Dive into the rich tapestry of sound and culture with UC Berkeley's music department's stellar series of events this April and May. From exploring the intersectionality of race and music in the life of Don Shirley to vibrant jazz performances by the Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective, these events paint an eclectic musical canvas. Join us as we delve into the nuances of these performances, spotlighting the talented artists and the overarching themes that make this series a must-attend for music aficionados.

Exploring UC Berkeley’s Dynamic April-May Music Series: A Celebration of Diversity in Sound

UC Berkeley's Department of Music is set to enchant audiences in 2026 with a diverse lineup of music events. From the intricate harmonies of chamber music to the grandeur of orchestral performances, and the lively rhythms of jazz to the solemn beauty of choral works, there's something for every music lover. Join us as we explore the highlights of these upcoming events and the talented performers and composers who will bring them to life.

UC Berkeley Music Events 2026: A Symphony of Talent and Innovation

Noon Concert: Jazz x2

UC Berkeley Department of Music

UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble 2026

Noon Concert: University Baroque Ensemble 2026

UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra 2026

Elevate your lunch break with The Loft Hour, a year-long series in that invites arts faculty to riff on their work over lunch, in an informal conversation moderated by an ARC-affiliated faculty member. Join us in welcoming our esteemed colleagues in Architecture, Art Practice, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, History of Art, Music, and Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. The February program features Chris Batterman Cháirez (Music) and Cathy C Lu (Art Practice).

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The Loft Hour: Chris Batterman Cháirez + Cathy Lu

University of California, Berkeley

Noon Concert: Chamber Music 2026

Cal Performances presents Eco Ensemble

Noon Concert: Berkelium String Quartet

Noon Concert: Piano Recital

Piano students from the studio class, Music 168CS, perform a variety of solo works

Noon Concert: Performance Class Piano Recital

Lighting the Night - Uplifting music to fuel your inner light to shine bigger and brighter.

University Gospel Chorus

On December 5 and 6, UCBSO presents the North American debut of Susan Lim’s Fantasy of Companionship for Piano and Orchestra. An imaginative work that fuses classical traditions with futuristic soundscapes, this landmark performance invites audiences into a world where music becomes a lens to reflect on human connection with the inanimate and the future of companionship.

UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra

Noon Concert: Javanese Gamelan

University Chorus

UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra

Noon Concert: Vocal Studies Student Showcase

UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble II

Music of Stillness, Slumber, and Rest - The University Baroque Ensemble performs instrumental and vocal works of Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Telemann, and others, with a focus on music that creates and celebrates stillness and rest.

University Baroque Ensemble

Experience the Indonesian artform that shaped the way Debussy composed for piano as Berkeley’s Javanese Gamelan premieres new music by Midiyanto accompanied by traditional dance of the Javanese court.

Javanese Gamelan

A Journey Beyond the World — featuring works by Bach, Pärt, and many more. Featuring University Chorus and Golden Bear Voices.

UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus

Elevate your lunch break with The Loft Hour, a year-long series in that invites arts faculty to riff on their work over lunch, in an informal conversation moderated by an ARC-affiliated faculty member. Join us in welcoming our esteemed colleagues in Architecture, Art Practice, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, History of Art, Music, and Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. The November program features Xandra Ibarra (Art Practice) and Matthew Taylor (Music) in conversation with Anne Walsh (Art Practice).

The Loft Hour: Xandra Ibarra + Matthew Taylor

The Del Sol Quartet is joined by traditional musicians from the National Gugak Center in Seoul, performing new works from Berkeley and Santa Cruz composers including Cindy Cox, Edmund Campion, Jean Ahn, and Ben Leeds Carson

Noon Concert: Korean Music Festival/Berkeley New Music Project

Recent collaborative works, and spatial audio for the Korean Experimental Music Festival.

Composition Colloquium: Edmund Campion

Students from the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra perform small ensemble works under the direction of Leighton Fong

Noon Concert: Chamber Music for Piano and Strings

This event is free and open to the public.

Composition Colloquium: Théo Ould

Noon Concert: University Wind Ensemble

Louise Brugger Bidwell teaches piano at UC Berkeley in the Music 168C Program. She is trained as a pianist and composer and enjoys playing a variety of the wonderful keyboard instruments in the UCB Music Department. She has studied composition at UC Berkeley and gave piano concerts at Stanford for ten years while studying with Adolph Baller. She has performed many concerts at UC Berkeley on the departments historic Erard and Wieck pianos. Her interest in the harpsichord and early keyboard instruments has developed in recent years. Besides attending Professor Davitt Moroney’s course on French Music and Poetry, she also attended his Masterclass in the Music of William Byrd at the Flint Collection in Delaware. She gave concerts of William Byrd’s Music in a Noon Concert and at the Women’s Faculty Club. In 2020, she gave an on-line concert at the Women’s Faculty Club to celebrate JS Bach’s Birthday. She has given concerts at the Women’s Faculty Club and at St. Alban’s Church in Albany featuring Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Johann Jakob Froberger, François Couperin and others, including John Thow and Jeremy Hunt.

Friday Concert: Keyboard Music from England, France, Germany and Spain

Composition Colloquium: Claire Hu (UC Berkeley)

An all Beethoven program featuring his Sonatas No. 5 and No. 9 for Violin and Piano and Romance in F major

The annual concerto audition features members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and music majors performing on non-orchestral instruments. The winner(s) perform with the symphony during the following academic year. Free and open to the public.

UCBSO Annual Concerto Audition

Chamber and orchestral music of Georg Philipp Telemann, including selections from the Paris Quartets and the suite Hamburger Ebb’ und Fluth.

Noon Concert: University Baroque Ensemble

UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble

Elevate your lunch break with The Loft Hour, a year-long series in that invites arts faculty to riff on their work over lunch, in an informal conversation moderated by an ARC-affiliated faculty member. Join us in welcoming our esteemed colleagues in Architecture, Art Practice, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, History of Art, Music, and Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. The October program features Karina Gutierrez (Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies) and Mu-Xuan Lin (Music) in conversation with Iggy Cortez (Film & Media).

The Loft Hour: Karina Gutierrez + Mu-Xuan Lin 林慕萱

Noon Concert: Faculty Baroque Chamber Music

World premieres by Matthew Taylor and Etienne Rolin California premieres of solo pieces by Riccardo Santoboni, Allen Shearer, and Dan Flanagan

Noon Concert: The Bow and the Brush

Students from the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra perform small ensemble works under the direction of Leighton Fong, featuring works by Hindemith and Webern.

Noon Concert: Ensemble Ari

Mehana Ellis performs ‘Troubled Water’ from Bonds’ Spiritual Suite, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde, and Schumann’s ‘Widmung’ from Myrthen Vanness Yu performs Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30 and Chopin’s Etude No.8


Capstone Recital: Emile Serper

Capstone Recital: Sarah Jones

Capstone Recital: Jacob Hill

Capstone Recital: Elizabeth Su

Capstone Recital: Kathleen Liang

Friday Concert: Evan Huang Solo Piano Capstone Recital

Duo Capstone Recital: Jolie Abdelmalk, Winter Felton-Priestner

Duo Capstone Recital: Sky Moon, Amy He

May the fourth be with you! Join us for this special performance of selections from John Williams’ Star Wars Trilogy, alongside music from Anthony Barfield and Katahj Copley. Featuring guest ensemble BD Winds, directed and conducted by Katilin Bove.

UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble I

This program brings together two major works by Johann Sebastian Bach while introducing a contemporary perspective through the music of Carmine-Emanuele Cella. Centered around the Four duets BWV 802-805 and the Overture in the French style BWV 831, it offers a refined exploration of keyboard writing, where contrapuntal clarity and expressive depth coexist.

Hélène Papadopoulos in Concert

An invigorating and inspiring array of the many colors of Gospel…expect the unexpected in this musical mosaic.

Duo Capstone Recital: Anna Jian, Jane Lin

Friday Concert: Clara Schuur Solo Violin Capstone Recital

Capstone Recital: Tansy Chen

When Mozart came across a treatise written in 1776 by Abbé Vogler that used Roman numerals to describe harmonies within a key, he despaired. Mozart wrote a letter to his father complaining that Vogler’s theory was “more use for learning to count than to compose.” In the early nineteenth century, Vogler’s pupil Gottfried Weber fine-tuned the analytical system—and complaints raged yet again, notably by A. B. Marx, who rejected the Roman numeral system in his harmony treatise. It was not until the teachings of Arnold Schoenberg and Heinrich Schenker that the use of Roman numerals became entrenched, and still today there are grumblings about the system despite its widespread use.

Music Studies Colloquium: Suzannah Clark (Harvard University)

 free Latin American and Caribbean Music Ensemble performance.

Latin American and Caribbean Music Ensemble

Noon Concert: Balinese Gamelan

This is the MU 210 Composers and Improvisers Workshop final concert

Beta Environment

An opera in two acts based on the novel by Mary Shelley, newly revised and expanded since its 2023 world premiere, performed from the orchestral reduction

Capstone Project: Frankenstein

The Raven and the Swan is a new musical written by Samantha Morales, a tale inspired by the ballet Swan Lake. Come enjoy an exciting story filled with haunting ballads, lively choreography, and creepy birds. The cast and musicians will love to see you there!

Musical Theater Prize Concert

UC Berkeley University Chorus

These lectures explore an anthropogenic history of sound during the first half of the twentieth century (up to the 1960s), a period of intense imperial expansion of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the first three lectures I approach the centrality of media and the development of new sound technologies in such a history. I particularly focus on the transformation of the relation between histories of life, extractivism and sound produced by sound technologies. In the last two lectures I approach an intertwined counterarchive: that of the rise of indigenous film and works by indigenous intellectuals in Colombia and Brazil during the early twenty first century and the conceptualizations of music, voice and sound in specific works produced by them. All lectures are based on different archival and ethnographic materials from Latin America, the Caribbean and The United States.

Bloch Lecture: Perspectivism’s auditory history

Chinh Chinh Nguyen Solo Piano Capstone Recital

Friday Concert: Chinh Chinh Nguyen Solo Piano Capstone Recital

¡Resistir! Students of the vocal studies program perform songs inspired by resistance and protest movements from around the world.

Noon Concert: ¡Resistir!

Lovemusic collective is specialized in new music and based in Strasbourg, France. Working with composers on new and exciting works that will enrich the musical world is at the heart of their mission. This involves collaborating with artists who wish to create new music together, with both the composer and musicians actively involved in the creative process. They aim to dismantle the patriarchal and hierarchical systems ingrained in the new music world, creating a safe and inclusive environment in which musicians can make individual decisions regarding how they contribute to each project, the music they want to perform, and the composers they wish to work with.

Composition Colloquium: Collective Lovemusic

African Music Ensemble

Capstone Recital: Coloratura and Beyond: The Art of Sonic Storytelling

Friday Concert: Chamber Music of Brahms

A free Balinese shadow play performance with live gamelan music.

Balinese Gamelan Shadowplay: Arjuna’s Meditation

Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective & Goldberg-Melford-Davis-Glenn Quartet with Special Guests–An evening of creative jazz by students in the Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective, featuring Ben Goldberg, Myra Melford, Ben Davis, and Jordan Glenn, as well as special guests Mark Dresser, Liberty Ellman, Mat Muntz and Matt Wilson.

Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective

Don Shirley, the subject of the 2018 film Green Book, performed in nightclubs after being denied classical concert management on account of race. He navigated audile discrimination through musical means that mirrored the spirit of the Negro Motorist Green Book and the ethos of the Civil Rights Movement. His performing style blended popular and classical techniques while aiming to stimulate engaged, “serious” listening of an otherwise inaudible Black performer within a racially restrictive musical culture. Simultaneously, Shirley’s pianistic strategies intersected with gendered performance negotiations. For a Black pianist like Shirley, being thrust into entertainment paradigms prompted resisting prejudice tied to the afterlives of blackface minstrelsy. Shirley pushed against legacies of stock character stereotypes of the hypermasculine, sex-crazed maniac and the effete dandy.

Music Studies Colloquium: Pheaross Graham (Stanford)

Noon Concert: University Chorus and Golden Bear Voices

Composer Jarosław Kapuściński specializes in creating audiovisual works across various media. Many of his compositions are interactive, often involving musicians—particularly pianists—who control visual content, or more recently, general audiences who paint audiovisual worlds in VR. In this presentation, Kapuściński will discuss his work, focusing on the VR collaboration with the Open EndedGroup, Point Line Piano, a project that reimagines the composition, performance, and reception of piano music by fusing these three modes.

Composition Colloquium: Jarosław Kapuściński

The University’s Javanese Gamelan ensemble does a rare United States performance of Ramayana’s Hanuman in Action. Accompanied by puppets in shadowplay.

Javanese Gamelan: Shadowplay

The UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus and University Baroque Ensemble perform J.S. Bach’s Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, along with other works for Baroque orchestra and chorus.

UC Chamber Chorus & University Baroque Ensemble

Bloch Lecture: Myth, song and indigenous film in northern Colombia

Matthew Monaco discusses the evolving role of improvisation and transcription in his recent work where he explores the interaction between a longstanding engagement with fragmented, microscopic musical material, and spontaneous, idiomatic redefinitions of such material. His presentation will draw from completed works from 2021-2024, as well as a work in progress for ensemble. In discussing musical examples, he will illustrate some of his views on intuitive orchestration and re-orchestration using perceptual descriptors, building upon Lachanmann’s theory of sound types and Narmour’s theory of melodic profiles.

Composition Colloquium: Matthew Monaco and Nathan Corder

Friday Concert: Cassi Chen Solo Capstone Recital

In 1883, the volcano Krakatau, located just off the island of Java, erupted violently, killing tens of thousands of people in its eruption and the aftermath. Alongside this devastation, the eruption produced what is often characterized as the loudest sound ever recorded. In this talk, I join an emerging conversation one might call geomusicology or geoacoustics to revisit Krakatau. While it is now internet-famous for its loudness, an equally significant acoustic phenomenon is also tied up with its eruption, namely the “discovery” of infrasound, or sound waves traveling at frequencies below the threshold of human hearing (c. 20 Hz). That discovery was made possible by a network of European scientists and colonial outposts that could measure the infrasound pressure waves circling the globe repeatedly in the days that followed the eruption. In many ways, this imperial discourse network—a mix of colonial administrators and outposts, advancements in acoustic measurement, scientific correspondence, and other communications media—heralds a new mode of geological listening; at the same time, it stands in stark contrast to the kinds of life-and-death listening that took place in and around Java and Sumatra, documented by local poetic forms that also sought to make sense of this precipitous moment and commemorate the loss of life it brought about.

Music Studies Colloquium: Peter McMurray

University Baroque Ensemble director David Miller is joined by musicians from the Sacramento Baroque Soloists to play pieces from La Guerre, Montèclair, and Rameau.

Noon Concert: Baroque Chamber Music

The UC Berkeley Department of Music is committed to the health and safety of our students, staff, and patrons. Measures to protect concertgoers and musicians will be informed by state, local, and UC Berkeley Public Health policies and are subject to change.

Guests from Stanford University share their work and music in the ongoing graduate student exchange with UC Berkeley.

Composition Colloquium: Anna Kristina Golubkova and Lemon Guo

Friday Concert: Chamber Music for Piano and Strings

Noon Concert: Chamber Music

To highlight the development of French music, and to draw a parallel between a beloved work by Gabriel Fauré and a groundbreaking modern work by Gérard Grisey, the Fauré Requiem will be performed by De Anza Chorale and Vintage Singers, and Voices of Silicon Valley will collaborate with Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at UC Berkeley (CNMAT) on the US premiere performance of Grisey’s piece “Les Chants de L’Amour” and world premiere of “Symbionts” by Edmund Campion.

French Universe: from Faure to Grisey

Grace Cathedral

Friday Concert: Trio Solano with pianist Miles Graber

Musical selections from Cuong, Lane, Li, Mazone and Milburn.

Noon Concert: UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble

Join Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) for a Commons Conversation with Vince Caro, Senior Recording/Mixing Engineer at Pixar Animation Studios, who will discuss the role of sound in animation: how it has been, and continues to be, a large part of the process of making an animated film. Expect a slideshow and presentation, as well as a robust Q&A.

Vince Caro, “The Role of Sound in Animation”

Dr. Matthew Evan Taylor is an AfroPnuematic composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser who has “…wrestled with the societal boundaries of Black artistry only to blast them apart…” (Dr. Kori Hill, I Care if You Listen) through creating music that is “insistent and defiant…envelopingly hypnotic” (Alan Young, Lucid Culture). An artist at the intersection of concert music, free improvisation, and multi-disciplinary performance, Matthew has worked with many leading artists and ensembles including the Metropolis Ensemble, Turtle Island String Quartet featuring Cyrus Chestnut, Elliott Sharp, dancer Laurel Jenkins, and visual artist Dannielle Tegeder, in front of audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World Saxophone Congress 17, CineJazz Film Music Festival Paris, and the Perez Art Museum Miami. A “risk taker” (Neil De La Flor, Huffington Post), Matthew’s latest work focuses on expression and liberation through breath. This music, AfroPneumaism, subverts Western aesthetics and philosophy by replacing chronometric and metronomic time with the human breath. Through this work, musicians are asked to listen inward as well as across the ensemble, as the audience joins in the collective act of deliberate breathing. Matthew’s forthcoming album, Life Returns, will be released in May on Navona Records. He serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of California, Berkeley.

Composition Colloquium: Matthew Evan Taylor

Friday Concert: The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, featuring Talia Young-Skeen

Students of George Emblom perform works from Bach, Brahms, and others.

Noon Concert: Organ Recital

An evening of real-time composition featuring UC Berkeley’s Nathan Corder (electronics), Matthew Monaco (piano), and Mat Muntz (bass). The concert will showcase the unusual trio instrumentation as well as an assortment of solo and duo structured improvisations.

Graduate Student Real-Time Compositions

Electronic sound pervades our experiences: A sci-fi thriller opens with whirrs, clicks, and hums; teenagers rave to trance-inducing dance music; hip hop producers create sick beats from drum machines. How did electronic sound become so ubiquitous? What do synthesizers mean to us? I investigate how sounds and ideas move through technologies like the Moog, the Yamaha DX-7, and the vocoder. Though synthesizers might appear to be black boxes, they are porous to change and revision at every stage. I explore novelty with stories of play, experimentation, and mis-use. I focus on how users create social belonging and identity as they synthesize electronic sounds. Synthesis means discovering and recycling, all in the same day, and anyone can do it. Synthesizers are incredible tools for making sense of the complex worlds we navigate—tools for bringing together commercial with art spheres, for meshing the past with the present. Synthesizers foster social belonging and the circulation of cultural value.

Music Studies Colloquium: Jennifer Iverson (University of Chicago)

Friday Concert: Chamber Music

UBE and the Viol Consort perform concertos for chamber orchestra by Bach and Handel.

UC Berkeley Department of Music

Feb 20 - May 9, 2026

UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra 2026

Mar 18, 2026

Noon Concert: Organ Recital 2026

Apr 3, 2026

Composition Colloquium: Tacet(i) Ensemble

3 - 4 Apr, 2026

UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, University Chorus, UCBSO

Apr 5, 2026

Tacet(i) Ensemble

Mar 4, 2026

Noon Concert: Jazz x2

Feb 28 - May 2, 2026

UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble 2026

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UC Berkeley Department of Music