UC Davis Department of Music presents their annual Concert Bands series
By ELIZABETH BUNT — arts@theaggie.org
On Wednesday, March 5, the Mondavi Center hosted saxophonist Michael Hernandez as a featured soloist alongside the UC Davis Concert Band and Campus Band, directed by Pete Nowlen and Garrett Rigsby respectively.
Led by Hernandez, the bands played a selection of eight pieces, each from different composers. The highlight of the program was the penultimate composition, “Eyes to Look Otherwise” by Juan Sebastián Cardona Ospina, which was both dedicated to and commissioned by Hernandez. This concerto was inspired by a painting, “The Song of Creation” by San Francisco-based artist Tino Rodriguez.
Currently based in the Bay Area, Hernandez has been described as one of the finest soprano saxophone artists of the present generation. He has been heard in concert halls throughout Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, Holland, Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
Hernandez has also held residencies at dozens of music festivals, including Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, National Music Festival, Music in the Mountains, Taneycomo Festival Orchestra and the Festival of New American Music. When he isn’t touring, Hernandez is a music professor at San José State University and is the principal saxophonist for the Santa Cruz Symphony.
Hernandez’s most recent project — which made an appearance at the Mondavi Center concert — is entitled “Latinx Storytellers.” This is a multi–sensory performance described as part concert, part installation and part gallery that focuses on the voices of Latinx artists, their art and the stories of the artists who inspire them.
The program tackles topics such as U.S.-Mexico border relations, sex trafficking, LGBTQ+ rights, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, xenophobia and climate change, as well as the concept of artistic inspiration and what it means in today’s society. In compiling these compositions, Hernandez has collaborated with prominent Latinx composers to try to capture all of the facets of storytelling through combinations of music, spoken word, film and other artwork.
“In storytelling, the listener imagines the story [and] creates the vivid, multi-sensory images, actions, characters and events — the reality — of the story in his or her mind, based on the performance by the teller and on the listener’s own past experiences,” Hernandez said. “The completed story happens in the mind of the listener, a unique and personalized individual. The listener becomes, therefore, a co-creator of the story as experienced.”
Hernandez plans to perform the “Latinx Storytellers” project at several more universities this spring. If UC Davis students missed the Mondavi Center performance and would like to see Hernandez in action, he is scheduled for a number of performances in San José in the upcoming months. The locations and dates for these shows can be found on the Michael Hernandez website.
Written by: Elizabeth Bunt — arts@theaggie.org
