Under the direction of Dr. Maxim Kuzin, the UC Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra will present "Nocturne" from Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61 on Monday, April 26, 2021 at 6 pm PDT as a YouTube Premiere via the Department of Music's YouTube channel. Dr. Maxim Kuzin and the members of the UC Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra are proud to present this immortal masterpiece, one of the most beautiful and pure musical depictions of love, to the public. Viewers will have the chance to hear a mesmerizingly gorgeous horn solo, a staple of the instrument's repertoire, rendered by UC Santa Barbara undergraduate Dylan Correia, a student of Professor Steven Gross. For this special virtual production, each of the performers recorded their individual parts from their homes during Fall 2020. 

 

Graduate vocalist Naomi Merer (soprano) will present a virtual Doctor of Musical Arts lecture recital, titled "Get thee to an asylum: reflecting on the evolution of mental illness and its portrayal in Thomas’s operatic mad scene," with pianist Mandee Madrid Sikich on Saturday, May 8, 2021 at 4 pm PDT as a YouTube Premiere via the Department of Music’s YouTube channel. Merer will perform excerpts from Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia by Jake Heggie and Hamlet by Charles Ambroise Thomas. Merer is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate from the studio of UC Santa Barbara Professor Ben Brecher.