Baldini-led symphony opens 2009-10 music season

by Dave Jones
September 04, 2009

The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and new conductor Christian Baldini open the Department of Music's 2009-10 season when the orchestra accompanies soprano Christine Brewer during her concert at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Baldini's actual debut with the orchestra will be Sept. 23 during the Fall Convocation starting at 10 a.m. in the Mondavi Center's Jackson Hall.

The music department's new season, announced Sept. 1, features the orchestra and these other department mainstays: the University Concert Band and University Chorus, Jazz Bands, Gospel Choir, Baroque Ensemble and Empyrean Ensemble.

Special events include a Violin Festival (and two concerts), The American Piano project (in collaboration with the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts) and an Indonesian shadow-puppet play featuring UC Berkeley’s Gamelan Sari Raras.

Baldini, a conductor and composer, comes to UC Davis from his position as conductor and music director of the Symphony Orchestra of the State University of New York at Buffalo. At UC Davis, Baldini succeeds D. Kern Holoman as symphony director and conductor; Holoman stepped down after 30 years with the orchestra, and continues as a professor in the music department.

Baldini and his new orchestra are set to perform with Brewer on Oct. 4, in a concert that is part of the Mondavi Center's 2009-10 presenting season. The orchestra is scheduled to accompany Brewer on two selections: Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and George Gerswhin's Summertime.

Brewer's concert, which doubles as a birthday celebration for Mondavi Center patron Barbara K. Jackson, also includes the following: Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, Richard Strauss' Ich liebe dich and Breit’ über mein Haupt, and John Carter's Cantata, with Craig Rutenberg on piano.

The music department also plans to continue its free noonhour concerts—with 12 of them during the fall quarter, 10 on Thursdays and two on Tuesdays.

The department announced that most of noon concerts in 2009-10 will be in the Music Building, but that the fall quarter also brings several special presentations in the Rumsey Rancheria Grand Lobby of the Mondavi Center.

In fact, the first three free noon concerts of 2009-10 are scheduled in the Grand Lobby, starting Sept. 24 with the Davis Summer Symphony.

The list of noon concerts in the fall also includes Grand Lobby performances by soprano Rebecca Plack on Oct. 22, Percussion Group Davis and the CSU Percussion Group (presenting Steve Reich’s Drumming) on Oct. 29, and cellists Lena and Robert Andaya on Nov. 5.