Steven Schick met and grew to know the venerable composer Chou Wen-chung at UC San Diego on the several occasions Chou was invited to San Diego by Schick’s colleague Roger Reynolds. Professor Chou was a champion of the music of Edgard Varèse and was himself one of the most important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The links between Professor Chou and the department strengthened over the years--Lei Liang on UC San Diego has been a steadfast friend and advocate of Professor Chou's music. After his death in 2019, Liang and Schick brought all of Professor Chou’s percussion instruments, including many that belonged to Varèse, to UC San Diego where they now comprise the core of a collection of historically important percussion instruments. Each year, a UC San Diego graduate student is commissioned for a new piece that uses or is inspired by the collection. This year, the newly commissioned pieces are by graduate students Jiyoung Ko and Myles Ortiz-Green. Also on the program are works by Schick’s UC San Diego colleague, Wilfrido Terrazas, and an old friend, Gabriela Ortiz. Visit: https://music-web.ucsd.edu/concerts/cms_index.php?i=804
