Making Music in a “New Normal

Graduate violinist Gulia Gurevich gives a private concert to residents at an assisted living center as part of her work with Hospice of the Conejo (photo by Richard Gillard/Acorn Newspapers)

Department of Music faculty, students, and alumni help connect communities during the COVID-19 pandemic

When traditional performance venues were shuttered in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UC Santa Barbara Department of Music faculty and students were forced to think creatively to reach their audiences. Within weeks of the university’s shift to remote operations, Music faculty and students were already adapting and sharing music both virtually and in socially-distanced settings.

Shortly after remote operations began, Sarah Gibson, Teaching Professor of Composition in both the Department of Music and College of Creative Studies, was invited by violinist Jennifer Koh to write a piece for Koh’s latest project, “Alone Together.” Koh created the commissioning project and performance series as a means of support for composers during the coronavirus pandemic, and to reflect the widely varying emotions of this quarantine time. Gibson’s new piece, You Are Still Here, was premiered live by Koh on Saturday, April 11, 2020 via Facebook and Instagram, and is now available on-demand on Koh’s YouTube channel (youtu.be/fTSHo2Rq8IU).

Jill Felber, Professor of Flute, and alumna Catherine Marshall ‘18 collaborated on a series of videos highlighting Felber’s vast repertoire, particularly her “Fusions,” combinations of classical and popular songs that she arranged with pianist Dianne Frazer. These arrangements pair a popular contemporary

classical flute piece such as Ian Clarke’s Orange Dawn with a well-known classical piece such as Richard Strauss’ Morgen, or Stanley Myers’ classical guitar piece Cavatina and Harold Arlen’s Over the Rainbow (watch the video at youtu.be/JliayTXIbyo). “A few years ago, Dianne and I created seven mashups, or fused pieces, combining vocal music with flute music, movie tunes with classical music, and hymns with folk music,” said Felber. “Catherine was engaged (while we are sheltering in place) to create beautiful images to add to our fusions in hopes of warming the spirits of our community.”

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, Associate Professor of Voice, presented a Mother’s Day concert as a premiere via her YouTube channel (watch the video at youtu.be/5fgx7kXkMfg) on Sunday, May 10, 2020. Bayrakdarian dedicated the concert to “the Blessed Mother Mary, and in honor of all mothers, Creation, and Mother Earth,” and was joined by harpist Ellie Choate and organist Ben Krikorian from the beautiful (but empty) St. Paul Armenian Apostolic Church in Fresno, California. The program included sacred songs and prayers in many languages, as well as recitations of the “Ave Maria” in seven languages (Armenian, Arabic, Italian, English, French, Spanish, and German). Bayrakdarian noted that “the multilingual musical selections were specifically chosen to address and heal current human conditions experienced universally, including fear, hopelessness, and grief, along with songs that move the spirit, and give strength and vigor to it.”

Lecturer and violist Jonathan Moerschel was featured as a member of the Calder Quartet during the 2020 Ojai Music Festival, which took place virtually from Thursday, June 11 to Sunday, June 14, 2020. In the absence of an in-person festival, the virtual festival featured prerecorded conversations and performances by artists and composers that would have performed or had their music performed live at this year’s festival, such as Ensemble intercontemporain, the Calder Quartet, composers Olga Neuwirth and Steve Reich, as well as Music Director Matthias Pintscher. The organization released a curated list of links to videos and audio recordings for each day of the festival, which included recordings of John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts and Charles Ives’ String Quartet No. 2 by the Calder Quartet. For Saturday’s program, the Calder Quartet served as the featured artists and participated in a prerecorded conversation hosted by Ara Guzelimian, the Artistic Director Designate of the festival (video available at ojaifestival.org/saturday-june-13th/). Violinists Lecturer Jonathan Moerschel Benjamin Jacobson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers discussed the effects of the pandemic and isolation on the quartet, Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131, as well as the quartet’s expansive and varied repertoire.

Jonathan Moerschel

Assistant Professor of Cello Jennifer Kloetzel recorded a duo performance with pianist Andrew Gerle of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” from The Carnival of the Animals (watch at youtu.be/hDcvzgD0uoU). Kloetzel and Gerle produced the video as “an homage to performers and audiences everywhere during this extended intermission.” The duo has produced other demo videos in their recording project, titled “Cantilena,” including recordings of works by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Manuel de Falla, Carlos Guastavino, and Johann Sebastian Bach, which can be viewed on their YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UCmEMF_5M8ZvEi1vyNdgRFeA).

Kloetzel was also featured as a virtual guest lecturer with the Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara, having recorded a 41-minute lecture on the repertoire that was to have been played by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for the final concert in CAMA’s 2019-2020 International Series, originally scheduled for Monday, May 18, 2020 at the Granada Theatre. The concert was to have been led by conductor Jaime Martín, featuring solo cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Kloetzel, Head of Strings at the UC Santa Barbara Department of Music, was asked to speak about music by Camille SaintSaëns, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Derrick Spiva, Jr. for the video, which was shared via email with CAMA’s patrons. Watch each part of the lecture at the links below:

Part 1: Derrick Spiva, Jr. (bit.ly/34CItqp)

Part 2: Camille Saint-Saëns (bit.ly/3ox4Ipp)

Part 3: Ludwig van Beethoven (bit.ly/3kLrabW)

“I had been scheduled to give the preconcert talk before the May 18 LACO concert," said Kloetzel. "When the remainder of their season was cancelled in March, they reached out to see if I would be willing to record something to send out to their subscribers, related to that May 18 program. I had about 5 days to dive into the music and with nothing more than my iPhone, my computer (cued up to 10 musical examples, praying that no YouTube ads would play instead of the musical examples!), a tripod, and some serious enthusiasm for the repertoire, I recorded the talk in one single take! I am missing performing so much right now, but this filled that gap for a few days.”

Jennifer Kloetzel

Associate Professor of Musicology Derek Katz was also featured as a guest lecturer during the pandemic, in a UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures Culture at a Click email from Spring 2020. Professor Katz gave a lecture on Beethoven’s music, titled “Beethoven’s Great Fugue: From Incomprehensible to Profound,” recorded exclusively for Arts & Lectures patrons. Watch the lecture at wfly.co/g2M4K.

UC Santa Barbara graduate students collaborated with music organizations in the community and internationally to uplift and inspire music lovers from around the world. Valdis Jansons (baritone) and Erik Lawrence (piano) presented a virtual concert in partnership with Quarantine Concerts and the Verbier Festival on Wednesday, June 24, 2020. The program included works by Modest Mussorgsky,

Henri Duparc, Roger Quilter, Ernesto De Curtis, Salvatore Cardillo, and Enrico Cannio, and was performed live from St. Athanasius Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Santa Barbara, CA. Jansons, an alumnus of the Verbier Festival, is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice and studies under Associate Professor Isabel Bayrakdarian. Lawrence is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Accompanying and studies under Professor Robert Koenig.

Graduate violinist Gulia Gurevich has been giving socially-distanced performances for terminally ill and elderly patients in Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village, and was featured in the Thousand Oaks Acorn for her work with Hospice of the Conejo. When asked what it was like performing for these new audiences, Gurevich told the Thousand Oaks Acorn: “It’s wonderful. To see tears in their eyes is a touching thing.” Gurevich is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the studio of UC Santa Barbara faculty member Ertan Torgul.

UC Santa Barbara alumni have played a major role in helping communities return to normal, through both music-making and philanthropic work. Inspired by an opportunity to help his performance colleagues, alumnus Nick Norton ‘18 created the Equal Sound Corona Relief Fund to provide direct financial assistance to musicians who lost work as a result of coronavirus-related event cancellations. For many freelance and contract-based musicians, those cancellations meant they were left without any source of income. As the founder and Artistic Director of Equal Sound, Norton positioned the 501(c)(3) to receive donations that would go straight to musicians in need. The Equal Sound Corona Relief Fund is one of a handful of performing arts relief efforts that have received national attention from publications such as Billboard and The New Yorker, as well as from opera star Renée Fleming. At UC Santa Barbara, Norton studied with Clarence Barlow, Curtis Roads, Joel Feigin, and Andrew Tholl, and received his PhD in Composition in 2018.

UC Santa Barbara alumna Sara Aronson has been giving socially-distanced performances of wind chamber music during the pandemic as a horn player in the Royal Swedish military band, Livgardets Dragonmusikkår. An elite brass-only ensemble, the group serves as one of three full-time bands in the Swedish armed forces. While large ensemble concerts and rehearsals are not possible, the pandemic enables an extensive number of chamber groups to play with widely varying instrumentation. These include performances, as well as recordings, in the Stockholm area. As a Swedish citizen, Aronson enrolled at UC Santa Barbara midway through her professional career to study horn with Professor Steven Gross. At UC Santa Barbara, Aronson performed in the scholarship Maurice Faulkner Brass Quintet and received her Master of Music in Horn Performance in 2018.

Sara Aronson

We look forward to seeing the continued creativity of our faculty, students, and alumni over the coming months, as they remain dedicated to connecting communities worldwide through inspiring performances, lectures, and more.

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