UCSC Music Department

The UCSC Music Department has updated some Music course numbers, titles, and prerequisites for 2024-2025 academic year, effective in the Fall 2024 term. Scroll through to see some of the changes slated for next year! Also make sure to check out the last two slides for a list of brand-new courses we’ll be offering in the upcoming year, starting with this Summer Session!

2nd/3rd/4th year Music majors - please see an exciting new employment opportunity, and follow the link below to apply! For questions, please contact our Undergraduate Programs Coordinator Cory Graves-Montalbano directly at [email protected]

Music Department Undergraduate Peer Advisor | Handshake The peer advisor position assists the Music Department Undergraduate Programs Coordinator in offering foundational advising to students.Between its four major tracks, three minor tracks, and Large Lecture courses, the UCSC Music Department serves over 6,000 students annually at the undergraduate...

Janet Noguera, UCSC Music Alumni and guitarist, has just dropped her new single "Refuge"! Listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekPKQ2G8-C8 Congrats on the release Janet!

Refuge - Janet Noguera ⋆ R e f u g e ⋆ from the upcoming album, Myriad Worlds, 2022This is a short tune that came to me two year ago from the comfort zone while working on more pai...

Keshav Batish is an alumnus of our UCSC Music undergraduate and master’s programs who released his record “Binaries in Cycle” in tandem with his master’s thesis. Since then, “Binaries in Cycle” has been reviewed by four arts news media outlets such as Downbeat, JazzTimes, Mercury News, and KQED. Read what everyone is saying about Keshav’s record at these links:

Downbeat
https://downbeat.com/reviews/detail/binaries-in-cycle

JazzTimes
https://jazztimes.com/features/profiles/keshav-batish-sees-meaning-in-confusion-on-debut-album/

Mercury News
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/07/06/with-new-release-keshav-batish-builds-on-famous-fathers-legacy/amp/

KQED
https://muckrack.com/media-outlet/KQEDArtsandCulture

"UC Santa Cruz will celebrate the 60th anniversary of John Coltrane’s iconic Africa/Brass with jazz virtuoso Charles Tolliver joining the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Choir in a reimagining of the work.

The live performance, featuring Karlton Hester as a soloist and Charles Hamilton as a performing artist will be at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4 at the UC Santa Cruz Mainstage. Presented by the Music Department, the show is being directed by Charles Tolliver and emceed by KPFA-FM and KCSM-FM radio host/producer, Greg Bridges.

Tickets are $5-$30 and available at ucsctickets.com. (COVID–19 protocols will also be in place for this in-person performance.)"

Read more of this press release written by Scott Hernandez-Jason at https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/11/africa-brass.html

Jazz virtuoso Charles Tolliver to reimagine Coltrane’s iconic ‘Africa/Brass’ on 60th anniversary UC Santa Cruz will celebrate the 60th anniversary of John Coltrane’s iconic 'Africa/Brass' with jazz virtuoso Charles Tolliver joining the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Choir in a reimagining of the work.

UCSC Music has three Giving Day initiatives for this year:

UCSC Opera has $2,750 in matching funds; gifts will support the 2021-22 productions, including Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

Music Ensemble hopes to offer three public concerts featuring UCSC faculty and students, dedicated to voices in global, diasporic, popular, improvised, and experimental music.

Music Diversity Scholarship is dedicated for students whose work is aimed at critiques of racism, racial injustice, and cultural marginalization in music and society.

Please consider donating! The link to the Arts Division Giving Day Initiatives will be in the link in our bio. Thanks!

Happy Giving Day! UCSC Music has three Giving Day initiatives for this year:

UCSC Opera has $2,750 in matching funds; gifts will support the 2021-22 productions, including Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. You can donate to this initiative here: https://givingday.ucsc.edu/giving-day/41378/department/42320

Music Ensemble hopes to offer three public concerts featuring UCSC faculty and students, dedicated to voices in global, diasporic, popular, improvised, and experimental music. You can donate to this initiative here: https://givingday.ucsc.edu/giving-day/41378/department/43316

Music Diversity Scholarship is dedicated for students whose work is aimed at critiques of racism, racial injustice, and cultural marginalization in music and society. You can donate to this initiative here: https://givingday.ucsc.edu/giving-day/41378/department/42218

Please consider donating to these initiatives or feel free to share them with people who would be interested! Thank you!

We are hiring work study student assistant positions for the front desk offices at the UCSC Music Department? Apply through our job posting ER #7097 at http://www.careercenter.ucsc.edu/ers/erspub/main.cfm to become a Student Assistant today! We are looking forward to meeting you!

Graduate Spotlight: Nick Hidy!

It’s tough being a performing arts major when all the performing arts spaces are shut down.
That’s the predicament in which Nick Hidy found himself in early 2020. Hidy plays the French horn and trombone, and was a key member of several UCSC Music Department ensembles.
All his work depended on being on stage with an audience.
“COVID wiped that out in totality. Adapting was extremely difficult,” Hidy said.
But, as they say, out of adversity comes innovation, and that’s what happened, “especially at UC Santa Cruz,” says Hidy, 20, who will graduate with a bachelor of music degree in music performance and is headed to the University of Washington for at least a master's degree in music performance.
“Santa Cruz has been a great springboard to graduate school,” he said.
Hidy misses performing live but noted that he and other students were able to create new musical projects that could only be possible in a virtual setting (https://soundcloud.com/brianbaumbusch/isotropes).
The Music Department considers him a great resource because of his knowledge and assistance in making remote recordings for online performance presentations.
For his senior recital project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhr1T5Bt-OE), he created a video collage of himself playing across campus using his phone and “a cheap tripod.”
“It was a lot of fun," Hidy said. "I wanted to include the campus not only because it’s pretty but to bring people closer to the campus because everyone has been away.”
Hidy said the campus’s beauty is what drew him to UC Santa Cruz. He grew up in Sebastopol where his dad is a bamboo fly rod maker and his mom a nurse. He was inspired to play the horn by his brother, a trumpet player.
He took up the French horn in sixth grade “because it looked cool.” He really wanted to play the alto sax, too, but the school didn’t have one. The teacher said he could play trombone, so he did.
What really propelled him to music was a summer jazz camp where he learned to improvise.
He played in the county symphony and all the bands his high school offered. Looking toward college he chose UCSC even though it’s not known as a music conservatory.
“I think a smaller department allows individual students to have a more focused experience,” Hidy said. “I enjoyed the small scale.”
Hidy will graduate after just three years at UCSC.
“It’s a little bittersweet for me,” he said. “Just about half of my education has been online.”
Speaking of bittersweet, Hidy is also a recipe developer at a Santa Cruz chocolate maker.
“Food and music hit the same synapses in anyone’s brain,” he said. “When you taste food there’s a level of harmony of flavors. Food and harmony are pretty much the same thing.”

Written by Guy Lasnier
https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/06/hidy-nicholas-commencement.html?ref=co21