On October 29, 2011 Kevork Andonian’s arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango” was performed by the Los Angeles Dream Orchestra at Zipper Hall as part of their debut concert.  The orchestra was founded by Daniel Suk who is also a Doctoral Candidate at HASOM. UCLA voice professor Vladimir Chernov and former UCLA vocal student Erin Wood [...]

Joshua Fishbein, a 2nd-year PhD student in music composition at UCLA, has recently won the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Contest of the American Choral Directors Association. This contest is an opportunity for young composers to showcase their talents and have their work presented at an ACDA conference. Selected nationally, Fishbein’s work will be [...]

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times
For those who missed the great article in the Los Angeles Times about Prof. Cheng’s recent concert:
The late composer Luciano Berio called his small but potent book of Harvard lectures “Remembering the Future.” And that seemingly paradoxical phrase informed Gloria Cheng’s nearly all-British Piano Spheres program Tuesday night at the [...]

Unseen Secrets, a choral work by composition PhD student Joshua Fishbein, was recently performed during the Awards Banquet at Chorus America’s National Conference in San Francisco. Performed and commissioned by the Oakland-based chorus WomenSing, Unseen Secrets was composed under the mentorship of acclaimed composer Libby Larsen as part of WomenSing’s Youth-Inspiring-Youth Composition Competition. WomenSing, [...]

Pablo Hopenhayn, a graduate student pursuing an interdisciplinary in the School of the Arts and Architecture, has shared news of his required final project, which is the creation of a company which brings together all of the things he learned in my major: classical and jazz composition, violin performance, sound engineering and music industry. [...]

Kevork Andonian, Music graduate student in composition (whom we have blogged about several times) sent us the following email about his summer activities–glad you are keeping busy, Kevork!
“Kevork Andonian, UCLA PhD Candidate in Music Composition, had his composition for flute and marimba entitled A Longing For Joy performed at this year’s “Piccolo Spoleto Festival” in [...]

Here’s some information from Music Department Composistion Chair David Lefkowitz on a recently-released CD:
David S. Lefkowitz: Music of Contradictions
For much of my career as a composer, I have enjoyed creating music with different-often contradictory-faces: atonal yet tonal, dissonant yet consonant, fast yet slow, granular and intricate yet long-lined and melodic, repeating basic patterns [...]

Peter Yates, professor of guitar in the Music Department, sent in this short note about his summer activities:
“My summer begins with performances on bowed guitar (arpeggione) at the Los Angeles Guitar Festival, and then moves on to various recording projects. These include “Four Bagatelles” for two guitars by UCLA MFA alumnus Buzz Gravelle, “Five Hobo [...]

We have received an interesting update from Tamir Hendelman, who also appears to have an exciting summer planned. After another exciting year at UCLA, this June he will be recording his fourth CD with the Jeff Hamilton Trio, a follow-up to last fall’s Symbiosis, which topped the Jazzweek charts.
Also on the summer schedule:
A 4th [...]

We have heard from Musicologh Ph.D. Student Jeremy Mikush about his fun and wide-ranging summer activities. Here is a quick blog about what he is doing this summer:
Jeremy Mikush, a Ph.D. candidate in the Musicology Department, has been in France since early June practicing his French and doing research in Paris for an article [...]