In their last concert of the ’09-’10 season, the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra (UCDSO) will present their annual Family Concert on June 3 at 7 p.m. at the Mondavi Center. Tickets are available to students for $5.

The concert will feature two pieces showcasing the winners of the two different competitions held at UC Davis.

Ching-Yi Wang, who won the UCDSO Composition Competition, will perform her original piece entitled, “Lament.” Wang is a UC Davis Ph.D. candidate in theory and composition and a teaching assistant with bachelor of arts and masters of fine arts degrees in theory and composition from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan.

“‘Lament’ is a piece dedicated to Taiwan, my original country. In August of 2009, typhoon Morakot destroyed the southern half of Taiwan seriously,” Wang said. “Hundreds of people in the mountain village of Shao Lin were buried by a large mudslide. I was very sad and decided to compose a work expressing my sorrow.”

The Composition Competition is extremely competitive and includes three different rounds. After the first round of submissions in January, the faculty selects five pieces. Then, the orchestra plays those five in February and the faculty selects two finalists. After the orchestra plays those two again in April, the jury selects the final piece.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for me to have my piece read by the orchestra two times, and even lucky to have the orchestra perform my work at a public concert,” Wang said.

Her winning piece will be featured during the concert and played by the full symphony orchestra.

“The piece starts with low register instruments such as cello, bass and timpani, indicating waves flood the coastal area and low-lying lands,” Wang said. “As for the second section, I used the initial melodic line of ‘Song of Farmers,’ a Taiwanese folk song. I hope this piece can encourage Taiwanese people to have positive attitude all the time.”

The UCDSO Concerto Competition will also feature a winning performance. This is the Concerto Competition’s first annual event, and any associated student is eligible to enter.

Andy Tan and Shawyon Salehi won the competition with their duet of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. Tan, who plays the viola, is a UC Davis graduate student studying music composition. Salehi, who plays the violin, is a first-year music major, specifically violin performance.

“Everybody practiced really hard and invested a lot of time and money,” Tan said. “We had to pay the piano player to accompany us for the competition.”

The competition itself was held in the Mondavi Center. Christian Baldini, the music director and conductor of the UCDSO, said the winners “won the competition with a superb audition, back in March” in an e-mail interview.

The two musicians began practicing several months independently and combined forces one month before the competition.

“One day Andy approached me and asked if I wanted to play the concerto with him. We barely knew each other,” Salehi said. “I learned the piece before and played around with it a bit, it’s one of my favorites. When he offered I couldn’t say no.”

Because of the steep competition, there will be two honorary mentions announced during the concert.

“We have a responsibility to not only just play but to play music, let the audience enjoy it,” Salehi said. “Without [the competitors] I wouldn’t have been here. The work they put into it really made me work harder.”

Baldini said that “in addition to Mozart and Wang, the concert will also feature music from a wide range of composers, including Piazzolla (who is from Argentina, like me), Liadov and Shostakovich (both Russian).”

The five pieces that will be performed during the concert will all be one-movement pieces.

“So many schools would be so jealous to hear how good our orchestra is, and how lucky we are of having the Mondavi Center,” Baldini said.

Although Baldini is the UCDSO conductor, Professor D. Kern Holoman will conduct the concert. Baldini will be conducting in Europe, so Holoman – who was the conductor for 30 odd years – has come out of his first year of retirement to conduct this concert.

“I’m an apprentice conductor all over again,” Holoman said. “It’s very humbling. I wouldn’t necessarily choose these pieces and I spent a lot of time learning them. It’s a concert I like a lot and am really looking forward to.”

BRITTANY PEARLMAN can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Duy Ha doesn’t feel the need to “catch ’em all.” Rather, the first-year psychology major is satisfied with his 200 caught Pokémon, and invitation to the National Pokémon Video Game Championships in this summer.

On May 15, Ha came out on top in the West Coast regional competition – living out childhood dreams as one of the best Pokémon trainers in the U.S.

“Everyone at some point has wanted to be the best Pokémon trainer,” Ha said. “They’ll deny it, but we all know it’s true.”

Ha argues that Pokémon is not just a collector’s card game or a videogame for kids. In a Pokémon tournament in Seattle, Ha saw a 40-year-old man competing along with his three kids.

“The game is deeper than people think it is,” he said. “It’s not just fighting. You have to strategize how your team is raised so that your stats will do well against other Pokémon.”

Ha battled for five hours in the San Francisco tournament with Cresselia, Rhydon, Kyogre and Abomasnow – his ideal lineup. He won a trophy, airfare and accommodations for Nationals in Indiana.

“I was in shock,” he said. “It was my first year playing [competitively] and a lot of people there already knew what they were doing.”

Pokémon has vastly changed since the days of the original 151. There are now 493 Pokémon and more are on the way. There is even a God of Pokémon now – Arceus, which possibly created the entire Pokémon universe.

“I don’t really pay attention to the story though, I just fight,” Ha said.

As long as the new Pokémon are aesthetically pleasing, Ha sees no problem with more additions. Competitively, Ha looks for Pokémon that can hit hard, are fast and preferably look cool, which are often the newer Pokémon. Ha also favors the newest Pokémon games for their improved graphics.

To prepare for tournaments, Ha will play with his brother, Huy Ha, and floor mates.

“I don’t get how Duy can remember half the stuff he does,” said Liam Fox, a first-year history and art major and Duy’s floor mate. “He’s definitely head and shoulders above anyone else I’ve seen play.”

Fox thinks Duy’s success can largely be attributed to his ability to understand all of the minute details required for competitive play.

“It’s all about knowing the game and knowing what to do any given situation,” Fox said.

Huy, a junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, battled in five official Pokémon tournaments already. He went to nationals and the world’s championships last year, which gave his brother the motivation to compete this year.

Even though Huy has played Pokémon longer than Duy and will also compete in nationals, he said there is no sibling rivalry.

“I wanted him to win San Francisco,” Huy said of his brother. “He deserves his chance at the spotlight.”

With his experience, Huy knows what to expect at nationals and thinks Duy has the ability to succeed.

“I think he’s learned really fast and has picked up the game really well,” Huy said.

Huy is nervous for nationals, feeling like there are high expectations for him given his past accomplishments. Duy isn’t feeling the pressure quite yet.

“I’m feeling pretty calm about it right now, but we’ll see in a month,” he said. “I’ll probably be nervous.”

The Ha brothers will both compete against Pokémon trainers from the Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta and New Jersey regions June 26 to 27. From there, the top 16 will compete in the Pokémon Video Game World Championships in Hawaii on Aug. 13 to 15.

If they qualify for the world’s championships, Duy and Huy will compete against 65 of their international rivals from Japan and Europe. Players fight to win travel packages, trophies and other Pokémon prizes.

Preparing for these tournaments will not consume their lives though, Duy said.

“We have our Pokémon lives and then we have our normal, regular lives,” he said. “We don’t spend most of our days just playing.”

This is typical of most Pokémon players, Duy said. Pokémon players generally are not like other gamers who may spend many hours a day in front of a computer.

Huy said he plays Pokémon between one and two hours per day at most. Duy also said he doesn’t devote that much time to Pokémon, rather, he enjoys playing soccer, basketball, hanging out with friends and having a normal college life.

JANELLE BITKER can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

These are the experiences we experience, the memories we create. The small defining moments we seek that make our day that much brighter. It is the meeting point of where the velvety texture of butter hits the tip of our tongue and dissipates over thousands of taste buds, or the sound of Frank Sinatra gliding across the air waves and breaking the chaotic bustling of aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers embracing for the first time in years.

The Matter of Taste, the theatre and dance department’s final Granada Artist-in-Residence performance this year, is a collection of stories which capture the essence of what the human experience is all about. It’s a place where we sit, talk, listen, laugh, shed tears and most importantly-eat.

As a Granada Artist-in-Residence and director from the U.K., Anna Fenemore brought a raw and refreshing element to the department of theatre and dance. Utilizing food as a central theme, Fenemore gathered an ensemble of vibrant faces and personalities.

Although creating an unscripted feel in a scripted production is not an easy task, Fenemore and her cast perfected it. The audience can’t help but fall in love with the cast because the characters are so relatable. When performer Heebeom Choe set the first scene with her bubbly personality and shy demeanor, it’s as though it was her first time on stage.

What have you forgotten? When did you last cry? Who do you miss? These are the types of questions Fenemore challenged the audience with. As each performer told their stories about recipes which have engrained a particular memory from their past, the audience was taken on an intimate journey about life, lovers, family, death and self-realization.

One of the most touching scenes took place with performer Avila Reese, who broke down in tears while talking about her recipe for “Heartbreak Sad Blue Soup.” Prior to finding love, Reese recalled making this artichoke-chicken soup alone in the kitchen – sad and desolate. With a live guitarist playing an acoustic tune in the background and the lights dimmed low, Reese uttered joyful words such as “He taught me to never humiliate garlic in hot oil ever again.”

But aside from the tears, The Matter of Taste captured the spirit and joyful nature of friends and laughter. During a scene where performer Sarah Birdsall asks Alejandro Torres and Jason Masino a series of questions, the seemingly unrehearsed and playful nature of Fenemore’s directing is highlighted.

Birdsall asked: “What meal would you cook me tomorrow morning?” Masino quickly replied: “Whatever I cooked for you last night.” Judging by the reaction from the cast members themselves, it is as though the one-liner response was an impulsive and unscripted response. With that, the cast members, audience and Fenemore (who sat in the audience watching the performance) laughed hysterically in unison.

Taking inspiration from various movies and shows, Fenemore inserted parodies and comical re-enactments of films and TV shows about food. Wearing a bra stuffed with onions, Daniel Jordon performed a memorable spoof from the movie Julie and Julia where Julie is on the floor sobbing about wrecking dinner. Another notable parody included Sarah Birdsall’ performance of Audrey Hepburn’s cooking scene – paired with Rage Against the Machine, of course.

There is no fourth wall in this production. Fenemore takes the barrier between the spectator and performer tears it down. At times, the audience forgets that they are watching a performance but instead, they are just another member of an unforgettable dinner party. The performers had a great time and it clearly translated to the audience. The spirit of food, fun, and laughter filled the air in every direction of Wyatt Theatre.

The unconventionality of the performance space perfectly suited the uniqueness and playfulness of the production. Like the sweet smell of onions sautéing on the stovetop, or sound of the audience’s uncontrollable laughter or sight of such a colorful and wonderfully vibrant cast, the senses triggered by The Matter of Taste combined to create an impressionable memory of its own. There won’t be another production quite like this for some time to come.

UYEN CAO can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Over 100 students lined up to dance to the music of the Super Mash Brothers on May 20 at Freeborn Hall. But even for first-time listeners, the tunes were familiar.

That’s because Super Mash Brothers creates mash-ups, or combinations of music originally created by other artists. Musicians, lawyers, corporations and music lovers alike have long debated the legality and legitimacy of the mash-up. And in today’s digital age, the argument is still far from settled.

American studies professor Ari Y. Kelman said that the mash-up has its roots in early music, before the term “mash-up” was even used.

“The cultural practices that led to the mash-up have been going on for a really long time, going back to jazz and folk music,” Kelman said. “A mash-up is any kind of retextualization of a known song. Usually you take the instrumental part of one song and the lyrical part of another song and you lay them on top of each other to create a new, third song.”

Kelman said that borrowing from other artists’ work is a commonly accepted practice in some musical genres.

“The old jazz practice of quoting other people’s music, or quoting another person in your solo, or even playing another person’s style in your solo, is out of respect,” he said. “Or, [it’s] out of a way to musically say ‘anything you can do I can do better.'”

Music professor Sam Nichols agreed that composers and musicians have a long history of borrowing styles to create new works – even in such respected forms as the symphony.

“Gustav Mahler, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, died 100 years ago. He was really the father of the mash-up,” Nichols said. “He was doing it in his symphonies, which was very high art and high culture. He was combining it in collage fashion, taking lots of different kinds of music and combining them simultaneously.”

However, the modern mash-up can be a touchy subject for musicians who do compose their own original music. Andy Jones, a professor in the University Writing Program, said that there is a fine line between taking inspiration from different musical elements and copying another artist’s work directly.

“Musicians are always taking things that have been created by others and we don’t fault them for that,” he said. “Where it gets tricky is the explicit use of someone else’s words, tunes, lyrics and also sounds.”

An early conflict occurred when 1970s hip-hop group The Sugarhill Gang used a sound from Chic’s “Le Freak” in their song “Rapper’s Delight.” Chic sued The Sugarhill Gang for compensation and won.

“The great concern is that, if you’re a copyright holder or if you’ve created something of value, it can easily become stolen, built upon and shared,” Jones said. “The value of your labor goes down. This is basically the concern of artists today.”

Nichols said that since younger generations have grown up with advanced technology, they are more accepting than older generations of allowing music to be made available for others to experiment with.

“Your generation gets that if there’s a little bit of selflessness up front then you can reap the rewards for that,” he said. “The older generation comes at it from a different point of view, that there’s a lot of drudgery and hard work and you have to have everything done a certain way.”

But with new options for protecting and sharing intellectual property now available, the mash-up has become accepted and even embraced by many people in the music industry. For example, the Creative Commons license allows individual artists to decide for themselves how protected they want their work to be.

Many musicians, including UC Davis technocultural studies professor Bob Ostertag and bands like Nine Inch Nails, even make their content available online for free so that others may use it in their own work.

The future of the mash-up as we know it today is uncertain. For some, the practice seems likely to continue as long as it can be done easily. Others, however, think the novelty of it may already be wearing off.

“Part of the appeal is it’s transgressive, just like rock and roll a few years ago,” Nichols said. “You know you’re breaking copyright. But more and more artists are releasing things under Creative Commons license, and that removes the whole transgressive aspect.”

Still, fans at the Super Mash Bros. concert didn’t seem to be weary of the mash-up just yet. First-year Jacqueline Garcia, a nutrition science major, said she thinks the Super Mash Bros.’ creations are entertaining and refreshingly different from other popular musicians today.

“There was this song that really shocked me,” Garcia said. “It had Coldplay’s piano, Pitbull’s “Dirty” lyrics, and “Mr. Sandman” just merged in. I thought it was hilarious. I really appreciated that because not many artists do that. And if they do, they don’t pull it off that well.”

ROBIN MIGDOL can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

There’s been a lot of talk about Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul in the news recently, and a lot of it is unsavory. Critics and pundits have hounded Paul, the recently hailed Tea Party leader who won the Kentucky Senate primary, after he stated on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” that he might not have supported certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The backlash against the media coverage and the interview itself has also been substantial. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin fired back at Maddow’s “gotcha” journalist techniques on Fox News Sunday, arguing that the real prejudice was within the interview itself, not Paul’s views on race.

After all, Paul’s point suggested that forcing private businesses to desegregate was inappropriate – a reflection of his own hands-off libertarianism that brought him both the nomination and his own first name (a reference to free market author Ayn Rand, his father’s ideological wet dream). It was not entirely out of reason, and Paul probably isn’t a racist.

But while media coverage on Paul might be excessive, it’s missing the point. Paul’s own brand of libertarianism, while still the lesser evil when compared to big-government neo-conservatism, is the problem itself. Paul and his followers represent an old-fashioned leap into the problems that sent us spiraling downward into a wrecked economy. It’s shocking that someone like Paul ever managed to get media attention in the first place.

Harry Shearer made a great point in a Huffington Post blog last Friday, arguing that the Civil Rights Act controversy was also missing the point. Shearer brought up a bigger issue: a predictable and unsurprising statement by Paul arguing that the BP oil spill shouldn’t be addressed by a blame game. “Sometimes accidents happen,” Paul said, after earlier calling Obama’s criticism of BP “un-American.”

He’s right. Paul is no different than the other frantic tea partiers – the same ones who would rather question the Federal Reserve than challenge anti-regulatory stances that brought us into this economic crisis in the first place. This is the real problem.

His supporters might not agree about the blame thing, though. Conservatives like Palin are playing the blame game themselves by criticizing the Civil Rights comment coverage – further driving the point away from Paul’s real flaws. Paul himself is now scared by the media spotlight – he canceled his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press and stated that his appearance on Maddow’s show was a “poor political decision.”

It’s also hard to forget the 2008 Internet frenzy over Ron Paul, the elder Paulbertarian who ran in the Republican presidential race. While this web sensation was pretty easy to avoid on campus – especially when conservative rhetoric is virtually nonexistent on campus this year – Ron Paul supporters stopped at nothing to promote the small-government agenda.

Connecting Rand Paul to his father might be a bit of a stretch, but both figures are expectedly similar in their views. Internet supporters on websites like Digg.com are quick to blame Rand Paul for faulty logic and political pandering, but they’re the same loudmouthed zealots that wouldn’t shut up about Paul only two years ago.

This isn’t about gaffes or clarifications. It’s about tea party movements that are actually succeeding. Accidents do happen.

JUSTIN T. HO hopes people get over their Ayn Rand phases soon. E-mail him at arts@theaggie.org.

This month, the Davis Cemetery will host an art show inside its office. Itself a work of art with its manicured green lawns, decorative tombstones and grass labyrinths, the cemetery’s show is titled “Layers of images, color and texture.”

The show will feature the artwork of Judith Monroe and will take place the entire month from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. A meet-and-greet with the artist will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. on June 13.

”’Layers of images, color and texture’ not only pleases the senses of the viewers, but inspires the feelings of spirituality and emotion with Judith Monroe’s work,” said Keri Pinkstaff, public relations representative for the Davis Cemetery. “By creating in several stages, she takes photographs of beautiful landscapes and colors them with a multitude of materials; sometimes colored pencils, acrylics or watercolors. The results are not only awe-inspiring, but always a pleasure to admire.”

Born and raised in Northern California, Monroe started off as a journalism major at CSU Sacramento but soon became captivated by photography. She proceeded to take every photography class offered at the school. While she loved taking pictures of all the places she ventured to, Monroe sought a medium that could encapsulate the myriad colors and feelings that film and photographic papers were not able to capture. By exploring through her own independent studies, Monroe found that hand coloring could help to record these feelings more accurately.

She experimented with art over the years that she and her husband traveled the world for her husband’s army career, and finally settled back down in Northern California to raise two toddlers and return to photography as a working artist. Having had her work on display at Tree Davis, the Blue Wing Gallery in Woodland and the Kennedy Art Center among others, Monroe now uses multiple media to get her personal vision across to viewers. She currently helps teach art education programs at local schools, museums and other organizations.

“My artwork is my invitation to viewers to join me on my adventures,” Monroe said. “Layers of images, color and texture invite closer inspection and reward with story and meaning. The adventure of wandering the landscape translates into the adventure of experimenting with a new media or substrate in the darkroom or studio.”

Monroe said that the work on display will include not only her newer work, but also some of her more traditional hand-colored black and white photographs from the past few years.

“My art often has an Edenic theme or references to the future heaven on earth,” Monroe said. “What I currently create can best be described as photo-based mixed media; I take black & white photographs and incorporate them into collages on canvas or wood panel, then I use layers of colored pencils & acrylic paints to pull the whole piece together.”

Cemetery community outreach director Joe Finkleman describes this show, and art shows in general, as means of communicating vision.

“Every art venue has its own vision, even an evolving vision, to bring to the public,” Finkleman said, whose photography is on display at the cemetery throughout this month. “I see this gallery as a way to present art that is sophisticated; a mature personal vision that the artists whom we choose have spent a lifetime seeking the truth in their hearts and translating this into a solid piece of work. It isn’t always pretty, but it is always beautiful.”

ELENI STEPHANIDES can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.