Faculty News and Accomplishments

Six of UC Santa Barbara Corwin Chair of Composition Dr. João Pedro Oliveira’s works have recently been recognized internationally in competitions such as the Chicago Composers’ Consortium Composition Competition (La Mer Emeraude), Sound Silence Thought International Composition Competition (N’vi’ah), She Lives Budapest Prize International Composition Competition (Mosaic), “New Vision” Composition Competition (Full Moon), the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival (Tesseract), and Grand Prize in the Double Bass and Electronic Media category for the 2020 International Society of Bassists David Walter Composition Competition for the piece Bass on Fire.

During the summer, Professor of Horn Dr. Steven Gross was interviewed on Zoom as part of a public Celebrity Hornist Series featuring internationally prominent horn players. The interview was hosted by Director Charles “Skip” Snead of the School of Music at the University of Alabama. Other interviewees included British soloists Michael Thompson and Richard Watkins; former Chicago Symphony member Gail Williams, now at Northwestern University; Jeff Nelson, past member of the Canadian Brass, currently at Indiana University; and David Ohanian, previous member of the Boston Symphony, Empire Brass, and Canadian Brass. An interview with Dr. Gross was also featured on UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts website for “Focus on Faculty.”

Senior Continuing Lecturer Dr. Charles Asche was awarded the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT) Lifetime Achievement Award for 2020. With over 900 members, the CAPMT is the California state affiliate of the Music Teachers National Association, one of the largest music teacher associations in the United States. The CAPMT’s Lifetime Achievement Award is presented each year to a musician who has distinguished themselves in the fields of performing, teaching, and service to the profession. Past winners of the award include renowned mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and From the Top host Christopher O’Riley.

The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UC Santa Barbara released a new software app for sound granulation: EmissionControl2 for MacOSX, Linux, and Windows. EmissionControl2 is a granular sound synthesizer. Granular synthesis is one of the most important methods of sound design, the theory of which is described in the book Microsound (Curtis Roads, 2001, MIT Press). The new app was developed by a team consisting of Professor Curtis Roads acting as project manager, with software developers Jack Kilgore and Rodney DuPlessis. DuPlessis is a PhD student in Music Composition at UC Santa Barbara and is also pursuing a Master of Science degree in Media Arts and Technology.

Professor Jennifer Kloetzel was featured on the Performance Today radio program on September 28, 2020. Hosted by Fred Child, Performance Today is one of the most popular classical music radio programs in the country, broadcast to roughly 1.2 million listeners each week. The September 28th program featured a recording from February 15, 2020 of the first movement of Kloetzel’s solo performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B.191 with the Lexington Symphony, conducted by Jonathan McPhee. On October 11, 2020, Kloetzel also performed a virtual concert, titled “Bach Inspired,” presented by the Gold Coast Chamber Players on their Bach Shorts series.

Lecturer Dr. Andrew Tholl was named the winner of the 2020 Luigi Nono International Composition Award for his piece every moment is another opportunity to shine. Organized by the Amici per la Musica di Venaria Reale, the adjudicators for the seventh edition of the competition included Andrea Portera (Italy), Alissa Firsova (England/Russia), and Anna Pidgorna (Ukraine/Canada). The 2020 competition saw applicants from 20 different countries, including Italy, China, Egypt, and more. Commissioned in 2017 by Grammy-nominated, Los Angeles-based new music collective wild Up (of which Tholl is also a member), every moment is another opportunity to shine is scored for 13 solo strings (4.3.3.2.1).

Associate Professor of Voice Dr. Isabel Bayrakdarian collaborated with the Canadian rock band Glass Tiger on the band’s first-ever Christmas album, Songs For A Winter’s Night. For the release, Bayrakdarian joined fellow Canadian guest artists singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, violinist Natalie MacMaster, and pop vocalist Roch Voisine, as well as the Steve Sidwell Orchestra. The album includes ten original songs written by Glass Tiger, including “An Every Day Wish,” which features Bayrakdarian as soloist. Winner of five Juno awards and five Canadian Classic awards, Grammy-nominated Glass Tiger has shared the stage and recorded with some of the world’s leading acts, including Rod Stewart and Tina Turner.

Lecturer of Orchestral Conducting Dr. Maxim Kuzin served as Chair of the Instrumental Division for the 13th edition of the Colibri International Arts Competition for Young Performers, which is organized by the Unity in Diversity Arts Foundation (UIDARTS) with the support of the City of West Hollywood. The competition is held annually and consists of four individual competitions—Instrumental, Vocal, Dance, and Visual Art—and runs from September to December. The event usually takes place in-person in West Hollywood and involves over 600 competitors between the ages of 4 and 20. Even though the 2020 edition was virtual, the Instrumental Division received over 100 applications, from all over the world.

Assistant Teaching Professor of Music Composition Dr. Sarah Gibson and fellow pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff—members of the new music piano duo HOCKET—wrapped their #What2020SoundsLike project at the end of October 2020. In June 2020, the Los Angelesbased duo had set out to commission 50 composers to write miniatures for piano duo as a response to the challenges of 2020. The duo recorded each of the pieces and posted them to HOCKET’s YouTube and social media channels. I Care If You Listen (ICIYL), one of the foremost contemporary classical music blogs and a program of the American Composers Forum (ACF), recently featured a review of HOCKET’s #What2020SoundsLike.

Professor Robert Koenig was featured on the Santa Barbara Symphony’s Beethoven @ 250 Concert on November 21, 2020. The event was streamed live from the Music Academy of the West as part of the Santa Barbara Symphony’s 2020/2021 digital concert season. The chamber music program featured highlights from Beethoven’s extensive repertoire. Koenig joined Santa Barbara Symphony’s concertmaster, violinist Jessica Guideri, for the “Allegro” from the Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 24 “Spring;” soprano Julia Metzler for Marzelline’s aria from Fidelio; and Santa Barbara Symphony clarinetist Juan Gallegos and principal cellist Trevor Handy for the “Theme and Variations” from the Trio, Op. 11 for Clarinet, Cello and Piano.

Lecturer of Violin Ertan Torgul was featured as a Guest Teaching Artist for The REALLY Big Class, an online masterclass series, on December 3, 2020. Torgul worked virtually with students from Austria, the UK, North Carolina, and Texas, playing music of Bach, Mendelssohn, and Lalo. The REALLY Big Class was created to provide inspiration, motivation, and community for violinists worldwide during the COVID-19 lockdown. The first session of the series ran from April to July 2020 with guest teaching artists from the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the United States, and over 100 student performers from around the world, ranging in age from 11 to adults.

Continuing Lecturer Dr. Jon Nathan performed in Opera Santa Barbara and the Lobero Theatre’s “Staying Home for Christmas” holiday concert, which was recorded live at the Lobero Theatre and streamed online from December 23-26, 2020. Hosted by Opera Santa Barbara Artistic and General Director Kostis Protopapas and Lobero Theatre Executive Director David Asbell, the free event featured Santa Barbara artists. Dr. Nathan led a jazz quartet with Santa Barbara City College’s Jim Mooy (trumpet), Santino Tarafella (bass), and Andy Langham (piano). Dr. Nathan arranged Jingle Bells and God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen for the quartet, and the group also played a Gospel-style arrangement of Silent Night.