I am delighted to bring you the first issue of Cadenza for the 2023-2024 academic year! We have already had three exciting weeks of rehearsals, auditions, and performances since the start of the marching band pre-season work in mid-August, and our students and faculty are eagerly preparing for performances beginning next week. We look forward to welcoming you to UTSA’s Main Campus – and several other exciting venues throughout the year – for a wonderful season of performances!
If you are available for a mid-day concert, please join us on September 5th at 11:30 a.m. in the UTSA Recital Hall, when our faculty will present a “Meet the Faculty” concert. It’s a whirlwind program and a great opportunity for you to meet many of our wonderful colleagues. Our first concert of the year in the Coates Chapel at UTSA Southwest will feature the Texas Guitar Quartet on September 13th at 7:30 p.m. And our first student ensemble concert will be the annual Sombrilla Concert on September 21st at 7:00 p.m. Read ahead for information about our upcoming September concerts.
Feature articles in this issue include our Alumni Spotlight on Speech-Language Pathologist Randi Wooding (MM 2015), a “travelogue” from our guitar faculty, an article about On-Corps, our beginning band for veterans, and an introduction to several new faculty in our School of Music this year.
We are inspired to begin a new academic year leading into the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the School of Music in all its forms at UTSA, and we are grateful for all of you who support our work to learn and share music with those around us. As we begin this new concert season, we look forward to warmly welcoming you to celebrate with us all that the arts bring to our lives!
Tracy Cowden Roland K. Blumberg Endowed Professor in Music and Director
October 09 – Performance
Linsay Kesselman, soprano
Kimberly Luevano, clarinet
Midori Koga, piano
BALLET NEPANTLA
October 17 – Performance
Ballet company combining classical ballet with ballet folklorico presents a performance of their show Mística
November 13 – Masterclass
Kari Boyer
Allison Asthana
Sarah Shin
Chelsea Tanner
AGARITA
December 09 – Performance
Sarah Silver Manzke, violin
Marisa Bushman, viola
Ignacio Gallego, cello
Daniel Anastasio, piano
REENA ESMAIL , composer
March 03-08 – Guest Composer
New Music Festval 2024 artist
BRINGING WORLD-CLASS ARTISTS TO SAN ANTONIO
PABLO GARIBAY, guitar
March 09 – Performance
Southwest Guitar Symposium 2023 artist
ALAN WOO, piano
March 25 – Performance
Hugh Hodgson School of Music - University of Georgia
ABBIE CONANT, trombone
April 09 – Performance
Staatliche Hochschule für Musik
DAVID RUSSELL, guitar
April 20 – Performance
Grammy Award-winning artist
An ensemble of faculty and guest artists is set to kick off the UTSA School of Music’s 2023-2024 concert season on September 13th. The school will be hosting the Texas Guitar Quartet to give the first concert of the Fall semester inside Coates Chapel at the UTSA Southwest campus.
The quartet’s lineup consists of UTSA guitar faculty members Dr. Isaac Bustos and Dr. Alejandro Montiel and artists Joseph Palmer and Jay Kacherski. This particular line up of the quartet has performed together for close to five years, giving concerts domestically as well as in other countries outside the United States
The quaret’s upcoming concert at the San Antonio chapel features a diverse program consisting of the following works: Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet, Alborada del Gracioso by Maurice Ravel, Reveirie (from Miroirs) by Claude Debussy, Tocata en Salsa by Aurero Puerto Carreno, and Egmont Overture, Op. 84 by Ludwig Van Beethoven.
All five pieces encapsulate a variety of different musical thematically through their Spanish influences, as well as the
music of Latin America found within Carreno’s work.
The arrangement work of Dr. Bustos on the Alborada and Egmont Overture and that of Dr. Montiel on Reverie breathes new life into these works arranged for four guitars. Bustos aims to showcase “the versatility of colors that the instrumentation and arrangements bring to those traditional pieces you know” so that audiences can experience them in a new way.
The guitar quartet is a rare musical arrangement. However, it offers a wide dynamic range due to the classical guitar’s versatile sound and rhythmic capabilities.
“That (versatility) is one of the things that the guitar brings....it doesn’t have the fullness of an orchestra, or resonance of a piano, but you can experience or experiment with color, timbres, and variety of dynamics....softness and beauty,” explained Dr. Bustos.
Tocata en Salsa is the only piece on the program composed explicitly for a guitar quartet in its original working. The Texas Guitar Quartet had the work written by Aurero Carreno three years ago. It will be
one of the featured tracks on their upcoming record that is expected to be released later this year.
“It’s a virtuosic piece.....I think it’s a very audience friendly piece as well. People really enjoyed it when we did play it,” said Bustos.
Dr. Bustos and Dr. Montiel were founding members of the quartet over twenty years ago when they were graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music. It was around 2009 that they established themselves as the Texas Guitar Quartet. Joseph Palmer and Jay Kacherski were colleagues at UT Austin, with Kacherski joining the quartet in 2017 and Palmer joining in 2018. Their concert at Coates Chapel will be open to the public and presents a unique opportunity for San Antonio’s central communities to experience a fun classical guitar concert at no cost for admission.
Dr. Isaac Bustos and Dr. Alejandro Montiel have performed many concerts and recitals together as Duo Fortis. They are fresh off from an excursion to Peru in August, where they gave two performances.
The duo first performed by themselves at a concert in Arequipa on August 4. Their next date came on August 11 at an event called Festival Internacional de Guitarra “Ximénez Abril” in the historical city of Cusco. There, the duo gave the Peruvian premiere of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto Madrigal with the Cusco Symphony Orchestra.
“Al (Alejandro) and I were very impressed with how professionial they (the orchestra) were and how great they sounded.....I would say a high-level professional orchestra,” commented Dr. Bustos on the Cusco Symphony Orchestra.
The music of Joaquin Rodrigo has been a significant focus of Dr. Bustos’s research and creative work. His Concierto Madrigal is a virtuosic piece that is seldomly performed, often being overshadowed by his monumental Concierto de Aranjuez. Bustos and Montiel have performed it many times, with their solid foundation as a duo proving to bring the best out of Rodrigo’s composition. .
After an eventful week in Peru, the duo are now back in San Antonio as classes at UTSA
resumed
The UTSA Lyric Theatre has unveiled its upcoming 2023-2024 season. The season, launching with the tagline “something for everyone,” presents six vastly different stage productions for the year and looks to continue its efforts in making musical theatre collaborative and widely accessible to diverse audiences.
The UTSA Lyric Theatre is a significant performance organization within the University of Texas at San Antonio School of Music, where the performing actors and actresses are all voice students. The rising voice program at the university has produced several successful vocalists over the past decade who’ve graced opera stages worldwide, such as 2024 Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner David Portillo, tenor Rafael Moras, and soprano Jennifer Black.
For the past couple of years, the theatre has been trending in an ambitious direction, with plans for this year so far setting a new precedent for the scale of its operations. In place of well-known operatic works and famous musicals are recent original scores and off-Broadway productions on the show schedule. Collaborations with other departments of UTSA and commissioned composers are in place to craft a meaningful lyric theatre season for the community to experience.
“I look forward to presenting a work in Catalan (El gato con botas) and am thrilled to work with Maestro Troy Peters and his orchestra on our Verdi Project. Our students have the chance to make music in new ways, and I know it will be a win for us,” said Dr. Jourdan Laine Howell, professor of voice instruction and the UTSA Lyric Theatre’s long-time director.
“I am also starting 4:Epigrams, which will be a reoccurring series that features four mini-operas with at least one commissioned work per iteration of the series,” said Howell.
The UTSA Lyric Theatre’s 2023-2024 schedule is as follows: the first installment of a series titled 4:Epigrams (November 17-19), Chloe and the Magical Christmas Forest (November 27), El gato con botas (March 2124), Songs for a New World (April 4-7), and the Verdi Project (April 24). Dr. Howell will serve as director for each production, except for Songs of a New World, which Dr. William McCrary will direct.
With rising production costs and inflation taking its toll on all industries, the price of admission to professional
years. The result has been severely limited opportunities for those in less fortunate economic situations to experience the magic that only happens in the theatre. Non-profit organizations like the UTSA Lyric Theatre have taken it upon themselves to fill this gap in the community by making opera and musical theatre more accessible to the public.
As seen last Spring with its production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music held at the Wonder Theatre at Woodlawn, the theatre has made efforts to reach into the community of San Antonio beyond the campus grounds. With single-show tickets ranging from $5 for students to a ceiling of $15 for general admission, these productions are an extremely affordable avenue for different audiences to experience musical theatre.
In addition to live performances scheduled for the season, the UTSA Lyric Theatre will also be collaborating with UTSA Film and Media Studies to produce Opera on FIlm. The project marks the second time since a student group documented the production of Fall 2022’s Cindrellion that the theatre group collaborates with the university’s film department within last year. Jourdain Howell is working with composer and School of Music events manager Wesley Penix to create a meaning piece for the film that is inspired by the personal experiences of her students.
Tickets for the UTSA Lyric Theatre are expected to be available for purchase as early as late September at colfa.utsa.edu/music/tickets.html. Check UTSA School of Music social media accounts for more UTSA Lyric Theatre ticket announcements.
Since its inception in 2022, UTSA Art’s innovative program On-Corps has offered weekly group music instruction to veterans with no prior musical experience required and provided a meaningful artistic challenge while fostering connection among its members. The program goes as far as to include instrument loans and participation at absolutely no cost to veteran students.
The health and well-being of our veterans is an important cause that resonates with most Americans. Many veterans struggle with their mental health upon completing their services or later in their lives, with depression and PTSD being common diagnoses. With San Antonio’s significantly higher-than-average veteran population, the city needs programs focused on improving veteran health and well-being.
One method of therapy that studies have shown to evoke strong, positive emotional responses and increase cognitive ability is play ing music. With the many health benefits of music still being actively explored, On-Corps is in a great position to flourish and provide a valuable case study on how music can affect the everyday lives of veterans and their families. The program enters its second year of operation when classes resume on September 9th.
Dean L. Zarmbinski, Major, USAF (ret.), will be returning as the director of On-Corps for its second year. Zarmbinksi is a UTSA Music alum from the Class of 1989 and former member of the Air Force Band of the Pacific and Band of the West. He teaches the class every Saturday morning and conducts the ensemble with UTSA music students and faculty working alongside him to provide additional instruction to the veterans.
The program saw impressive growth and retention in its first year. Twenty-two of the original twenty-five On-Corps members from Fall 2022 returned for Spring with a 55 percent growth rate to 45 members. For returning members, the program will now offer a new jazz band class during its Fall 2023 semester in addition to the standard concert band ensemble.
The progress made by the class in one year has been nothing short of incredible. When the class had their Spring recital in May 2023, many of the veterans had no prior experience with music before September 2022. In spite of this, national hymns such as “America the Beautiful” sang out beautifully in the UTSA Recital Hall.
In addition to being covered by multiple news sources, On-Corps is also the subject of an upcoming documentary set to release this Fall. Ireland Robinson is a sophomore UTSA Film and Media Studies student and has been working on documenting the project since its birth in 2022. Her vision for the documentary, eponymously titled On-Corps, was to tell a story about the lives of the veterans, examine their motivation for participating in the program, and explore its impact on their well-being.
Ireland and her team captured over seven hours’ worth of interview footage and a large amount of B-roll footage throughout her time around the program. Ireland would get her team together for every other Saturday that On-Corps met to film during classes. At some point in the project, Robinson began working with The Sauce Productions, a local video production group in San Antonio whom she described as “incredible filmmakers” to enhance the cinematography level for the interviews with veterans.
“I wanted to do the interviews inside the veteran’s homes to really immerse the audience within their lives...[to capture] what goes on outside of rehearsal and why they take the time to go do On-Corps,” said Robinson.
The documentary is currently undergoing edits to create a concise film. Throughout the process, the project’s size continued to outgrow everyone’s expectations as the crew became increasingly invested in the real-life story unfolding before their eyes. Robinson found her initial plan of including three interviews in the documentary insufficient for the narrative and opted to do six interviews.
“In documentary filmmaking, you just want to capture human experience and to tell the stories that are happening now or in the past,” said Robinson. “It’s a great way of storytelling that I really enjoyed.”
Robinson was touched by the stories she heard while making the film, such as that of On-Corps member Eddie Silva, who is featured in a documentary interview. Silva, who had spent the last few years caring for his late wife, found new ways to enjoy life and “keep alive” through his local church choir and performing in On-Corps.
Other veterans, such as Deborah Pike, had some prior experience with their instruments. For Pike, who had previously played music in high school, On-Corps was an opportunity to revisit her passion and be a leader in helping her fellow veterans open themselves up during the process. Robinson was captivated by the fantastic progress the ensemble made in so little time.
“The energy in the room whenever I walked in was filled with happiness and the desire to grow... it’s great opportunity for them, and I feel so grateful to be there to witness it all happen within their lives,” said Robinson.
The documentary will premiere at a screening hosted by the Film and Media Studies program at the Santikos Entertainment Palladium Theatre in November. The UTSA School of Music will post updates on the screening’s official date as the information becomes available on our social media channels.
Randi Wooding, M.M., M.S., is a speech-language pathologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center who graduated from UTSA in 2016 with her Master of Music degree in Voice Performance and Pedagogy. For Ms. Wooding, her knowledge of human speech functions and her experience teaching voice lessons formed the bridge between her passion for music and her newfound career in speech pathology.
Wooding began her journey as an undergraduate student at the former UTSA Department of Music. After receiving her B.M. in Vocal Performance, she continued her studies as a graduate student in the school’s Voice Performance and Pedagogy program. The program encompasses vocal technique and teaching methodology by exploring indepth topics such as voice development and production, acoustics, physiology, and anatomy. The program gives graduate students a deeper look into the science behind vocal mechanics and pedagogy to foster a thorough understanding of voice teaching methodology. The subject material introduced Wooding to the clinical world through the scope of a musician.
“I would definitely say my vocal pedagogy classes laid a really excellent foundation. And voice science, like acoustics, aerodynamics, and physiology...those are all things we learned in vocal pedagogy,” said Wooding. “We even learned about voice disorders. Even though [at the time] I wasn’t going be treating those disorders, it was still important for me to recognize them in my students.”
While at UTSA, Wooding taught voice lessons to students for her voice teaching practicum. For her capstone, she researched how vibrato extent (how far the frequency of a tone is displaced above and below its mean value in each cycle) and vibrato rate (number of frequency oscillations per second) affected what people perceived as singing in a “straight tone,” or a non-vibrato tone. Her research article was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Voice (2016). She would go on to present her research at voice conferences, most notably the Voice Foundation in Philadelphia, PA, where she first met speech-language pathologists who specialized in voice. Their field, which Wooding described as a “blending of the medical world and the musical world,” was an eye-opening discovery for the thengraduate student that further piqued her interest in voice anatomy and physiology.
Wooding eventually relocated to Maryland with her husband in 2019, where she decided to enroll in graduate school at the University of Maryland that Fall to study Speech-Language Pathology. She received her M.S. from UMD in May 2021. After completing her second graduate degree, she was accepted for a clinical fellowship at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, which she spent as a general outpatient speech-language pathologist from April 2022 until March 2023. Field experience
was key to her medical education, as she was required to maintain a full academic load and a full clinical caseload, which was a formidable challenge in sharp contrast to her research activities as a graduate music student at UTSA.
“It’s very clinically oriented...it’s all about getting in as much time with patients as possible,” explained Wooding.
Since completing her fellowship at John Hopkins, Wooding has worked full-time at GBMC. In her role as a voice speech-language pathologist, half of her workload consists of evaluations at the clinic where she works with otorhinolaryngologists or ENT (ears, nose, throat) doctors to diagnose patients with speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication, and swallowing disorders. These screenings begin with an in-depth case discussion followed by an oral peripheral exam to evaluate the mouth’s speech production and swallowing function.
As a voice SPL, Wooding measures the acoustic properties of a patient’s voice and how much airflow is being used in their voice production during her evaluations. She also performs laryngoscopies, where a tiny camera enters through the mouth or nasal cavity to examine a patient’s vocal cords for any issues or pathological conditions. Wooding likened her role in these evaluations to discover the root of her patient’s symptoms to her previous experiences as a music teacher.
“We, as music teachers, are like the diagnosticians. You’re listening to the sound of your student’s voice, and you’re trying to diagnose, ‘Where is the breakdown? Are they doing something weird with their breath? Is it their embouchure....where do we need to target to fix that problem?’ It’s the same process for us in the clinical world,” said Wooding.
When Mrs. Wooding isn’t handling ENT evaluations at the clinic, she engages with patients through therapy. Following the patient’s diagnosis and symptoms, Wooding will prescribe a voice therapy plan to help rehabilitate their vocal functions. Different evidenced-based therapy techniques lay a good foundation for balanced speaking and singing. Her methods include resonant voice therapy, breath support techniques, flow phonation techniques, semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, and others.
The process of instructing patients on therapy techniques to tackle their issues or rehabilitate their bodies is another area that Wooding compares to her methods as a voice teacher.
“I use a lot of the same techniques from when I was teaching voice lessons. It’s kind of like the same thing; we’re trying to help our patients just like we try to help our students get a good balance between the subsystems of respiration, phonation, and resonance,” explained Wooding.
Though Wooding’s line of work is very rigorous and requires an extraordinary amount of energy and focus, she considers herself to have reached a point of stability in her role. She’s thinking about her future with music as she sees herself having time to return to singing very soon. Some ideas that Wooding has floating around in the realm of possibility include getting back into a studio with a private voice instructor for a lesson, auditioning for a role in musical theatre, and even getting involved with the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
As the role of music in health continues to be explored, crossovers such as Wooding’s journey to the medical world through her musical foundations become possibilities that open more opportunities for music students to find a fulfilling career post-graduation.
Hector Garcia is the conductor for UTSA University Band and the director for UTSA Athletic Pep Band. Hector graduated with a master’s degree in instrumental conducting from UTSA in 2023 under the mentorship of Dr. John Zarco and Ron Ellis. He taught high school and middle school band for three years prior to attending UTSA. As a band director he taught brass and woodwind beginning band classes, marching band, concert band, and jazz band. In 2019, Hector led the Memorial High School Marching Band to the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington D.C. He has a bachelor’s degree in music education from Texas State University and his primary instrument is trumpet. Hector is a native of San Antonio, TX, enjoys photography, and his favorite food is sushi.
Miles Jefferson Friday is a composer and educator who aims to construct communities where sound can serve as a site for critical inquiry to be realized, not just in the abstract, but in practice. Within this guiding principle, Miles’s creative output acts as a form of project-based research, where he utilizes music technologies and engages with theoretical scholarship as a means of exploring personal subjectivities of auditory reception, re-thinking instruments and/as objects, and proposing ways in which sound-based practice can operate more dynamically and equitably.
Creating work in acoustic, electronic, digital, installation, and instrument-building based media, Miles aims to treat music composition not as a singular, codified medium, but as a methodology that has the capacity to house a wide spectrum of artistic inquiries in sound, technology, and related arts. Miles’s works have been performed across the United States and internationally by ensembles such as the AIR Contemporary Music Collective (China), Ensemble Dal Niente (USA), Ensemble InterContemporain (France), Ensemble Suono Giallo (Italy), the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (Russia), the Tacet(i) Ensemble (Thailand), the Tönkunstler Orchestra (Austria), the Wet Ink Ensemble (USA), and Yarn/Wire (USA). Additionally, Miles has exhibited acousmatic works and multi-media installations at festivals such as the SinusTon Festival (Germany), the International Computer Music Conference (Ireland), the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium Thailand), and the SEAMUS Conference (USA). Miles holds a BM in music composition from Indiana University (2016), an MA in music composition from the Eastman School of Music (2018), an MFA in music composition from Cornell University (2021), and a DMA from Cornell University (2023). In the fall of 2023, Miles will join the University of Texas at San Antonio School of Music as an Assistant Professor of Digital Music.
Praised for displaying “great poise and masterful technique” and possessing “an amazing rich tone” by The Day, cellist Yi Qun Xu has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States. A native of China, she came to the U.S. after winning multiple top prizes in Chinese national cello competitions.
Yi Qun is the recipient of the 2022 Presser Music Award and the firstprize winner of the 2021 New York International Artists Cello Competition. As the winner of the 2018 Sanders-Juilliard-Tel Aviv Museum prize, she was presented in recital at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She is also the first prize winner at the International Antonio Janigro Competition.
As a passionate chamber musician, she has been heard at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Cellists of Lincoln Center Concert and the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival. She has collaborated with artists including Itzhak Perlman and members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Tokyo, Ébène Quartets. Her performances are featured on Alec Baldwin’s podcast “Here is the Thing” and WQXR’s “Midday Masterpieces.” She can be heard on tours with Musicians from Marlboro during both 20212022 and 2022-2023 seasons.
Yi Qun is a member of The Juilliard School Pre-College and Music Advancement Program faculty as well as the Assistant Professor at University of Texas San Antonio. She also serves as Joel Krosnick’s teaching assistant at The Juilliard School. Yi Qun has taught at the Perlman Music Program’s Winter Residency, and she is on faculty at Heifetz International Music Institute’s Junior Program. She has performed for community engagement events for communities throughout the United States and China. Yi Qun is the founding co-Artistic Director of Noree Chamber Soloists.
Linda Jenkins is an ardent collaborative musician and educator recently based in Denton, TX. She frequently collaborates with local composers as a soloist and chamber musician and can be heard playing with various ensembles in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex.
Linda is thrilled to join the music faculty at The University of Texas at San Antonio for Fall 2023 as a part-time Flute instructor, having taught flute at North Central Texas College and a variety of secondary schools in Plano and HEB ISD during her time in Denton. She competed live on a number of regional and national flute stages, including the NFA 2023 Young Artist Competition. Linda has recently been a guest performer at NFA, as well as the MidAtlantic, Atlanta, and Florida Flute Association Festivals. Her teachers have included Terri Sundberg, Molly Barth, Conor Nelson, Elizabeth McNutt, and Amy Taylor.
An educator, composer, electronic musician, and vocalist from Atlanta, GA, J. Andrew Smith (b. 1992) is zealous about the intersections between acousmatic sound, live performers, and improvisation. His works often delve into personal narratives and how they can inform and enrich abstract mediums. Musical characteristics such as timbre, gesture, space, and form are often dictated by a delicate interlacing of autobiography with poetry and fiction in J. Andrew’s music. He embraces the convergence of complex structures with elements of improvisation to give performers agency without losing coherence or cogency in his music. As a vocalist, he maintains a passion for visceral, guttural, strange, and electrifying sounds.
J. Andrew’s works have been performed at numerous SEAMUS conferences, the SPLICE Institute and Festival, Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, New Music on the Point, Electric LaTex, PASIC, and the Southeastern Composers’ Symposium. He has participated in readings with Michael Lewanski, the Spektral Quartet, the Semiosis Quartet, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, he was selected as one of the four finalists in the ASCAP/ SEAMUS Student Commission Competition for his piece Arbitrary/Peremptory for voice and interactive electronics.
His dissertation Utterances; Approaching a New Acousmatic Praxis examines the philosophical roots of acousmatic music and attempts to modernize Pierre Schaeffer’s conceptions of sound and emphasize the significance of the ways that sound is used by composers as the crux of a modern acousmatic praxis.
A graduate of the University of North Texas’s PhD program in Music Composition. J. Andrew’s teachers have included Jon Nelson, Joseph Klein, Panayiotis Kokoras, Andrew May, Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Christopher Dietz, Fred Cohen, and Matthew McCabe. Additionally, he has worked with artists and performers such as Jordan Walsh, Colin Stokes, Diana Rojas, Sean Lopez, Lisa Kaplan, Matthew Duvall, and Conner Simmons.
Currently Assistant Professor of Practice in Music Technology at the University of Texas San Antonio, J. Andrew has taught electronic music and composition classes at Bowling Green State University, Owens Community College, and the University of North Texas.
The summer cycle is always a significant affair for the UTSA Voice Area, as they host one of the UTSA School of Music’s most prominent summer camps (UTSA All-State Choir Camp) in June. However, it was also incredibly significant this year as the area had a large representation in New York City at one of the most storied venues in history, Carnegie Hall.
As we covered in May, Dr. Yoojin Muhn conducted the Masterwork Festival Chorus and New York City Chamber Orchestra for a performance of Mozart’s Requiem on June 12, 2023, at Carnegie Hall. 25 UTSA choral students and alums accompanied Muhn to perform with 150 professional singers from across the country in the venue’s main hall, the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage.
“Getting to perform at Carnegie was such a beautiful experience. It’s been my dream since I was a little girl to perform there, and being under those lights, the acoustics, doing what I love with people I love, it made me cry,” said Madison Blanco, a UTSA voice alum who graduated in Fall 2022.
“The trip not only allowed me to showcase my love for and commitment to being part of a choir but also provided me with a platform to learn from and get to know other talented musicians,” said Valerie Crawford, a senior Medical Humanities student. “Our performance and applause to follow was a humbling reminder of the power of music to bring people together and evoke emotions that transcend language and cultural barriers.”
“Being able to experience New York and a professional working musician environment for a little under a week with my fellow choir members brought us much closer together as a group and helped us experience what our future careers could look like,” said Antonio Zubillaga, a senior Voice Performance student. “Thanks to Dr. Muhn, we were able to put out a performance to be proud of, and the long-standing ovation we received will be forever one of the highlights of my time at UTSA.”
MAESTRIA CONCERT SERIES
Meet the Faculty Concert
11:30 A.M. | UTSA Recital Hall
TEXAS GUITAR QUARTET
7:30 PM | Coates Chapel, UTSA Southwest Campus
SOMBRILLA CONCERT
7:00pm | Sombrilla, John Peace Library
UNIVERSITY BAND
3:00 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
IMR DON HODGES LECTURE SERIES
Trineice Robinson-Martin: Inclusive Pedagogy
7:30 PM | Faculty Center Assembly Room, John Peace Library
SYMPHONIC BAND
Kaleidoscope
7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
UTSA ORCHESTRA
Rapsodia Mexicana
7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
WIND SYMPHONY
Power
7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
SAN ANTONIO CHAMBER CHOIR
with the UTSA Chamber Singers
7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
UTSA JAZZ COMBO
7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
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