If the American Dream includes the hope of a better life in a promised land, then the story we tell must also acknowledge that the dream has not always been equally available to all Americans. This concert gives us both sentiments of this “American Story.”

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Choruses of UC Davis: "Sorrow and Joy: An American Story"

Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

This concert features the Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen, who has frequently collaborated with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, in a new work by Aida Shirazi. Since receiving her doctorate in music composition from UC Davis in 2021, Shirazi has been gaining attention far and wide for her acoustic and electro-acoustic music, which a New York Times music critic described as “unfolding with deliberation.” In Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony the audience will enjoy the composer’s Slavonic spirit in an energetic and varied musical landscape.

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra: "Musical Landscapes"

Concert Bands of UC Davis

UC Davis’s own Jazz Big Bands present songs from the Great American Songbook as well as a few contemporary works and sometimes feature student vocalists too. Tunes by Chick Corea, Here Hancock, and many others are often presented.

Jazz Big Bands (at the Pitzer Center)

Ann E. Pitzer Center

Jazz Big Bands at the Pitzer Center

Emmet Cohen’s 2022 sold-out run in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre was nothing short of electric. So electric, in fact, that Cohen returns just one year later, this time “plugged in” to a Hammond B-3 with his virtuosic, soulful organ trio. Whatever instrument he’s playing, Cohen has a unique ability to connect with audiences through his harmonically sophisticated, joyful and open-hearted takes on great tunes. For Cohen playing jazz is “about communicating the deepest levels of humanity and individuality; it’s essentially about connections.”

Emmet Cohen Organ Trio

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

The Auburn Symphony presents highlights from two of Disney’s most extraordinary and groundbreaking animated features, Fantasia and its sequel Fantasia 2000 in concert live to film.

Conducted by Ryan Murray, scenes from each of the two iconic films will be projected in high definition on a large screen above the orchestra as they perform classical selections including Beethoven’s “The Pastoral Symphony”, Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, Respighi’s “Pines of Rome”, and Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, among others.

Disney's Fantasia

Collaboration with the next generation of classical artists has been a keystone of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s San Francisco Symphony tenure. For this return engagement, the Symphony is led by young Polish conductor Marta Gardolińksa, a Dudamel fellow who has twice led the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. The program features a little-heard but delightfully energetic overture by Polish composer Bacewicz, Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” symphony inspired by the composers first visit to Britain and “new cello genius” (Le Figaro) Pablo Ferrández performing Elgar’s contemplative cello concerto.

San Francisco Symphony

With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, David Sedaris has become one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that Sedaris is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today. His bestselling books include Barrel Fever, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice and Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. Calypso, his 2018 collection of essays, is a  New York Times best-seller, and a Washington Post  Best Book of the Year.

An Evening with David Sedaris

A concert featuring several rising-star conductors, each taking the podium to conduct the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and soloists in operatic repertoire. This concert is the apex of three days of intensive rehearsals and workshops with renowned conductors and coaches in opera.

Program and vocal soloists to be announced!

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and the International Conductors Guild

From her debut album to her 2021 performance at the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics, Hiromi has electrified audiences and earned the deep respect of jazz icons like Ahmad Jamal, Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke. Her live performances are legendary for their energy and jaw-dropping improvisation. For this Mondavi Center debut she’ll be working her new quartet Sonicwonder, whose new album is forthcoming in fall 2023.

Hiromi's Sonicwonder

Dance Theatre of Harlem has achieved unprecedented success, bringing innovative and bold new forms of artistic expression to audiences around the world. The 18-member, multi-ethnic company performs a forward-thinking repertoire that includes treasured classics, neoclassical works by George Balanchine and new artistic director Robert Garland, as well as innovative contemporary works that use the language of ballet to celebrate Arthur Mitchell’s belief that ballet belongs to everyone.

Dance Theatre of Harlem

A tireless researcher into early music, he interprets and performs the repertory both as a gambist and a conductor. This program, featuring his acclaimed ensemble Hespèrion XXI, captures the inventiveness of the early Baroque era, including works by Frescobaldi, Kapsberger, de’ Cavalieri, Falconiero and more. As the critic Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times, Savall’s vast concert and recording career can be described as “not simply a matter of revival, but of imaginative reanimation.”

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI

Experience the exciting Afro-Brazilian musical traditions, with master drummer and candomblé player Jorge Alabê. Friends of Alabê’s and the UC Davis Samba School will join together under his direction for this concert. For more than two decades, Alabê gave worldwide tours with Samba groups he directed, including Oba Oba. Alabê is a renowned teacher and innovator, and now directs Grupo Samba Rio in San Francisco.

Jorge Alabê and Friends (at the Pitzer Center)

Formed by Sir Neville Marriner in 1958 the orchestra, now led by Joshua Bell, has gained an enviable international reputation for its distinctive, polished and refined sound. This program features Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, a true romantic masterpiece, and Brahms’s uplifting second symphony.

Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

The Triplets of Belleville  tells the story of a Tour de France cyclist who is kidnapped by mysterious, square-shouldered henchmen and spirited across the ocean to the teeming metropolis of Belleville. But the true star of the animated film is the hot jazz score written by Canadian composer Charest

Triplets of Belleville

For two decades, this band hailing from County Waterford has been entertaining audiences internationally with its breathtaking vocals in Irish and English and virtuoso performances on flute, tin whistle, button accordion and bouzouki. Irish Music Magazine rightly praises that Danú “stirs the blood and lifts the heart.”

Danú

In a program of music written entirely by living composers, the choruses at UC Davis perform works ideal for intimate concert venues such as the Pitzer Center. The repertoire incorporates many different choral traditions, including American Spirituals (including The Storm is Passing Over arranged by Barbara Baker), Venezuelan folk songs (La Paloma by Cristian Grases), Filipino or Visayan folk songs (Rosas Pandan, arranged by George Hernandez), and modern choral harmonies (as in Marques Garrett’s My Heart Be Brave).

Choruses of UC Davis: “Music of the Living” at the Pitzer Center

Taking care to play only that which says something, and leaving space for listeners to savor what has been said, his bands unite beauty and emotional intensity in their playing and improvisation. His two Mondavi Center appearances have been spiritual moments for many audience members, a very intentional effect. “For me,” he says, “playing the piano is very similar to a meditation or prayer.”

Tord Gustavsen Trio

The wholly original style of founders Paulo and Rodrigo Pederneiras joins modern movement with the complexity of Afro- Brazilian dance, captivating audiences with stunning physicality, dynamic staging and the wonders of Brazilian rhythms. The large, spirited ensemble presents two recent pieces in this return Mondavi Center appearance

Grupo Corpo

A thunderclap which begins a piano concerto. A symphony anxiously written over 21 years. A first performance of a new work commissioned by the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra by an “interdisciplinary artist … not constrained to logic and reason.” These are the ‘new frontiers’ the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra will explore in this program.

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra: "New Frontiers"

UC Davis’s own Jazz Big Bands present songs from the Great American Songbook as well as a few contemporary works and sometimes feature student vocalists too. Tunes by Chick Corey, Herbie Hancock, and many others are often presented.

Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music educates and trains exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. Each year, Curtis on Tour shines a light on the talented students, faculty and alumni of the esteemed school. This year’s tour features a string sextet featuring three rising stars and Curtis graduates playing the music of Strauss, Berg and Brahms as well as a newly commissioned work for the tour.

Curtis on Tour is the Nina von Maltzahn global touring initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music.

Curtis on Tour Curtis Sextet

Here On Earth features musical depictions of our planet earth, its evolution, and the lives of its inhabitants, expressed through music that spans centuries, from Haydn’s Sunrise Quartet to Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde (composed in 1923) and Clarice Assad’s A World Of Change, newly commissioned in 2023. The concert begins with Jake Heggie’s Earthrise, reflecting on the fragility of our tiny blue planet from the perspective of the iconic photograph taken from the surface of the moon during the 1968 Apollo 8 landing. Traveling through time and space, the program telescopes in to celebrate the beauties of the natural world, and explore our relationship to this changing earth that is our home.

Lara Downes and The Miró Quartet

Marsalis, the NEA Jazz Master, Grammy Award winner and Tony Award nominee, is equally at home performing concertos with symphony orchestras and sitting in with members of the Grateful Dead, but the core of his musical universe remains the Branford Marsalis Quartet. The celebrated ensemble is revered for its uncompromising interpretation of a kaleidoscopic range of both original compositions and jazz and popular classics. John Zeugner captured the impact of the Quartet in live performance in a recent concert review, calling it “casually confident, professional, cerebral, and supercharged with energy. The Branford Marsalis Quartet…was all of those adjectives and more.”

Branford Marsalis Quartet

Described by Abraham as a “post-modern gumbo” of movement exploration, the company is grounded and galvanized by Black culture and history. An Untitled Love draws from the catalogue of Grammy Award-winning R&B legend D’Angelo and pays homage to the complexities of self-love and Black love, while serving as a thumping mixtape celebrating our culture, family and community

A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Straight out of Minneapolis, Grammy-nominated American guitarist, bassist, songwriter, podcast-host, and producer Cory Wong positioned himself as music’s answer to motivational speakers like Tony Robbins since emerging in 2011. Head-spinning rhythm-guitar wizardry, technical ebullience, laugh-out-loud jokes, and radiance on stage established him as both a sought-after collaborator and celebrated solo artist alike

Cory Wong featuring Monica Martin

No less an authority than David Sedaris calls Fran Lebowitz “the gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humor. Now and forever.” Her essays and interviews offer her acerbic views on current events and the media as well as pet peeves including tourists, baggage-claim areas, after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, children who speak French or anyone who is unduly tan. Lebowitz returns after a raucous 2022 appearance that brought a little bit of New York City to Yolo County. The audience yelled out questions, which Lebowitz riffed on, dismissed, deflected and occasionally answered with quick wit and panache.

An Evening with Fran Lebowitz

Lakecia Benjamin was voted 2020 Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Star Alto Saxophonist and Up and Coming Artist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association.
A charismatic and dynamic performer who has played alongside Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, The Roots, Macy Gray and many more, Benjamin also has an inimitable skill of fusing traditional conceptions of jazz, hip hop and soul in her original songs. For this Studio debut, Benjamin features the quartet from her 2023 release Phoenix, an album that featured cameos by some of Benjamin’s heroes including Wayne Shorter, Angela Davis, Dianne Reeves and Patrice Rushen.

Lakecia Benjamin and Phoenix

In Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right, Cynthia Miller-Idriss shifts the conversation about radicalization from the how and why to the when and where, to the life stages and places where extremist beliefs are cultivated and spread. Miller-Idriss reveals the inherently social fabric of radicalization, where everyday spaces of community and belonging—from college campuses and mixed martial arts gyms to clothing stores, online gaming chat rooms and YouTube cooking channels—can inoculate extremism, hate and violence in the mainstream. Away from an exclusive focus on fringe or far-wing groups, the author draws us in to examine the fluid encounters and engagements that young people experience along spiraling pathways of radicalization. In suggesting interventions and antidotes, Miller-Idriss puts forward a “public-health approach to hate” that reduces vulnerabilities, educates on inequity and injustice in the United States and internationally and addresses feelings of alienation and isolation to ultimately locate and reorient towards shared values of belonging and home.

Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss

When the dinosaur wanders away from home, the scientist discovers a wonderful world of creatures that light up the darkness and help him find the true meaning of love. This glow-in-the-dark adventure (a recipient of the Jim Henson Foundation Grant) is visually stunning, and praised for its blend of puppetry, technology and dance.

Dino-Light

Honored with five Grammy awards and the U.S. National Medal of Arts, Fleming has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the Diamond Jubilee Concert for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Inspired by Fleming’s 2023 Grammy Award-winning album, Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene this special performance with pianist Gerald Martin Moore spans classical, romantic and contemporary music, exploring nature as both inspiration and victim of humanity. The National Geographic Society created an original video to reflect the musical selections.

Renée Fleming, soprano Gerald Martin Moore, piano

Soprano superstar Renée Fleming is a leading advocate for the study of the powerful connections between the arts and health. As Artistic Advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, she launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center and the National Institutes of Health, and she partners with other leading organizations to bring attention to research and practice at the intersection of music, health, and neuroscience. 

Renée Fleming’s Music and Mind

Mr. Blow’s columns tackle hot-button issues such as social justice, racial equality, presidential politics, police violence, gun control and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Blow is also a CNN commentator and was a Presidential Visiting Professor at Yale, where he taught a seminar on media and politics. Blow is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The book won a Lambda Literary Award and the Sperber Prize and made multiple prominent lists of best books published in 2014. People Magazine called it “searing and unforgettable.” It is also the basis for Terence Blanchard’s acclaimed opera of the same name. His second book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, was named a “most anticipated book” by the San Francisco Chronicle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Time Out and Town and Country.

An Evening with Charles Blow

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) returns to the Mondavi Center to perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, works that unfailingly provide spiritual fulfillment for music lovers of all faiths and beliefs, inspiring strength at year’s end and a vision of the brightest future. The artistic core of CMS is a multigenerational, dynamic repertory company comprised of an evolving and unparalleled roster of performers. Demonstrating the belief that the future of chamber music lies in engaging and expanding the audience, these expert chamber musicians draw more people to the genre than any other organization of its kind.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Matthew Whitaker’s love for music began at the age of three, after his grandfather gave him a small Yamaha keyboard. At nine years old, Matthew began teaching himself how to play the Hammond B3 organ. Four years later, he became the youngest artist to be endorsed by Hammond in its 80+ year history. From performing at Stevie Wonder’s induction to the Apollo Theatre’s Hall of Fame ceremony to his stunning debut at the Mondavi Center in 2022, Whitaker has achieved so much, so quickly. But it’s his rich talent and effusive spirit, not his youth, that keep audiences coming back to experience Whitaker and his talented bandmates. His most recent album, Connections, documents a further leap of this already prodigious talent

Matthew Whitaker Quartet

With the guest ensemble Alturas Duo, the Choruses of UC Davis and Nicolás Dosman bring the rhythms and holiday vocal traditions of the Americas (both Southern America and Northern America) to Davis. Works include Navidad Nuestra by Ariel Ramírez (an Andean influenced folk telling of the nativity story), Aaron Copland’s Zion’s Walls (drawn from Appalachian America’s hymnal traditions), and Abreme la Puerta (a traditional Christmastime song from Puerto Rico).

Choruses of UC Davis: “An American Holiday”

The Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg look back 100 years to the tumultuous social and political era of the early 20th century—times not unlike our own—and explore enduring works of the great music it produced. Programs will include works by Debussy, Ravel, Webern, Schoenberg, Sibelius, and Nielsen

Alexander String Quartet with Robert Greenberg

His annual holiday tour draws on his celebrated 2011 album An Appalachian Christmas and features fresh arrangements of Christmas classics, both vocal and instrumental. The spirited performance captures the varied emotions of the season: playfulness, joy, contemplation, gratitude and more. O’Connor’s touring ensemble includes his wife Maggie O’Connor on fiddle and vocals as well as a variety of guest musicians on each tour.

Mark O'Connor's An Appalachian Christmas

At the center of this concert is a new composition for wind ensemble by Sacramento-based composer Shuying Li titled Luminance, which the UC Davis Concert Band helped commission thanks to the Rucker Family Trust’s Endowed Fund for Concert Band Support. The composer writes of her piece, “At its core, the work addresses issues relevant to contemporary society. By exploring themes of hope and despair, inclusion and exclusion, and power and powerlessness, the piece seeks to provide a platform for reflection and conversation. Through its use of evocative tonalities and dynamic contrasts, Luminance aims to inspire audiences to find strength in moments of darkness and embrace the light within themselves. Luminance will have been premiered by The President’s Own United States Marine Band in October, 2023.

UC Davis Concert Band

UC Davis’s own Jazz Big Bands present songs from the Great American Songbook as well as a few contemporary works and sometimes feature student vocalists too. Tunes by Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and many others are often presented

Inspired by the real-life story of NASA flight engineer José Hernández, A Million Miles Away follows him and his devoted family of proud migrant farm workers on a decades-long journey, from a rural village in Michoacán, Mexico, to the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, to more than 200 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station

Chancellor's Colloquium: Special Film Screening - A Million Miles Away

The Curtis Institute of Music is home to some of the finest young musicians in the world who, each year, come together to create one of the world's great orchestras. Add internationally renowned conductor Osmo Vänskä and Grammy-winning soloist Yefim Bronfman featured on Bartók’s fierce Piano Concerto No. 2 and the stage is set for music making of the highest order. This immersive experience is completed with a new work from Curtis faculty member Dai Wei and Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterful Scheherazade suite.
Curtis on Tour is the Nina von Maltzahn Global Touring Initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music.

Curtis Symphony Orchestra

This multi-media adventure mixes the classic storytelling of Jack London with projected illustrations to tell the story of Buck, the magnificent cross-bred offspring of a St. Bernard and Scottish Collie. Kidnapped from his lavish life on a California estate and sent to work as a sled dog during the great Klondike Gold Rush, Buck fights to survive and becomes the most famous dog in the history of Alaska. The stunning presentation from the acclaimed Austin, Texas-based troupe Theatre Heroes features 180-degree projections featuring classic illustrations and new drawings created by Michael Rae.

Call of the Wild: Illustrated Edition

Chart-topping American pianist Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin through a 21st-century lens, revealing its many layers of genre-blurring subtlety and nuance. Joplin is revered as the “King of Ragtime" and acknowledged as a classically-trained composer of concert music whose ambitions were denied in his own time. He was also an innovator who merged traditions and histories to make music at the crossroads of the American future. His story is ready to be retold. Downes is joined by author and cultural commentator John McWhorter for an intimate evening of music and conversation about Scott Joplin’s story and legacy, his opera Treemonisha, a century of progress, and the contradictions that shape our American life. Together, they revisit the lineage of black music in America as Downes weaves the musical journey through Joplin's powerful music.

Lara Downes & John McWhorter

This collaboration between prolific opera superstar J’Nai Bridges, and Grammy Award-winning drummer, music director, and educator, Ulysses Owens Jr. is a musical journey exploring the idea of hope rooted in the deep relationship between the voice and the drum. The program will highlight music tied to the African American experience, with works by Debussy, Ellington, Ravel, Geri Allen, spirituals, and original work from Bridges and Owens. With inspiration drawn from writers such as Lucille Clifton, Audrey Lorde, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, Notes on Hope is a thoughtful, melodic program featuring a full band (piano, guitar, bass and vibraphone) that provokes reflection and will leave audiences hopeful and excited about a future world that is reflective of unity, and jubilation.

J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano and Ulysses Owens Jr., percussion

When The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain began in 1985, public opinion was that an orchestra consisting entirely of ukuleles in different sizes was a strange concept. This was something that attracted the founders. From the beginning, the group’s modest goals were to have fun and “not to lose money.” Incredibly, throughout its thirty-year career, the group has succeeded in both. In Europe and America, the Orchestra are best known for playing versions of famous rock songs and film themes, sometimes changing these so that the expectations of the audience are subverted. Sometimes a rock song will be changed into a jazz idiom, or sometimes several songs which are known from different genres are combined in one “soup of contrasts.”

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Jad Abumrad is the creator and former host of Radiolab and, among other honors, is the recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” award. Employing his dual backgrounds as a composer and journalist, he orchestrates dialogue, music, interviews and sounds into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics.
In this timely talk,  Abumrad focuses on how to have difficult conversations with our fellow humans. Drawing on the latest research, and historical approaches, as well as interviews with social scientists, therapists, psychologists, journalists, oral historians, and philosophers about their “talk” practice, he has created a series of lectures, games and exercises that he will explore with the Mondavi Center audience.

Jad Abumrad

From the beginning, Alvin Ailey envisioned a company dedicated to enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience. He became one of the trailblazers of modern dance. In 2008, a U.S. Congressional resolution designated the Company as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world.” Under the leadership of Robert Battle, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues to embody the legacy of its founder by celebrating artistic excellence, unbounded creativity, and the power of art to transform and engage. Expect daring new works placed in fascinating conversation with timeless classics like Ailey’s own Revelations.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Dublin Irish Dance

The Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices is a unique Colburn School of Music program that encourages greater awareness and more frequent performances of music by composers whose careers and lives were disrupted—or worse—during the years of the Nazi regime in Europe. For more than 25 years, James Conlon has championed works and drawn deserved attention to composers whose names and works had very nearly been eliminated from history. This two-day event will feature performances by a Chamber Orchestra (4/10) and Chamber Music Ensemble (4/11) made up of Colburn students and led by Maestro Conlon, as well as a symposium featuring Conlon and faculty from the UC Davis Jewish Studies Program. These events are provided free to the public with support from donors to the Mondavi Center’s Artistic Ventures Program.

Recovered Voices

In this third and final—and pandemic-delayed—edition of his concert trilogy, Vladimir Feltsman shares the final act of a story he began telling at Mondavi Center in 2018. Known as one of the most versatile and commanding musicians of our time, pianist and conductor Feltsman covered works by Bach, Beethoven and Chopin in year one; and by Schumann and Brahms in year two. In this final program, titled “Inspirations,” Feltsman will perform his interpretations of works by Mozart and Schubert. The old saying is “the third time is the charm” but audience members will be hard-pressed to pick a favorite among Feltsman’s trinity of performances.

Vladimir Feltsman, piano

Sammy Miller and the Congregation are on a mission, crisscrossing the country like a vaudevillian revival show with evangelic fervor for music. The seven-piece band, described as a mashup of Ben Folds Five and Preservation Hall Jazz Band, is putting people in the moment with a bracing dose of joyful jazz performed with infectious theatricality. The New York City-based, familial collective has captured its frenetic energy and unflinchingly optimistic songwriting on its debut album, Leaving Egypt. “We want to get people back in a room together,” Sammy Miller says. “I love the idea of being unhinged, sincere, vulnerable, and breaking down walls through humor. Music is an uplifting gift, and I want to be generous in sharing it with people.”

Sammy Miller and the Congregation

Ranky Tanky (a Gullah phrase for “get funky”) are five lifelong friends from Charleston, South Carolina who have established themselves as passionate global ambassadors for their local Gullah culture and community. Their deeply grooving music helps to faithfully preserve the traditions originated by African Americans in the coastal South during slavery that are kept alive through the present day. The band’s second album, Good Time, won a Grammy for Best Regional Roots Album. They are joined on this Mondavi Center debut by fellow Grammy-winner, multi-instrumentalist, former Carolina Chocolate Drop and “American Songster” Dom Flemons.

Ranky Tanky with Dom Flemons

It might not be too much to say that a Meow Meow cabaret performance is a life-changing event. Named one of the “Top Performers of the Year” by The New Yorker, the spectacular crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne has been called a “diva of the highest order” (New York Post), but one whose insecurities are always simmering just below the surface. Careening from French chanson to Radiohead, with brilliant dashes of Brecht and Weill in between, she’s a remarkable singer and physical comedian who hypnotizes, inspires—and terrorizes—audiences with ease. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, an evening with Meow Meow will have you holding on to your seats (as she might try to take them from you) and grabbing for handkerchiefs.

Meow Meow

UC Davis's own Jazz "Big Bands" present songs from the Great American Songbook as well as a few contemporary works and sometimes feature student vocalists too. Tunes by Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and many others are often presented.

Jazz Big Bands of UC Davis

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection") with the University and Alumni Choruses, Erik Peregrine, director, and a soprano and mezzo-soprano to be announced.
In its first reunion with alumni chorus members since 2018, the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and University Chorus join together to perform Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, a long-form symphony imbued with a deep reverence for Heaven and the journey to it from our mortal world. Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony is clearly a Beethoven’s-Ninth kind of work, albeit written sixty plus years later, and written after decades of further symphonic development by not only Beethoven, but Berlioz, Brahms, and others.

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, with the University Chorus and the Alumni Chorus

Over the course of their great friendship, Palestinian author/scholar Edward Said and Israeli conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim realized the urgent need for an alternative way to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This idea evolved into the West-Eastern Divan, a group comprised of Arab and Israeli musicians, playing the treasures of classical music while defying fierce political divides in the Middle East and globally. The West-Eastern Divan Ensemble is the most recent imprint of this project and brings the highly praised artistry of the large orchestra into an intimate chamber music format. As the orchestra celebrates its 20th anniversary, Michael Barenboim leads this ensemble to spread the ideas behind the West Eastern Divan Orchestra even further and to give the public an opportunity to experience the musicians' unique artistry and personality up close.

Michael Barenboim & West-Eastern Divan Ensemble

Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso bring a bright energy and virtuosity to their concerts, maybe matched only by the Brazilians themselves. Choro is an important musical tradition of Brazil with characteristic Afro-Brazilian rhythms and European popular dance tunes. Mike—already known throughout the world for pushing on the boundaries of many music genres—became smitten with Choro on his first adventure in Brazil.

Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso

The UC Davis Concert Band presents thoughtful works written especially for concert band, and sometimes for film (“My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Polar Express” to name a couple). Constituting members of the UC Davis community from students to graduate students to faculty, the band is proud to represent more than thirty areas of study in its members.

The U.S. Premiere of Blanche Neige (Snow White) was a centerpiece of the Mondavi Center’s 10th Anniversary Season. It also was like nothing else audiences here had ever seen. Angelin Preljocaj’s celebrated company returns with another groundbreaking story ballet, Swan Lake, a work which Preljocaj likens to “an Everest.” Combining Tchaikovsky’s musical masterpiece with more contemporary sounds, the company refashions and deepens the love story against a backdrop of family conflict. Magnificent dancers, stunning costumes and a classic story combine to elevate this mythical classic to new heights.

Ballet Preljocaj

Yamato, one of the premiere Taiko ensembles in Japan, returns to the Mondavi Center celebrating their 30th Anniversary with a new production Hinotori: The Wings of Phoenix. The Wings of Phoenix recognizes the incredible challenges we have faced and, as dawn begins to break in the world, we climb new mountains with determination and confidence. This new show captures all of Yamato’s virtuosity, strength, spirit and sheer endurance. Yamato has given over 3500 performances in 54 countries, bringing their spirit, enthusiasm and abundant joy to over 8 million fans, young and old.

Yamato

Grammy-nominated artists Alfredo Rodríguez and Pedrito Martinez first worked together on Rodríguez’s 2012 release Invasion Parade. Since that initial recording session, they have had the rare occasion to perform together as a duo, leaving audiences completely mesmerized by their fearless and virtuosic playing. Each artist brings a different approach to the collaboration. Rodríguez was schooled in the rigorous classical conservatories of Havana, and his piano playing is informed as much by Bach and Stravinsky as it is by his Afro Cuban and jazz roots. Percussionist Martinez’s musical training came directly from the streets of the Cayo Hueso neighborhood of Old Havana in which he was raised.

Alfredo Rodríguez & Pedrito Martinez

Becca Stevens stretches the boundaries of convention with songs that weave together her classical and Appalachian folk music upbringing and her love of the rich rhythms and harmonies of jazz and world music, enhanced by her skill on multiple string instruments.

Becca Stevens

Since its inception in 2010, Rising Stars of Opera has featured vocal artistry, stirring arias and a glimpse at the opera stars of tomorrow; and every ticket has been free to the public thanks to Barbara K. Jackson. Rekindling an old tradition, we relaunch Rising Stars of Opera with several singers from the acclaimed San Francisco Opera Center performing a wide range of great arias with full orchestral accompaniment from our own UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.
This is a free, ticketed event.

Barbara K. Jackson Rising Stars of Opera

Last we saw Cécile McLorin Salvant, one of the great jazz singers, she held a Jackson Hall audience captive with her majestic song cycle Ogresse. It would be the last performance before the Mondavi Center shut down for a 19-month, pandemic-related pause. Now the singer returns with Ghost Song, a remarkable album born during the pandemic, on which Salvant interprets songs from Kate Bush, Gregory Porter alongside her stunning original compositions. It’s another reminder that Salvant is an artist whose voice and artistry continue to grow with every new step she takes. “People think that I sing love songs, but more and more I’m realizing that I sing about yearning and the imagination that comes from wanting something and not having it,” says Salvant.  “That’s really when we’re at our most creative.”

Cécile McLorin Salvant Quintet

World-renowned musicians Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma unite to perform an evening of Beethoven trios. Pianist Emanuel Ax is an ardent collaborator whose commitment to chamber music has fostered acclaimed partnerships with a variety of musical luminaries. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos, "a spectacular artist" (Philadelphia Inquirer), was awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2017. His inspired music-making with pianist partners has resulted in several critically acclaimed recordings. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is known for being one of the most prolific artists in the world, seeking to expand the reach of the cello by joining forces with a variety of artists and musicians across several genres.

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma

Sam Bush, Mike Marshall, Edgar Meyer, George Meyer

Itzhak Perlman enjoys superstar status rarely afforded a classical musician. Beloved for his talent, charm and humanitarian efforts, he is treasured by audiences throughout the world. Communicating an irrepressible joy for making music, the violin virtuoso is one of the most in-demand artists in music. His sold-out performances at the Mondavi Center have been delighting audiences since 2004. Classical music’s most prominent ambassador, Perlman has been granted a Kennedy Center Honor, a National Medal of Arts, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His longtime accompanist Rohan De Silva joins Perlman in yet another peerless evening of music-making.

Itzhak Perlman, violin & Rohan De Silva

For years, the American Bach Soloists graced Jackson Hall with its stunning rendition of Handel’s Messiah. For this 20th Anniversary season, they return with a Baroque Christmas program packed with the “Christmas portion” from Messiah, as well as lovely works celebrating the season. Recognized worldwide as one of the foremost interpreters of the music of Bach and the Baroque, Jeffrey Thomas continues to inspire audiences and performers alike through his keen insights into the passions behind musical expression.

American Bach Soloists

With a career spanning almost four decades, violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. His Mondavi Center appearances, both in recital and as conductor and Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, have been hallmarks of each season. Alongside his Grammy-winning music career, Bell is a restless innovator: see his Summer 2020 At Home with Music special produced entirely in lockdown, his creation of the Joshua Bell VR experience with Sony, and the Joshua Bell Virtual Violin, a sampler created for producers, engineers, artists, and composers. But it is the concert experience where Bell shines. His return, this time with accompanist Peter Dugan (host of NPR’s From The Top), promises to be another in a long line of breathtaking performances from a musician working at the peak of his prodigious powers.

Joshua Bell, violin & Peter Dugan, piano

A major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, the Alexander String Quartet is equally beloved in its second home, the Mondavi Center. This year the quartet appears with violist David Samuel joining cellist Sandy Wilson, and violinists Fred Lifsitz and Zakarias Grafilo.
All Alexander String Quartet performances will take place in Jackson Hall and will feature Robert Greenberg's lecture on each piece followed by a full performance of the same piece.

Featuring student and community singers from the UC Davis community directed by UC Davis lecturer in music Erik Peregrine, these three choruses present diverse choral repertoire representative of our choral traditions of the past, our present, as well as new and developing traditions. Choruses of UC Davis are comprised of the University Chorus, Chamber Singers, and Early Vocal Ensemble.

Choruses of UC Davis

The UC Davis Concert Band presents thoughtful works written especially for wind band, and sometimes for film (“My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Polar Express” to name a couple). Constituting members of the UC Davis community from students to graduate students to faculty, the band is proud to represent more than thirty areas of study in its members.

Lyric for Strings (written 1946) is dedicated to George Walker's grandmother, whom he was very close. Walker’s grandmother escaped slavery; separated from her first husband when he was sold. She died shortly before Lyric’s completion. Listeners might find the short work reminds them of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (written 1936), which had an impact on Walker—after all, they shared a composition teacher at Curtis. Walker, it should be noted, was a decorated American composer, who achieved many firsts, including being the first Black American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra

During the 2020 lockdown, pianist and composer Emmet Cohen developed "Live from Emmet's Place," a series of weekly performances by his trio and special guests livestreamed from his New York apartment via YouTube. The wild success of the series is based in Cohen’s unique ability to build connections with audiences through his harmonically sophisticated, joyful and open-hearted takes on great tunes. That ability to connect extends to his fellow musicians and with the jazz masters that preceded him, as on collaborations with Ron Carter, Bennie Golson and Christian McBride, just to name a few. His status as a major rising star has recently been recognized in the JazzTimes readers’ poll: Cohen was listed as Artist of the Year and Best Pianist, and his trio was listed as Best Acoustic Group. 

Emmet Cohen Trio

Evolve is a new performance experience that explores the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. Combining pre-recorded videos and live monologues from The New Black Fest’s Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments, a show written by African American men and women about their experience with racial profiling, and Cop Out: Beyond Black, White & Blue, based on interviews with police officers,  Evolve seeks to stimulate conversation in a new way and help us to bridge a seemingly intractable divide.
NOTE: This performance uses prop firearms. They are not real guns, are not pointed at the audience and there will not be gunfire. More information is available by request. Evolve also contains mature language and themes and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Evolve

Bay Area Indonesian-Folk-Rock fusion group Purnamasari grew out of the idea of supporting a new generation of artists from both sides of the world through music and dance. The concert takes place on the eve of the LUCE Foundation’s conference “Rethinking the History of Indonesian Music.”

Purnamasari

Nella’s music is a meeting place for her Venezuelan folklore roots, the influence of her contemporaries, and the music of the Andalusian region. Born in Isla Margarita, an island off the north-eastern coast of Venezuela, Nella has performed with artists such as Alejandro Sanz, Jennifer Lopez, Susana Baca, Carlos Vives and many more. Her debut album, Voy, produced by Javier Limón, earned her a Best New Artist Latin Grammy and her hit song “Me Llaman Nella” (They Call Me Nella) collected millions of Spotify and YouTube streams. Her follow up, Doce Margaritas, captured an artist pushing new boundaries. The New York Times calls her a singer “who can convey flamenco tension even in a near whisper.” This is a rare chance to see an emerging superstar in the flush of her early career.

Nella

Director Ravi Jain’s remixed, reimagined, and bilingual Prince Hamlet features a cross-cultural, gender-bent cast – challenging traditional ideas of who can tell this story. Interweaving Shakespeare’s spoken text with heightened and poetic American Sign Language, this groundbreaking production creates a visually stunning retelling for both hearing and Deaf audiences. You’ve never experienced Hamlet like this before.

Prince Hamlet

Weaving in and out of the jazz piano tradition, Connie Han pays tribute to legends like McCoy Tyner, Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Kirkland with her own unique edge at the piano. The New York Times describes her as “the rare musician with fearsome technical chops, a breadth of historical knowledge and enough originality to write tunes that absorb your ear easily.” Her debut, Crime Zone, sounds nothing like a first album, and her follow ups, Iron Starlet, and the 2022 release Secrets of Inanna, prove her staying power. This is an artist who has absorbed the work of her heroes and emerged with a powerful voice of her own.

Connie Han Trio

One of the world’s great orchestras led by celebrated conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in a program of enduring favorites and new discoveries. From the churning impressionism of Debussy’s La Mer to soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a rising star from England, shining on the Elgar Cello Concerto, this will be an evening of unforgettable music-making.

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Harold in Italy was brought about by a commission by the famous 19th century violinist Nicolo Paganini in 1834. Berlioz was commissioned by Paganini not for a violin concerto but for a work that would feature Paganini and his new Stradivarius viola. Paganini thought the viola solo was too simplistic when he saw the score and declined to give the premiere. But when he heard it performed (albeit four years later) he was so pleased he paid Berlioz 20,000 francs anyway.

A legendary and powerful voice in Mexican music for more than 40 years, Aida Cuevas is truly the “The Queen of Mariachi.” Cuevas, the first female mariachi singer to win a Grammy, is beloved for her unswerving devotion to traditional mariachi music and for her mastery of its demanding vocal forms. This rousing celebratory concert will feature beloved hits like “El Pastor” and “Mexico en la piel” as well as her greatest hits “Te Doy Las Gracias” and “Quizás Mañana”.

Aida Cuevas 45th Anniversary

The San Francisco Symphony performed the first concert in the Mondavi Center in October 2002. They return to celebrate a 20-year partnership, now under the guidance of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. This celebratory evening features a rich program: a U.S. debut of new piece by British composer Daniel Kidane; Sibelius’s lovely tone poem Luonnotar featuring South African soprano Golda Schultz; and a complete rendering of Stravinsky’s breakthrough ballet score, The Firebird.

Jazz Bands of UC Davis

As a Stanford student, Grace Leslie imagined a new kind of electronic music, engineered to harmonize the brain with the nervous system. Leslie has continued to develop this Brain-Body music as director of the Brain Music Lab at Georgia Tech, and as an active electronic musician committed to harnessing the expression granted by new music technology to understand the link between music and emotion. Vessels and Fais de moi un instrument are brain-body performances that combine flute and electronics improvisation that is triggered by electrical readings of Leslie’s brain, heart and skin.

Grace Leslie

World of Change is an extended suite of pieces for piano and collaborative instrumentation composed by Clarice Assad for pianist Lara Downes and friends. The piece reflects on global transformation, disruption and destruction, renewal and rebirth. Downes has been a steady fixture on Mondavi Center stages, an artist who “combines exquisite musicality with an acute awareness of how an artist can make a positive and lasting social impact.” (The Piano) Clarice Assad is a Grammy-nominated composer, celebrated pianist, inventive vocalist and educator renowned for evocative colors, rich textures and diverse stylistic range.

Lara Downes, Piano & Clarice Assad, Composer

Valencia Baryton Project

In its “Effects and Dances” program, Christian Baldini and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra bring two thrilling orchestral pieces to the Mondavi Center in a short program

UC Davis Symphony Orchestra Effects and Dances

Sinfonia Spirituosa

Performing live on a pair of huge invented musical instruments, the duo of acclaimed composer, performer & instrument inventor Paul Dresher and percussionist-extraordinaire Joel Davel consistently generates "an exciting sense of mystery and surprise." (Portland Press Herald) 
Playing the 15-foot Quadrachord or the 10-foot Hurdy Grande, and featuring Don Buchla’s magical Marimba Lumina and Lightning controller, Dresher and Davel create lush textures and rhythmically propulsive grooves that fascinate the ear and the eye. Exploring unique sound-colors amplified by live digital looping, this electro-acoustic duo creates complex sonic layers as rich as a full orchestra.

Dresher Davel Invented Instrument Duo

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Kirill Gerstein’s playing is distinguished by its clarity of expression, discerning intelligence and virtuosity, and an energetic, imaginative musical presence that places him at the top of his profession. This concert brings the two generational talents together in a program featuring highlights of the two-piano repertoire: Adès suite from his groundbreaking opera Powder Her Face; Busoni’s homage to Bach, the Fantasia Contrappuntistica; Rachmaninoff’s own arrangement of his exhilarating late career Symphonic Dances; and the virtuosic La Valse.

Garrick Ohlsson & Kirill Gerstein Piano Duo

Legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz called the Liszt Transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies “the greatest works for the piano.” Who better than pianist Christopher Taylor, an innovative musician acclaimed as "seemingly possessed of superhuman powers" (Los Angeles Times), to tackle these demanding, illuminating works over four concerts. In Taylor’s last Mondavi Center appearance, he performed J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations in their entirety on a rare dual-manual Steinway piano.

Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

Jun 6, 2024