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 Charleston, South Carolina. The performers were flutist John Samuel Roper and percussionist Michael Haldeman and they are interested in commissioning a new work from Kevork in the near future.

On June 18th of this year the same piece was performed by flutist Marc Grauwels and percussionist Sarah Mouradoglou at the “Festival Evian” in France.

In August, 2011 Kevork will present a paper about composer Olivier Messiaen’s piece Quartet for the End of Time in Baden-Baden, Germany at the “Symposium on Art and Science” hosted by the “International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics”. At this conference Kevork will also give a lecture-recital related to his dissertation topic of music polystylism, eclecticism and transnationalism.”

Professor Juliana Gondek has shared some news about some of her students’ activities (and alumni) this summer:

“Here’s some summer news about some of my students:

UCLA Voice alumna Khori Dastoor is singing the role of “Mabel” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR.
This production is being conducted by UCLA alumnus Gary Busby. Following these performances, she travels to Switzerland to sing the title role in “Lucia di Lammermoor” with Lucerne Opera.

UCLA Voice alumna Peabody Southwell is singing two roles at Central City Opera Festival in Colorado this summer: Zita in Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” and Anna 1 in Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins”

UCLA Voice alumna Jacqueline Bezek recently performed the role of Zerlina in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” with Seattle Opera’s Young Artists in a new production directed by Peter Kazaras.

UCLA Voice alumna Rebecca Sjowall performed as “The Hollywood Starlet” with the band Sparks in “The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman” at the Ford Amphitheater for the Los Angeles Film Festival.

UCLA Voice alumna Angel Blue is reprising her performances as Clara in “Porgy and Bess” with San Francisco Opera.

UCLA Extension student Jesus Leon is singing the role of Cavaradossi in Puccini’s “Tosca” on tour in England.

Several UCLA Voice students – alumni, current, and incoming students – are studying and performing at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival this year. Mezzos Rachel Evans and Rachel Rubinstein, baritones Terrence Jegaraj and Ben Lowe, and soprano Susanna Lucarelli are performing in productions of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” and Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi”.

2011 UCLA MM graduate, mezzo Lauren Edwards, is in Baden, Austria (near Vienna) this summer, attending the Schubert Institute’s German Lieder Master Classes. Lauren was selected as one of only 15 singers worldwide to participate in this prestigious program. She and her collaborator, UCLA pianist Christopher Lade, have prepared more than 25 new pieces of music to perform in classes led by renowned art song interpreters, incl. Elly Ameling, Irwin Gage, Roger Vignoles, and Barbara Bonney. ”

Congratulations and good luck to all of you in your summer pursuits!

Here’s some information from Music Department Composistion Chair David Lefkowitz on a recently-released CD:

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 without ever repeating itself. These faces often exist in tension with one another, or, like an optical illusion, one face will seem all but invisible, until suddenly the image “flips” and our perception utterly changes. The old hag is suddenly seen as a young beauty, the vase is suddenly a pair of people kissing, and the Necker Cube, pointing down and to the left, suddenly points up and to the right.

The music of this CD, exploring inherent oppositions, covers nearly 25 years of compositions, and ranges from solo work through quartets and quintets.

http://www.albanyrecords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AR&Product_Code=TROY1247

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 Dreams” for arpeggione and guitar, by Eric Pham, and three of my own songs performed with UCLA Musicology graduate-student Alex Grabarchuk. The recording of Volume One of my PopArt song project (texts by Darwin, Karl Marx, Beatrice Wood, Black Elk, etc.) now complete, will be in production, freeing me up to continue work on volume two. Aside from dabbing my toes in pristine mountain lakes, that’s about it.”

You can also read more about the bowed guitar on previous posts in this blog.

For more about the L.A. Guitar Festival, go to: www.laguitarfestival.com.

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 of July concert with the Trio in Ancona, Italy kicks off a European tour with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra featuring vocalist/guitarist John Pizzarelli in tribute to Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. The tour will include stops in Villingen-Schwenningen (July 7), the North Sea Jazz Fest (July 8)- featuring Dutch vocal star Trijntje Oosterhuis, The Gran Canaries Jazz Festival (July 9-10), Cordoba Guitarra Festival (July 11) and the Festival Da Jazz in St. Moritz (July 13.)

On July 24-30 Tamir Hendelman will travel to Port Townsend, Washington’s CENTRUM JAZZ WORKSHOP for a week of workshops and concerts with the Jeff Hamilton Trio and fellow faculty such as Paquito D’Rivera, John Clayton and more.

Tamir returns to Southern California in August for concerts with a quartet led by brilliant guitarist Graham Dechter and the world-class rhythm section of John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton. They will then record Graham’s second CD, which will also feature a half dozen arrangements Tamir collaborated on with Graham.

Finally, Tamir is conducting a series of workshops on the Great American Songbook in Southern California- for musicians, students and music fans- centered around improvisation, accompaniment and arranging.

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 and for his dissertation–thanks to two HASoM SOF grants!

Also, in August, he’ll be performing his own songs as well as those of other composers with biographic and artistic works that speak to queer experience at the second installation of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History in the SoHo district of NYC (http://www.queermuseum.com/home/), giving a lecture-recital on non-traditional sexuality in musical cultures of the not-so-recent history.

All of this will be happening while he is continuing to balance work on his dissertation and his increasing collaboration with theater and performance artists in SF. In October, he will very likely perform with Original SF Cockette member Rumi Missabu in NYC with a hand-picked ensemble, in connection with retrospectives at Lincoln Center as Cockettes material is archived at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. A very busy summer and early fall indeed!

Thanks, Jeremy–it looks like a fun summer!

All Photographs by Hand Creative Media

Bryce Nicastro has sent in this update on his recent activities and has shared the fun posters created for this production:

I’ve spent this summer doing what I love and saving up money by utilizing my musical abilities in the real world. For the past year I’ve been director of music for a youth arts conservatory, California Artist’s Academy. We’re a company focused, not so much on production value, but on performance value. We try and instill a heavy classical and technical mindset for our students along with a vast appreciation for the arts. For our end-of-the-semester performance we tackled the renowned Into the Woods by Steven Sondheim. With a cast ranging from elementary to mid-high school, we had an astonishing and quite impressive outcome. I gained valuable teaching experience and a wonderful relationship with my students. I was proud to be a part of this amazing production.

Musically directing Into the Woods opened up so many new doors in my career. After every show I would have other youth directors approach me and compliment my skills and obvious connection with the kids. I was actually asked for my business card ha! The director was so pleased with the result that she offered me a position working private lessons and more classes to teach next semester. Also, after hearing the work I did on sound effects for Into the Woods, a high school director hired me to be sound director of a competitive performance traveling to Scotland for the Edinburgh International Festival this summer.

If you want to see more about our conservatory, you can view our website at www.CaaThePointe.com