Viola student Lucy Strauss was awarded an Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Explore grant over the summer for her telematic performance research, supervised by Prof. Marina Thibeault and Dr. Bob Pritchard. Her research explored themes of musical heritage and distance through improvised works for viola/mbira, dancer, and pre-recorded audio and video clips. Performed using web connections between Canada and South Africa, the audio/video processing was controlled by data generated by the sound and movements of the performers.
Ethnomusicology doctoral student Jason Winikoff recorded #Zoombia, a series of one-man African drumming ensemble videos that fundraised a total of $1,560 for five Zambian drum and dance troupes struggling to make ends meet during the global pandemic.
In November, cello students Adrian Pang, Jungeun Choi, Lyla Lee, Bruno Quesada, Aireleen Zhou, and Nila Golmaghani recorded the classic Beatles’ song “Let It Be,” arranged for cello by Adrian and based on an earlier arrangement for cello quartet.
President Santa Ono launched Songs of Comfort on social media during the lockdown, a series of comforting home performances by UBC musicians and more. Many UBC Music students and groups were featured: Emily Logan, Adrian Pang, Sodam Lee, Yiyi Hsu, Siliang Wang, Thomas Pantea, harp trio Nathania Ko, Madison Dartana and Hayley Farenholtz, Rosea, Ubuntu String Quartet, Vitara Duo and more.
UBC Music student Aaron Graham performed a marimba arrangement of the Beatles classic “Blackbird” for the Isolation Commisions project by Little Chamber Music, which supports front line artists and fosters musical reflections on the pandemic.
UBC Music students contributed video performances to Connecting with Compassion — a project launched by the UBC Faculty of Medicine that brings virtual concerts to isolated seniors living in long-term care homes across British Columbia. Read the feature story in High Notes (Fall 2020) for more information!
Seventeen-year-old composition student Maggie Lu had her new work, ”Fantasia through the Eras,” featured in a video by the YouTube-famous classical music duo TwoSet Violin.
Sodam Lee
Nathania Ko, Lucy Strauss, Sodam Lee and Carlos Savall Guardiola took part in Sonic Responses, a collaborative project between the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the UBC School of Music led by Curator of Outdoor Art Barbara Cole, musicology professor Dr. David Metzer and DMA piano student Judith Valerie Engel. The project invited eight musicians to respond to the changed aural conditions of UBC’s outdoor spaces due to the pandemic.
Kaia Stoesz was commissioned by Field Notes Presents to compose “Pacing,” a work for viola and pump organ. “Pacing” was premiered by alumni Robyn Jacob (BMus’11) and Newsha Khalaj (BMus’12) in an outdoor concert at Hadden Park, hosted by Publik Secrets.
Three UBC Music student teams — Vanessa Mak, Kelly Li and Ayumi Yaesawa (video, left); Devon Throness and Hudson Throness; and Catherine Akune, Bruno Quezada and Daniel Tong, were shortlisted to the final voting round of Quarantunes, a music competition hosted by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities that encourages students to inspire each other and their communities by making music during the pandemic.
