This spring is filled with live events from the UC Riverside Department of Music. The series will showcase the talents of UCR students and feature everything from Dvořák’s popular “New World Symphony” to chorale music from Japan and West Africa. Read more below and see the full line-up on the UCR events page.

Jazz

The UCR Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo will be performing at the Culver Center of the Arts in a free public concert on Thursday, May 29. The jazz combo will begin the evening with an “eclectic set of music originally written by artists varying from Crosby, Stills, and Nash to George Gershwin to James Brown,” said Director Josh Welchez. The jazz ensemble will take the stage after the intermission and play a “diverse set of compositions by composers ranging from Herbie Hancock to the 90s band Soundgarden.”

The concert will feature graduating seniors who programed the entire concert. “For this concert, we will be featuring two student-written arrangements and one arrangement by an alumnus,” Welchez said. “This has become a tradition that started before the pandemic and that the students look forward to each year.” 

UCR Orchestra

On Saturday, May 31 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, June 1 at 3 p.m. at the University Theatre on the UC Riverside campus the UCR Orchestra under the baton of Ruth Charloff will take audiences on a trip through time and place from the villages of Norway, the wild and mythic islands off the coast of Scotland, the United States of the 19th century, and into deep space.

The first half of the concert will feature Felix Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture,” which he was inspired to write while visiting an ancient cave open to the North Sea and all its storms. Edvard Grieg tapped into his country’s lively folk tradition with “Norwegian Dances.” The “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres),” composed in 2014 by American composer Missy Mazzoli, “uses the orchestra, twelve harmonicas, gentle other-worldly dissonances, and slow pulsations of consonance to transport us into a gorgeous, dramatic ambience of outer space,” Charloff said.

After an intermission, the orchestra will perform Dvořák’s most popular work, “New World Symphony.” It was composed during his own travels in the United States during the 1890s. It has a famous solo played on the English horn. “Helen Gomez, the graduating senior who’s been our principal oboist for four years, will be featured,” Charloff said.

UCR Wind Ensemble

Join the UC Riverside Wind Ensemble on Monday, June 2 at 7 p.m., for its annual Spring Concert at the Culver Center of the Arts. It is free and open to the public. Under the direction of Armando Dueñas, the ensemble will perform “Olympiada” by Samuel Hazo, “Life Eternal” by Rosanno Galante, “Chester” by William Schuman, “The Witch and the Saint” by Steven Reineke, and “Hungarian March” from the opera “The Damnation of Faust” by Hector Berlioz.

The concert will be the world premiere of “The Last Star” by student composer and band manager Christopher Shimoon. Student conductor Sarah Howick selected “Life Eternal,” which will be dedicated to her late grandmother who passed earlier in the year.

UCR CHOIRS: Chamber Singers & Chorale

On Wednesday, June 4, at 8 p.m., Director Ruth Charloff will lead the UCR Chamber Singers & Chorale in a concert titled “Songs of Nature (and Us).” Charloff said the evening will evoke the “wonder and longing with which we wish to be one with nature, the metaphors we draw from nature for our relationships and much else. 

The audience will hear songs from around the world, such as a Japanese children’s song, an Afro-Cuban song rooted in the Yoruba religion of West Africa, African American spirituals, music by Monteverdi, Brahms, Lauridsen, Frank Loesser, Joni Mitchell, and much more.  Charloff said of her choral students, “We have a lot of talented people and are having a great time preparing this wide variety of music.”