News Archive

January 17, 2017 — The University of California San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities is committed to interdisciplinary collaboration. Consistent with that approach is the Department of History’s Distinguished Professor Paul Pickowicz and Department of Literature Chair Yingjin Zhang, who have coedited the new book, “Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). The book includes essays about a Chinese film group led by Wu Wenguang, a former artist-in-residence at UC San Diego, who first revealed the struggles of rural people at a time when China’s state-controlled media depicted a thriving, modern country. The book’s debut happens to coincide with Pickowicz’s announcement of his retirement after more than 40 years. He will deliver a parting lecture entitled, “Very Close Encounters: Modern China at the Grassroots,” Jan. 18, 3 to 5 p.m., at the Faculty Club on campus.

November 17, 2016 — UC San Diego’s Lei Liang will be the focus of a Nov. 17 Composer Portraits concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. The series is dedicated to leading composers of new music. Liang’s concert, which features fellow UC San Diego Department of Music faculty members Steven Schick (conductor) and Mark Dresser (contrabass), includes the world premiere of “Lakescape V,” a Miller Theatre co-commission. Also on the program: the New York premiere of “Luminous” (2014), Ascension (2008) and Serashi Fragments (2005).

October 21, 2016 — Composer Roger Reynolds’ “FLiGHT,” which premieres Oct. 30-31 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, is the latest landmark in a career distinguished by a quest for new modes of making music. It combines spoken word, musical performance, computer sound processing and video to create an immersive multimedia experience.

October 6, 2016 — Visitors to Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles are now being transported into a cloudy rainstorm as they ride escalators through an enveloping atmosphere of clouds, light and sound to reach the renowned music hall. The multimedia installation “Nimbus,” which includes six clouds concealing 32 speakers that rain music down on guests, opened Oct. 1. The captivating environment was created by a team that included Yuval Sharon, artist-collaborator for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and UC San Diego professor of music Rand Steiger, the project’s composer and sound designer.

May 5, 2016 — From the experiences of an East African immigrant working as a dishwasher to those of a long-term, loving couple, UC San Diego’s 2016 Wagner New Play Festival features five new plays, May 3 – 12, in The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District located on the La Jolla campus. Two of the premiere pieces, described as highly personal and powerful, are by award-winning M.F.A. playwrights in the Department of Theatre and Dance.

April 7, 2016 — In a departure from the traditional concert hall experience, pianist and music graduate student Todd Moellenberg will perform onstage to empty seats in the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. The audience will view his six-hour concert, “Observation Dock,” backstage—from video monitors that present Moellenberg’s performance of pre-recorded sounds, movement and spoken word.

February 25, 2016 — Composer Hilda Paredes used the Mayan calendar as the basis for her solo percussion piece, “Tzolkin,” with soft eerie pulses suggesting the passage of ancient time. In a sense, her music bridged the divide between modern Mexico and its poor indigenous communities. Paredes’ work, and other compositions from around the world, will be performed Feb. 26 – 28 at UC San Diego Department of Music’s Intercultural Music Conference (ICM). More than 80 composers, scholars and performers will present three days of lectures, concerts and panel discussions exploring music in our rapidly evolving intercultural landscape. They’ll consider music in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Mexico and other locales. Concerts will showcase both traditional and contemporary music.

February 12, 2016 — When playwright Deborah Stein and director Suli Holum began working on the musical comedy “Movers + Shakers” in 2012, it was the height of the presidential election season and they were amused by the foibles of politicians such as Sarah Palin and Anthony Weiner. Flash forward to 2016 and another election year. The players have changed, but the intersections of “sex, power and hubris” portrayed in the play, which premieres Feb. 13 at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District at the University of California, San Diego, are just as fascinating.

February 5, 2016 — A 2013 University of California, San Diego M.F.A. graduate in acting, Ngozi Anyanwu, has won the inaugural Humanitas Prize for “Good Grief,” a play about a first-generation Nigerian girl dealing with love and loss in a small Pennsylvania town. Chosen from more than 230 submissions, “Good Grief” will be presented in staged readings Feb. 12-14 at the Humanitas Play Festival in Culver City.

January 27, 2016 — UC San Diego Department of History Professor Natalia Molina, who also teaches urban studies and serves as associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity and equity, was recently awarded the 2015 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book, “How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts.” Molina’s publication examines Mexican immigration from 1924 to 1965 to understand how broad themes of race and citizenship are established. She will discuss her research publicly as the next keynote speaker in the Division of Arts and Humanities’ Degrees of Health and Well-being lecture series, Wednesday. Jan. 27, 7:00 p.m., in UC San Diego’s Great Hall.