Getting young people excited about classical music can be
difficult. In an effort to interest a wider audience,
tonight’s chambermusic@ucla faculty concert will include
student performers and an eclectic music selection.
The series continues tonight with a show titled “Strings
and Reeds.” Featured faculty include adjunct associate music
Professor Peter Yates on guitar and adjunct assistant Professor
Douglas Masek on saxophone. Music Professors Gary Gray and Walter
Ponce ““ on clarinet and piano, respectively ““ will also
perform, along with guests and student players. The combination of
student musicians and faculty members aims to bring in a more
youthful audience.
“Without them, the selections I’m playing
wouldn’t work,” said Masek of the students. “They
have really reorganized their schedules for rehearsals, to be an
integral part of this program, and to share their talents with
faculty in this performance opportunity.”
Masek, slated to play soprano sax in three pieces, emphasized
the wide variety of music of what he called an eclectic program. He
was especially enthusiastic about the use of the soprano sax in a
concert setting, and highlighted Arthur B. Rubinstein’s
“DreamCycle.”
“It’s one of the only pieces I’ve seen of this
kind where there are two solo lines, one using soprano sax and the
other solo violin,” Masek said. “It’s going to be
something really unique and different for the listening
audience.”
Masek also performs pieces by Argentinian tango composer Astor
Piazzolla and Allan Stephenson of South Africa.
After being contacted and organized by music professor Roger
Bourland, the faculty members suggested pieces to perform. Masek,
Gray and Yates were the primary decision-makers in this aspect.
Yates also noted the range of music scheduled for performance.
“I hope to give a concert of the kind where if I were to
stumble into it halfway from off the street I would find myself
immersed in an unusual musical world,” he said.
Yates will perform Luciano Berio’s Sequenza No. 11 for
guitar and Jonathan Grasse’s Aubades, Diurnes and Nocturnes.
Music professor Mark Kaplan suggested the Berio piece after he
performed Sequenza No. 8 for the violin during an earlier
chambermusic@ucla performance last October.
The piece by Grasse, a visiting assistant ethnomusicology
professor, is a fusion between Brazilian and contemporary styles
written for the Elgart-Yates Duo (comprised of Yates and Matthew
Elgart, also performing), who will premiere it tonight.
“The two range from the almost obsessive and ecstatic kind
of very free music in the Berio piece to the Grasse piece, more of
a groove kind of music that has a pulse and harmonies that are
gracious,” said Yates.
The other scheduled piece is Johannes Brahms’ Sonata in F
minor, Op. 120, for clarinet and piano. All this, Yates hopes, will
result in the kind of concert he himself would like to hear.
In any case, Masek feels the students win.
“UCLA has a great performing faculty. They have true
artists on staff. I think that’s going to be another
dimension the students are going to be hearing. They’re going
to be hearing artistry up close and personal.”
“Strings and Reeds” will start today at 8 p.m.
in Schoenberg Hall. Student tickets are $7.