Another very full year in the arts at UC Davis is about to start. Pretty much everything you could want, and things you didn’t know you wanted, can be found around campus. Here’s a look at some of the fall highlights:

Department of Music

The Summer Symphony performs a free concert of music by Edvard Grieg, Mikhail Glinka and Antonin Dvořák, featuring Jeremiah Trujillo, piano, and Jonathan Spatola-Knoll, student conductor, at noon Thursday, Sept. 24, in Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.  

Other department events at the Mondavi Center:

• Rising Stars of Opera, featuring San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra. Sunday, Oct. 4; it’s free and the tickets are all officially gone, but show up and you might get in.
• In one of the biggest musical events of the academic year, cellist Anssi Karttunen performs a monumental concert of works by well-known contemporary composers Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg and Pascal Dusapin, as well as UC Davis music professor Pablo Ortiz. The event will include screenings of dance videos with music by Saariaho and Ortiz. Monday, Oct. 26, free.
• The Lydian Quartet presents a concert of newish music including music professor Kurt Rohde’s Treatises for an Unrecovered Past, written for the group. Nov. 15 (the quartet also gives a free Noon Concert, Thursday, Nov. 12).
• The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra premieres music faculty member Sam Nichols’ cello concerto This Is Not A Toy for a Child, and also performs works by Olivier Messiaen and Jean Siebelius. Saturday, Nov. 21.

All music department events, with more details.

Exhibitions

The Design Museum is “Rattled” with an exhibition of baby rattles spanning several centuries. The rattles are on loan from designers Maynard and Lu Lyndon, founders of Placewares stores and LondonDesign. Sept. 21-Nov. 20, Cruess Hall. Reception and collectors’ talk, 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1.

“A Decade Later: Recent Acquisitions of the C.N. Gorman Museum” has been extended through Dec. 4. The exhibition in 1316 Hart Hall will be accompanined by a series of talks by artists in the show (to be announced).

Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanacer, or Art Workshop of the New Dawn, a community program of the Department of Chicana/o Studies, will present a solo show by Ruby Chacon, a Utah artist who specializes in figurative paintings and mural work. Oct. 9-Dec. 10, 1224 Lemen Ave., Woodland. Opening reception, 6-8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9.

Department of Art

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series includes Chei Fueki, whose work reflects her background of growing up in Japan and South America. Thursday, Nov. 12, Art Annex.

Art students have regular shows in the Art Building’s Basement Gallery. The best place for information is this Facebook page.

Department of Theatre and Dance

Patricia Miller, a teacher and director at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and artistic director of the Pollinator theater company, directs The Government Inspector, an 1840 comedy of errors by Nikolai Gogol, satirizes greed, stupidity and extensive political corruption. Nov. 12-21, Main Theatre, Wright Hall.

Writing

Opening Night, a fall tradition, is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, on the Wyatt Deck — a gathering of creative writing faculty members, reading from their work. Free.

The Creative Writing Program also plans an evening with Craig Santos Perez, who has published three poetry collections in a series titled From Unincorporafed Territory; and recipient of a 2015 American Book Award for the third part of that series, From Unincorportaed Territory: Guma'. Perez’s reading is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27, in 126 Voorhies Hall.

The UC Davis Humanities Institute has organized a series of Book Chats with UC Davis faculty authors. The chats will begin at noon in 228 Voorhies Hall.

• Monday, Oct. 26 — Sasha Abramsky, a University Writing Program lecturer, leads off the series with a talk about his new book about books: The House of Twenty Thousand Books. The memoir centers on his grandparents and their vast collection of socialist and Jewish history and literature.
• Wednesday, Dec. 2 — Claire Waters, a professor of English, talks about Translating Clergie: Status, Education and Salvation in 13th-Century Vernacular Texts — texts that responded to the educational imperative that individuals be responsible for their own salvation.

Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

It’s always a little hard to pick a few items from the stellar lineup of classical, jazz, Americana, pop, dance and more in the Mondavi Center’s lineup, but here are a few:

• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Monday, Sept. 21 (preceded by a free concert of “good time jazz” by Sacramento’s Crescent Katz in the Corin Courtyard).
• Twyla Tharp Dance Company 50th Anniversary Tour, Tuesday, Oct. 6.
• Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club Adios Tour, Oct. 7.
• Handel + Haydn Society: The Bicentennial Celebration Tour, Saturday, Oct. 17.
• In Conversation with Zadie Smith (her books include NW, On Beauty, The Autograph Man and White Teeth), Friday, Nov. 6.
• San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor, and Leonidas Kavakos, violinist, Thursday, Nov. 12.
• Akram Khan Company dance group, Thursday, Nov. 19.

Arts aficionado Jeffrey Day is communications and marketing officer in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

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