Pacific Percussion Ensemble

Tuesday I Tuesday, April 11, 2023 I 7:30 pm

Piru Bole (1986)

Open Your Eyes (2013)

Kugelblitz (2022)

Lullaby (2022)

Una luz an la neblina distante (1994/2000)

Kyle Bruckmann, oboe

John Bergamo (1940–2013) Ivan Trevino (b. 1983) Jane Damon (b. 2001)

Mary M. Denney (b. 2002)

Batucada

Orlando Jacinto García (b. 1954) Traditional

Pacific Percussion Ensemble is open to students of every major at the University of the Pacific. Under the direction of Jonathan Latta, students are presented with a wide range of percussion literature that represents diverse composers, showcases unique chamber music settings, and exposes audiences to dynamic performances of the percussive arts.

Robin Bisho

Jonathan Herbers

Matthew Kulm

Daniel Lopez

Mallory Norman

Artist Biography

Oboist and electronic musician Kyle Bruckmann tramples genre boundaries in widely ranging work as a composer/ performer, educator and New Music specialist. His creative output—extending from conservatory-trained foundations into gray areas encompassing free jazz, postpunk rock, and the noise underground—can be heard on more than 100 recordings. Three decades of chameleonic gigging have found him performing in settings including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Venice Biennale, CBGB, Berghain, a twelve-foot diameter bomb shelter, and dangling thirty feet in the air by a harness from a crane.

Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003, Bruckmann has performed as a substitute with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras while remaining active within an international community of experimental musicians and sound artists. From 1996 until his Western relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago’s thriving indie scene; long-term projects dating from that era include Wrack, the electro-acoustic duo EKG, and the artpunk monstrosity Lozenge.

Bruckmann serves as the program director of chamber music and assistant professor of practice in oboe at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music. His other current affiliations include Splinter Reeds, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Quinteto Latino, Eco Ensemble, sfSound, and the Stockton Symphony. He has premiered dozens of works as a soloist and within these ensembles, working in particularly close collaboration with composers such as Olivia Block, Linda Bouchard, Gabriela Lena Frank, Michael Gordon, José-Luis Hurtado, Maija Hynninen, Sky Macklay, Paula Matthusen, Myra

Melford, Amadeus Regucera, Theresa Wong, and Eric Wubbels. Thanks to his uncommon distinction as an improvising oboist, he has performed and/or recorded with Creative Music progenitors Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton and George Lewis, and worked extensively for bandleaders such as Andrew Raffo Dewar and Lisa Mezzacappa.

Bruckmann earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic honor as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Master of Music degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.

Director

Jonathan Latta serves as a program director of ensembles and associate professor of practice in percussion. Since 2014 Latta has served in leadership roles in the Conservatory of Music, Office of the President, and Enrollment Management. He also maintains an active performing career as a percussionist, having performed with the Stockton Symphony, Modesto Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Stockton Concert Band, and the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra in Durango, Colorado. He is a member of the Stockton Friends of Chamber Music Board and the Stockton Scholars Advisory and Impact Board.

Prior to Pacific, Latta was the director of percussion studies for six years at Fort Lewis College in Durango, teaching applied percussion, percussion ensemble, non-Western music, orchestration, and jazz. He taught percussion at the University of the Pacific from 2016 to 2017 while serving in his role as assistant dean. Latta was chair of the University Pedagogy Committee for the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) for six years and a member of the PAS Education Committee.