Christian Baldini, music director and conductor
UC Davis Professor of Music

Schumann: Allegro affettuoso from the Piano Concerto in A Minor
with Erica Mineo
Winner of the Concerto Competition
and undergraduate music student

Daniel Godsil: Cathedral Grove
Winner of the Composition Award
and UC Davis graduate student composer

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9

$12 Students and Children, $24 Adults (Assigned Seating)

Read more about our graduate composition program.

On June 1, the Symphony Orchestra, performs a program titled “Breathtaking Motion,” which includes Schumann’s Allegro affettuoso from the Piano Concerto in A Minor with soloist Erica Mineo, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, and the premiere of doctoral student Daniel Godsil’s “Cathedral Grove.” The symphony is conducted by orchestra director Christian Baldini, Barbara K. Jackson professor of music.

Godsil, whose music has been described by San Francisco Classical Voice as having an “intense dramatic narrative,” is the 2018-2019 winner of the orchestra’s Composition Award.

“This composition was inspired by a visit to Muir Woods, a redwood forest north of San Francisco,” said Godsil. “One particular grove of the forest has been dubbed the ‘Cathedral Grove’ for its towering beauty; the grove reminded me of a passage from John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley: In Search of America.’”

Godsil’s works have been played by Ensemble Dal Niente, the Lydian String Quartet, the Empyrean Ensemble, the Metropolitan Orchestra of Saint Louis, the Daedalus String Quartet, and the Nova Singers, among many others. Film scores include the PBS documentary “Boxcar People,” new scores for Man Ray’s 1926 silent film “Emak-Bakia” and feature film “The First Men in the Moon” by H.G. Wells.

Winner of the music department concerto competition, Mineo, a second-year undergraduate student majoring in biological sciences and minoring in music and animal science, has performed as a soloist with the Southwestern Music Festival and Beach Cities Symphony orchestras, and the Winchester Orchestra of San Jose. She was a three-time state finalist in the Celia Mendez Beethoven Competition at San Jose State University.