The weekend in your pocket has everything...music, art, design.

Arts & Humanities annual graduate exhibition shows multidisciplinary work

June 8, 11 a.m. – June 26, 6 p.m., Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

This year’s Arts and Humanities Graduate Exhibition, running June 9 – 25 at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, features student work from across the College of Letters and Science. Thirty graduate students from history, performance studies, English, design, art history and art studio will present their research exploring the pressing issues of our time, including environmental destruction, racism and immigration, while offering both practical and idealistic ways of thinking about and solving problems, or engaging with personal experiences, memory and aesthetic practices.  

About the Grad Exhibit

At the opening reception June 8 from 6 to 9 p.m., winners of the LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize, and Savageau Award in the Department of Design will be announced. 

The following day, on Friday, June 9, art history students will present their theses in the Art History Graduate Symposium from 2:30 – 5:30 p.m. at the Manetti Shrem Museum.

At the opening reception June 8 from 6 to 9 p.m., winners of the LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize, and Savageau Award in the Department of Design will be announced. 

The following day, on Friday, June 9, art history students will present their theses in the Art History Graduate Symposium from 2:30 – 5:30 p.m. at the Manetti Shrem Museum.

Find more information about the exhibition and participating students here. 

'Open, Stay' theatre production at Mondavi

June 8, 9, 7 – 8 p.m., June 10, 2 – 3 p.m., Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

The Department of Theatre and Dance will present Open, Stay, a new musical, through June 10 in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Open, Stay is a vibrant contemporary musical that explores romance in all forms — from thrilling first encounters to bittersweet goodbyes. The musical is a collection of ten moments of connection — beginnings, endings and in-betweens, as well as the moments that come long after we part ways. It is an exploration of how we love and how we lose one another, all connected by the need that brings us together — the need for each other.

The production was developed with gender neutrality in mind. The performance encourages casts of different gender expressions and the entire company has been formed through gender-blind casting.

Featuring music and lyrics by Anna DeNoia and arranged/orchestrated by Joshua Villa, the show masterfully weaves together musical genres to create an evening of laughter, romantic resilience and lessons learned. Open, Stay will be directed by Broadway veteran Mindy Cooper with music direction by Graham Sobelman. 

Listen to excerpts from Open, Stay on the show’s website. 

Adult tickets are $15, faculty/staff tickets are $12 and student/senior tickets are $5. Tickets are available at the Mondavi Center Ticket Office in person or by calling 530-754-2787 between noon and 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Tickets are also available online here.

At Pitzer this weekend

Student Chamber Ensembles

June 8, 12:05 p.m. - 2:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert, free

The program includes Steve Reich: NY Counterpoint for 11 Clarinets and other works. 

Pusaka Sunda celebrates Henry Spiller’s Career

June 10, 2 – 4 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free

Pusaka Sunda, directed by Burhan Sukarma, will present a concert of Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia, featuring guest performers Ani Sukmawati, Rina Oesman, and Yusdiana. The concert marks the retirement of Professor of Music Henry Spiller, who has taught at UC Davis since 2005, including directing UC Davis’s Gamelan ensemble for much of that time. Spiller’s teaching and research focus on the performing arts of West Java. Pusaka Sunda’s performance will feature several of Spiller’s most influential teachers and consultants, including Undang Sumarna (UC Santa Cruz), Burhan Sukarma (Pusaka Sunda), and guest artist Yusdiana (with whom Spiller studied during Fulbright research in West Java, 1998–99).

Choruses of UC Davis: 'Full Circle' at Mondavi

June 8, 7 – 8 p.m., Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, $12 Students and Children, $24 Adults (Open Seating)

The program includes Florence Price: Song of Hope, Price: Resignation conducted by undergraduate music major Natalie Laurie, Amy Beach: The Chambered Nautilus for Chorus and Orchestra, Trad. / Arr. J. David Moore: Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Hildegard von Bingen: O virtus sapientie, J.S. Bach: Chorale from Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227 and Stephen Paulus: The Road Home.

Purchase tickets here. 

WHAT DEATH DOES: Time, Scale and Anonymity at Verge

June 10 - Sept. 17, opening reception June 10, 5 – 8 p.m., lecture July 22, 2 p.m., Verge Center for the Arts, 625 S St., Sacramento 95811 

Verge Center for the Arts announces its second solo exhibition by Stephen Kaltenbach, an alum of UC Davis and a recent exhibitor at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. 

This show brings together several different bodies of work and modes of making from Kaltenbach’s more than 55-year career. The exhibition will focus on his career-long interest in time and scale. The centerpiece of the show is What Death Does, a stage set of a furnished living room. Throughout the run of the exhibition, simulated rain falls into the room. Decay sets in at an accelerated pace with the aid of manufactured precipitation. Geological time becomes heightened and condensed into theatrical entropy. Deep time becomes visible through human perception. 

The show also brings together a group of works exploring time and scale in a much different manner. Throughout the late 1960’s, Kaltenbach used strategies of anonymity, aliases, and tactical lies to create works that slowly spread as historians, curators, viewers, and students unearthed them and tied the work back to his practice. The exhibition will include work by Kaltenbach’s aliases Es Que and Clyde Dillon. It will also feature work from his anonymous Artforum micro manifestos and lies that circulated through the readership of the Village Voice and Arts magazine.

Kaltenbach’s divergent strategies put the viewer in a precarious position. They will be confronted by an ever changing visceral sculptural work while simultaneously being asked to engage with weightless unmeasurable works that have not yet come fully into focus. We as viewers are stretched between the physical and the cerebral and are asked to create a strategy to hold room for both. 

Kaltenbach graduated with a bachelor's degree from UC Davis in 1966, followed by a master of arts degree in 1967. His work has been exhibited at the UC Davis Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.

Coming Up

Mythology Meets Rock in Woodland

June 16 – 25, Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 p.m., Woodland Opera House, 340 Second Street, Woodland

Tom and Meg Stallard present a Young Adult Performers production, The Lightning Thief, The Percy Jackson Musical.

This energetic musical follows Percy Jackson, a 12-year-old boy who newly discovers that he is a demigod. As the half-blood son of a Greek god, Percy has powers he can’t control, a destiny he doesn’t want, and a mythology textbook’s worth of monsters on his trail. When Zeus’s master lightning bolt is stolen and Percy becomes the prime suspect, he has to find and return the bolt to prove his innocence and prevent a war of the gods. From the best-selling book and with an original rock score, this show is fast paced and an exciting adventure for all! PG – language and battle scenes. 

The Lightning Thief, The Percy Jackson Musical is a Young Adult Performers production with a cast between the ages of 14 and 24 years old. The show is directed and choreographed by Erik Catalan, and music direction by Jia-Min Rosendale. 

Performances are set for Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. All seating is reserved, ticket prices are $20 for Adults, $18 Seniors (62+), and $10 for Children 17 and under. Balcony pricing is Adults at $12 and Children at $7. Flex pass specials and group rates are available. 

Purchase tickets online at www.WoodlandOperaHouse.Org and at the Box Office (530) 666-9617. Located at 340 Second Street, Box Office hours are: Tuesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.,  2 p.m. to 5 p.m.