11:10 a.m., Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Composer and performer Sungmin Shin explores a wide range of styles, genres and idioms, which is a culmination of the immigrant experience. The core theme of the program deals with identity and authenticity as an Asian American performing artist living in the U.S. through the lens of the guitar. “Generation One” consists of all newly composed music for the solo classical and electric guitar. This genre bending program lives without borders and draws from Brahms to Debussy, King Crimson to Steve Reich, Jobim to Villa-Lobos, Seo Taiji to Stevie Wonder, and more.
Free admission
Brynn Albanese: Music is Medicine — Good Vibrations
Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025
11:10 a.m., Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Brynn Albanese, violinist and certified music practitioner and end of life doula, will explore the power of sound and vibrations in the form of music and how it dramatically affects the medical industry as a whole. She will also delve into the reasons why music makes us feel the way we do and discover how our own intuition plays a vital role in this work, plus the differences between playing music as performance versus music as a service.
Free admission
Bach Week
Jan. 23-25, 2025
This year’s Bach Week theme is “Magnificat.” The song of Mary, from the Gospel of Luke, this text has held an important place in music history and has been set by thousands of composers. The week will include vocal and instrumental master classes, and an exciting Akademie lecture by Music Department Chair Alicia M. Doyle. Tesserae Baroque will present the music of Buxtehude and his contemporaries on period instruments, and the finale concert will feature Antonio Vivaldi’s “Magnificat in G Minor,” as well as the famous “Magnificat in D Major” by J.S. Bach. Two performances! Read more below.
Instrumental Master Class and Continuo Workshop
Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025
11:10 a.m.-1 p.m., Cal Poly Davidson Music Center, Room 218
For the first half, guest artists Leif Woodward, cello, and Anna Washburn, violin, will coach Cal Poly students in instrumental repertoire from the Baroque era, with a focus on historically informed performance. During the second half, the guest artists will coach students in effective continuo playing, which is the foundation of all Baroque music.
Free admission
Vocal Master Class
Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025
3:10 p.m., Cal Poly Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Guest artist John Buffett will coach several Cal Poly voice students in repertoire from the Baroque era.
Free admission
Akademie Lecture-Demonstration: Music for the Golden Hour
Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025
7:30 p.m., Cal Poly Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Music Department Chair Alicia M. Doyle will present a lecture titled "Music for the Golden Hour" which will explore the evolution of service music for Vespers from chant to J.S. Bach. Guest performers will demonstrate the lecture concepts.
Free admission
Chamber Concert: Buxtehude — The Italian Influence in Northern Germany
Friday, Jan. 24, 2025
7:30 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of San Luis Obispo
Bach Week welcomes back the world-class musicians of Tesserae Baroque! A period instrument ensemble specializing in repertoire of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The music of Dietrich Buxtehude was a profound influence on Bach’s style. In this program, Tesserae and festival bass John Buffett will explore works by Buxtehude and his contemporaries alongside selected early Italian works — which in turn had a profound influence on the early German style. Featuring vocal cantatas alongside virtuosic instrumental works, this program traces the thread between the early Baroque style and the music of J.S. Bach.
Members of Tesserae Baroque:
- Anna Washburn, baroque violin
- Leif Woodward, baroque cello
- Aaron Westman, baroque violin
- Alexandra Opsahl, recorder
- Ian Pritchard, harpsichord
Tickets ($22 general, $12 students)
Special ticket price for both Jan. 24 and 25 concerts ($30 general, $15 students)
Finale Concert: Magnificat
Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025
2 and 7:30 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of San Luis Obispo
Members of Cal Poly’s Chamber Choir, Symphony and faculty will join with guest artists to perform works based on the Magnificat text, a canticle from the traditional Vespers service that shares the song of Mary from the Gospel of Luke.
Tickets ($22 general, $12 students)
Special ticket price for both Jan. 24 and 25 concerts ($30 general, $15 students)
Andrew A. Watts: AI, Glitch and Composing Video
Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025
7:30 p.m., Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Join composer Andrew A. Watts for a talk on the creative process in recent video work and other topics including data sonification, glitch and multimedia applications of artificial intelligence (AI).
Watts has composed chamber, symphonic, multimedia, and electro-acoustic works. His compositions have premiered at world-renowned venues such as Burning Man, Ravinia, Boston's Jordan Hall, Darmstadt festival in German, and Oxford's Holywell Music Room.
He has written for many of the top new music groups including Dal Niente, Ekmeles, Proton Bern, Distractfold, RAGE Thormbones, Splinter Reeds, Quince, and Line Upon Line. Watts recently premiered an open instrumentation quartet, "A Strobe Fractures Obsidian Night," which utilizes AI generated video and multichannel audio.
He completed his D.M.A. in composition at Stanford University, earned his master's degree with distinction from the University of Oxford, and his bachelor's with academic honors from the New England Conservatory. He has been a featured composer at the MATA Festival, impuls Academy, Rainy Days Festival, Delian Academy, Young Composers Meeting, Cheltenham Music Festival, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Composit Festival, Ostrava Days Institute, highSCORE Festival, Wellesley Composers Conference, Etchings Festival, Fresh Inc. Festival, New Music on the Point, and Atlantic Music Festival. Watts is currently on the music composition faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies.
Free admission
Brynn Albanese: Music is Medicine — Good Vibrations
Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025
11:10 a.m., Davidson Music Center, Room 218
Brynn Albanese, violinist and certified music practitioner and end of life doula, will explore the power of sound and vibrations in the form of music and how it dramatically affects the medical industry as a whole. She will also delve into the reasons why music makes us feel the way we do and discover how our own intuition plays a vital role in this work, plus the differences between playing music as performance versus music as a service.
Free admission
Bennardo-Larson Duo Concert
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
7:30 p.m., Davidson Music Center, Room 218
The Bennardo-Larson Duo is a contemporary classical duo committed to the performance of forward-thinking works for violin and piano. Comprised of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Karl Larson, piano, the duo is dedicated to aesthetically diverse programming that illuminates new repertoire for their instrumentation alongside intrepid works from the past. The Bennardo-Larson Duo was formed in 2016 when they undertook the task of learning and performing Charles Ives’s complete works for violin and piano, which they presented on their annual ‘Ives of March’ concerts from 2017-19.
Their performance at Cal Poly will focus on contemporary performance techniques and recent collaborations with living composers.
Free admission
Mivos Quartet
Thursday, April 17, 2025
7:30 p.m., Perfoming Arts Center Pavilion
(6 p.m. pre-concert talk
)
Free admission
W. Terrence Spiller: All-Chopin Piano Recital
Friday, April 25, 2025
7:30 p.m. Performing Arts Center Pavilion
Music Professor Emeritus W. Terrence Spiller will explore a broad swath of Frédéric Chopin's works, including dances, a nocturne and concluding with his extraordinary set of Preludes, Op. 28.
- Tres Valses brillante, Op. 34
- Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57
- Nocturne in F-sharp Minor, Op. 48 No.2
- Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, Op. 44
Tickets ($22 general, $12 students)