Florence Bayz Music Series
2024-2025 Florence Bayz Music Series
The Florence Bayz Music Series offers online concerts, lectures, and presentations of academic research by Department of Music faculty, postdoctoral researchers, students, and international guest artists and scholars.
Dr. Amy Skjerseth (she/her), Assistant Professor of Popular Music, coordinator.
Events during the 2024-2025 academic year will be held in person at ARTS 157 on Wednesdays at 12 noon.
Events are free and open to the public. Reception and light refreshments to follow.
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Parking
Free parking is available in Lot 1 Blue for all events in the Florence Bayz Music Series. To reserve your free parking permit, follow the steps provided in the individual calendar listings below.
Spring Quarter 2025
April 9
April 16
Ketty Wong on Ecuadorian composer Luis Humberto Salgado
April 23
April 30
Dr. Lorena Valdebenito, musicologist from Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile
May 7
International Contemporary Ensemble
May 14
May 21
May 28
Student Performance and Composition
June 4
Department of Music Annual Awards Ceremony
Winter quarter 2025
January 15
Dr. Joy Calico: "Blue Opera Studies in the Anthropocene"
Neither opera, nor the musicologists who study it, can save the oceans. Nevertheless, Joy Calico will argue that they *can* contribute to the imagination through an approach she calls Blue Opera Studies.
January 22
Dr. Alejandro Ataucusi: "The Peruvian Charango: Tradition and Innovation"
This lecture will explain and showcase the unique techniques developed in the Peruvian charango tradition. Additionally, an introduction on the hatun charango and its harmonic possibilities will be presented.
January 29
Sam Shin: "Syncopated Progress: Exploring Music and Technology"
This presentation will explore the interplay between music and cutting-edge technologies, focusing on issues such as the rise of generative AI, NFTs, and copyright and sampling. The discussion will focus on how these innovations are reshaping the creation, distribution, and ownership of music. Following this brief presentation, attendees will experience a collection of audiovisual works inspired by this research, blending elements of popular and experimental electronic music to highlight the creative potential of these tools. This presentation is designed to spark curiosity and conversation across all levels of musical and technological interest, from casual listeners to tech-savvy creators.
February 5
Todd Moellenberg, Kirsten Wiest, and Christine Tavolacci: "Changing Light: Contemporary Music for Voice, Flute, and Piano"
UCR Performance Faculty Kirsten Ashley Wiest (voice), Christine Tavolacci (flute), and Todd Moellenberg (piano) present a concert of works from the 20th and 21st century. Alongside composers Anton Webern, György Ligeti, Kaija Saariaho, and Henry Cowell, the program will include recent commissions by Emma Tucker, Tom Flaherty, and UCR Composition Professor Dana Kaufman.
February 12
UCR Chamber Singers: Valentines
Chamber Singers presents selections from our popular annual tribute to Valentine's Day -- songs of love, yearning, happiness and heartbreak. Features solo performances, the full choir, pianist Jonathan Keplinger and conductor Ruth Charloff, with pop, jazz, Broadway and far beyond.
February 19
Dr. Roberta Freund Schwartz: "1928 -- The Big Bang of Black Popular Music: A Story in Three Acts"
In 1928, three influential blues recordings - "How Long, How Long Blues," "It's Tight Like That," and "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" - traversed racial and genre boundaries in the recording industry. Their influence continued to reverberate during the following decades, and ultimately were fundamental in shaping black popular music's dominant styles: boogie woogie, rhythm and blues, jump blues, pop crooners, and rock 'n' roll.
February 26
In a world increasingly critical of specialized knowledge and of academic institutions more generally, a field like ethnomusicology might seem ill prepared to face questions concerning its real value. After all, what does ethnomusicology have left to teach us in 2025, nearly a century and a half after its origins in the field of comparative musicology? In this presentation, ethnomusicologist Jon Bullock offers a defense of the field by revisiting the decade-long trajectory of his own research on Kurdish music and media. While acknowledging ethnomusicology's historical entanglements with various forms of hegemonic power, he shows how the field's unique methods and approaches have ultimately enabled the identification and recognition of Kurdish musical culture in profound and exciting ways whose impact is truly global.
March 5
Student Performance and Composition Series
UC Riverside’s own music students present a diverse program of individual and small ensemble performances. Works presented include newly composed music and pop selections, as well as songs, arias, and instrumental pieces from the classical, jazz, and musical theater traditions.
March 12
Anaís Azul: "Simp'ashani: Canciones Trenzadas" (live)
Anaís Azul's debut album "Simp'ashani: Canciones Trenzadas" is a result of the research they conducted while on their Fulbright U.S. Student Scholarship, which gave them the opportunity to travel to Perú to study Charango and Quechua for 9 months. “Simp’ashani” began as a project compiling Andean music to create an album of multilingual (Quechua, Spanish, and English) reinterpretations of said songs using experimental production. Now, the album also includes field recordings, interviews, and original compositions about the journey Anaís has been on re-connecting to their Indigenous ancestry. In this live performance of the album, Anaís Azul will be featuring their dear friends iri.des (music production), Luis Ramirez (Sikus, Quena) and REN (Voice, percussion).
Fall quarter 2024
October 9
Connecting Dot: A Kindred Revue (Victoria Romano)
October 16
The Black Voice Shouts in Flamenco (Ricardo R. Paz)
October 23
Enrique Granados "Los majos enamorados" ("The Young Lovers) (Marisa Martins, soprano and Mac McClure, piano / Walter Clark organizer)
October 30
Latin American Digital Music (EDM): Rhizomatic Identities, Post-Geographical Territories (Emilia Moscoso Borja)
November 6
Getting Your Music Performed (Lorna Katz)
November 13
Sound Imaginations: Telematic Immersion (Paulo C. Chagas)
November 20
Why Women Went West: Women, Creativity and the Idea of the West. (Pamela Madson)
December 4
UCR Chamber Music presents Holiday Music (Frances Moore)