Steven Schick is probably best known on campus for two things: the wildly popular course on the Beatles that he taught for 16 years; and “red fish, blue fish,” a contemporary percussion group comprised of his graduate students, which has performed at locales as various as Lincoln Center, in Paris and in Mexico City.
Now Schick has stepped onto the concert podium to conduct the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (LJS&C), a UCSD affiliate, as its new music director. His debut concert in November 2007 featured the American premiere of Philip Glass’s “Cello Concerto,” with Glass attending the sold-out performance in Mandeville Auditorium.
Schick, a distinguished professor of music at UC San Diego and a consulting artist in percussion at the Manhattan School of Music, earned his master’s degree in music from the University of Iowa and continued his studies in Freiberg, Germany, on a Fulbright scholarship. He commissioned his first work for solo percussion from classmate Lewis Nielson, now a distinguished composer, and has since gone on to commission 150 pieces, many of which he has premiered and performed in concerts throughout the world.
“The abiding issue for me has always been to find a dynamic relationship with music. To find something that is exciting, that drives passion, that makes you happy to be there in the musical circumstance,” Schick adds. “The La Jolla Symphony & Chorus
allows me to work with music from all different historical periods, which is just a fabulous thing.”
Schick sees a movement afoot in the classical music world, one toward vitality with audiences more open than ever to music beyond the 19th century.
“Beethoven’s a given. But orchestras should also be playing contemporary music,” says Schick. “So, all of a sudden, I have experience that is relevant. I have 35 years of playing contemporary music, and I know these composers.”
As music director, Schick’s goal is to create a bridge between classical and contemporary repertoires, to offer a new kind of music experience to audiences that gives orchestras a future. To that end, Philip Glass is programmed with Beethoven, Berlioz with Ingram Marshall (whose work incorporates digital voice recordings), and Mozart with environmental composer John Luther Adams.
Referring to the collusion of a classically trained orchestra with UCSD’s experimental music department, Schick concludes: “We can take advantage of all that is here, in this place, with this orchestra. It’s really a brand new day.”
For more information go to: lajollasymphony.com.
— Diane Salisbury
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