This Thanksgiving, gives thanks for the arts in our community. Many of this weekend’s events were covered in last week’s Arts Blog, but we link to them again and hope you look forward too to the holiday and other concerts and events on the horizon. The Arts Blog will take Thanksgiving off next Thursday (our normal publishing day), so we preview some concerts you won’t want to miss when you come back super-stuffed. Don't forget to enjoy Thursday's noon concert featuring a little-known string instrument. Read on.

Karen Nikos-Rose, Arts Blog Editor

The noon concert is the Valencia Baryton Project

Thursday, Nov. 16, Pitzer Center, 12:05 p.m. – 1 p.m., free

Hailing from Valencia, Spain, this trio will perform music written for the baryton, a little-known string instrument. The trio performs music by Franz Joseph Haydn from Austria in the 18th century and music written in the last three years by John Pickup and Steve Zink.

Program

• Franz Joseph Haydn: Baryton Trio No. 67 in G Major
• John Pickup: Prelude 1 (2021) 
• Haydn: Baryton Trio No. 113 in D Major
• Haydn: Baryton Trio No. 87 in A Minor
• Steve Zink: The River (2020)
• Haydn: Baryton Trio No. 71 in A Major

Free, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert

Jazz Combos

Otto Lee, director

Tuesday, November 21
5–7 p.m., at the Ann E. Pitzer Center

More information on all UC Davis concerts.

Light Festival is Saturday, 3 – 7 p.m.

The first UC Davis Light Festival — a free, family-friendly event that combines festivities of both the Asian and Pacific Islander, or AandPI, and Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian, or MENASA, communities — will be hosted by the UC Davis Cross Cultural Center on the East Quad from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18. 

The Davis campus community can enjoy a variety of food and craft vendors, community activity booths and live performances by student organizations. The community activity booths includes henna and face painting, as well as crafts like origami, diya lamp painting, kite making and lantern decorating. Attendees are encouraged to bring a lawn chair or a picnic blanket to sit on the lawn and enjoy the entertainment, including classical Indian dances, a Hmong fashion show and a Chinese orchestra performance. 

Read the full story.

Ongoing exhibitions at UC Davis

The Gorman Museum of Native American Art newly reopened in its bigger, better space in September. The opening exhibition “Contemporary California Native Art” includes about 40 works by 20 artists, all members of California tribes. There are more than 2,000 works in the total collection.

The museum is open noon to 5 p.m. on weekends and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and admission is free.

Closed Monday, Tuesday and University holidays.

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The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis features in its fall season internationally acclaimed sculptor Deborah Butterfield, pioneering Chicano activist artist Malaquias Montoya, and abstract painter Ayanah Moor. Visit the museum website for more details and additional programs.

Thanksgiving hours: 11 a.m.–6 p.m Nov. 24, and 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Nov. 25 and 26. The museum is open through Dec. 17, 2023.

Art Spark 
1–4 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays, Carol and Gerry Parker Art Studio

November: Ink, Print, Resist and Repeat: Explore the visual language of protest through poster-making evoked by the printmakers in Malaquias Montoya and the Legacies of a Printed Resistance.   

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Design Museum

Newly acquired garments and textiles from around the globe are featured in the exhibition “Cultural Crossroads: Recent Acquisitions from the Jo Ann C. Stabb Collection,” open at the UC Davis Design Museum.

Read a story about all of these exhibitions

UC Davis presents gender-bending ‘As You Like It’ 

Wright Hall Main Theatre, UC Davis campus, Nov. 16, 17, 18, 30 and Dec. 1, 7 p.m.; and Dec. 2, 2 p.m. 

By Michael G. French

William Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It” gets a contemporary gender-fluid update by the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance. Directed by alumna Josy Miller (Ph.D., performance studies, ’15), the classic opens the department’s 2023-2024 season on Nov. 16 in the Main Theatre, Wright Hall. 

In the play, ambitious Duke Frederick deposed and banished his brother, the rightful Duke Senior. At an online gaming contest, Rosalind, daughter of the Duke Senior, becomes enamored of the gamer Orlando. But before they can pursue their mutual attraction, Rosalind finds herself banished by her vengeful uncle. Disguising herself as a young man, Rosalind flees to the Forest of Arden for refuge along with her cousin Celia and the court’s fool Touchstone. Once there, the trio find themselves entangled in a series of rustic romances and misadventures.

Colin Minigan, a doctoral student in music composition at UC Davis, wrote an original score for the production. The creative team also includes scenic design by Ian Wallace and costume design by Joanne Martin, who both teach in the theatre and dance program.

A pastoral comedy, this production artfully and humorously explores themes of love, gender fluidity, sexuality and injustice.

About tickets

Adult tickets are $15, faculty/staff tickets are $12, and student/senior tickets are $5.

Tickets may be purchased at the UC Davis Ticket Office, located on the north side of Aggie Stadium, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, by phone 530-752-2471 during the same hours, or online.

“At core, ‘As You Like It’ is about joy as a radical act of resilience and resistance in the midst of an unjust world,” said Miller. “A story that bravely explores the intersections of love, desire, gender, sexuality and identity, every character experiences a transformation in relationship to these intersections. Whether that is realizing belonging, embracing the fullness and complexity of their identity, or finally recognizing who it is they truly love.”

At UC Davis, Miller directed the world premiere of “{LOVE/logic}” in 2019 and her own original production of “The Dogs of War” in 2014. Miller was artistic director at Hapgood Theatre Company in Antioch, California, where she directed more than a dozen productions. She also directed at Atmos Theatre Company in San Francisco and the Eugene O’Neill Foundation Theater in Danville, California. Since 2016, Miller has worked as an arts programs specialist for the California Arts Council.

Colin Minigan, a doctoral student in music composition at UC Davis, wrote an original score for the production. The creative team also includes scenic design by Ian Wallace and costume design by Joanne Martin, who both teach in the theatre and dance program. Assistant Professor Ethan Hollinger designed light and media for the production. 

“As You Like It” runs Nov. 16, 17, 18, 30 and Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 2 at 2 p.m. 

Adult tickets are $15, faculty/staff tickets are $12, and student/senior tickets are $5. Tickets may be purchased at the UC Davis Ticket Office, located on the north side of Aggie Stadium, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, by phone 530-752-2471 during the same hours, or online.

The Department of Theatre and Dance’s 2023-2024 season includes “The Laramie Project” and a workshop of an original hip-hop theatrical musical performance work in winter 2024; an “Outside the Lines” dance concert and a production of “Our Town” will be featured in the spring. 

The Department of Theatre and Dance is part of the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. For information about other department productions, visit theatredance.ucdavis.edu.

More events at the Mondavi, Woodland and elsewhere can be found in last week’s Arts Blog.

Coming up

Mark O'Connor's An Appalachian Christmas

Featuring Maggie O’Connor, Saturday, Dec. 2, 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

Three-time Grammy-winning composer and fiddler Mark O’Connor brings an elegance and earnestness to down-home bluegrass and folk music.

His annual holiday tour draws on his celebrated 2011 album An Appalachian Christmas and features fresh arrangements of Christmas classics, both vocal and instrumental. The spirited performance captures the varied emotions of the season: playfulness, joy, contemplation, gratitude and more. O’Connor’s touring ensemble includes his wife Maggie O’Connor on fiddle and vocals as well as a variety of guest musicians on each tour. Read more and get tickets.

Alexander String Quartet returns for three concerts — beginning in December

Music as a Mirror of Our World: Chamber Music at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Dec. 3; February and May, Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

The Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg look back 100 years to the tumultuous social and political era of the early 20th century — times not unlike our own — and explore enduring works of the great music it produced. Programs will include works by Debussy, Ravel, Webern, Schoenberg, Sibelius, and Nielsen. Read more and get tickets. The quartet appears three times this season at Mondavi, but Dec. 3 is the first appearance.

France – Dec. 3, 2023
Claude Debussy: String Quartet in G Minor (1893)
Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F (1903)