Beyond Borders: A Faculty Artist Series Concert Featuring Music & Global Jazz Studies Faculty

David Kaplan, pianist, has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. He has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Britten Sinfonia and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin. Known for diverse and creative recital programs, he has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Washington’s National Gallery, Strathmore, and Bargemusic. Kaplan’s New Dances of the League of David, mixing Schumann with 16 new works, was cited in the “Best Classical Music of 2015” by The New York Times.

Kaplan has collaborated with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets, and is a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. He has appeared at the Bard, Seattle Chamber Music, Mostly Mozart, and Chamber Music Northwest festivals, and is an alumnus of Tanglewood, Ravinia-Steans Institute, and the Perlman Music Program. Kaplan has recorded for Naxos and Marquis Records, as well as with Timo Andres in the acclaimed disc, Shy and Mighty (2010), for Nonesuch. For 2021, he commissions renowned composers Anthony Cheung and Christopher Cerrone for two works based on music written by one another, to be programmed with fantasy-form works from L. Couperin to Elliott Carter.

Passionate about teaching, Kaplan was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in 2020. Kaplan’s distinguished mentors over the years include the late Claude Frank, Walter Ponce, Miyoko Lotto, and Richard Goode. With a Fulbright Fellowship, he studied conducting at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Lutz Köhler, and received his DMA from Yale University in 2014. Preferring Yamaha and Bösendorfer pianos, David is proud to be a Yamaha Artist. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars.

In recital and on recording, pianist Gloria Cheng is devoted to creating multidimensional collaborations that explore meaningful interconnections amongst composers. She has been a recitalist at the Ojai Festival, William Kapell Festival, and Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, and has performed on leading concert series including Carnegie Hall’s Making Music, Cal Performances, San Francisco Performances, and Stanford Lively Arts.

Cheng has premiered countless works, including Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Dichotomie, composed for and dedicated to her, John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction for two pianos, and the late Steven Stucky’s Piano Sonata. Recent seasons have seen her in duo-recitals with Thomas Adès that included the premiere of his 2-piano Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face, with Terry Riley in Cheng Tiger Growl Roar for 4-hands, and in coast-to-coast screening/recitals of MONTAGE: Great Film Composers and the Piano, a themed recital, CD, and documentary (Breakwater Studios, Vimeo.com) featuring works written for her by Bruce Broughton, Don Davis, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, and John Williams. Cheng has curated programs that include Music at Black Mountain College for the Armand Hammer Museum; BEYOND MUSIC: Composition and Performance in the Age of Augmented Reality at UCLA, an international gathering of composers and media artists featuring Kaija Saariaho and Jean-Baptiste Barriere; and Inside the (G)Earbox, a daylong symposium at UCLA marking the 70th birthday of composer John Adams.

Cheng’s 2008 release, Piano Music of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky, and Witold Lutosławski, was awarded the Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance [without Orchestra]. A second Grammy nomination followed for her 2013 recording, The Edge of Light: Messiaen/Saariaho. In 2017 MONTAGE: Great Film Composers and the Piano aired on two PBS SoCal stations and won the 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy Award. Cheng’s latest project is Garlands for Steven Stucky (Bridge), a CD featuring 32 miniatures composed in honor of the late composer. The CD proceeds will support the Steven Stucky Composer Fellowship Fund established by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to engage young composers in multi-year educational programs with the orchestra.

At Pierre Boulez’s 2003 personal invitation, Cheng joined him in performing Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during its three historic final concerts in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Cheng’s concerto debut with the L.A. Philharmonic was in 1998 under the direction of Zubin Mehta. Other concerto engagements have included appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, Indianapolis, Shanghai, Pasadena, Long Beach, and Pacific Symphonies.

In Los Angeles Cheng has been a principal artist with the long-running Piano Spheres series, Jacaranda Music, and a frequent guest with the L.A. Philharmonic Green Umbrella, performing works such as Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord conducted by Oliver Knussen, and John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano with Jeffrey Milarsky.
Cheng received her B.A. in Economics from Stanford University, and earned graduate degrees in performance under Aube Tzerko and John Perry. She teaches at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where she has initiated classes and programs that unite performers, composers, and scholars.

Salim Washington is a composer and multi instrumentalist, playing tenor sax, flute, oboe and bass clarinet. He has played and recorded with many of the luminaries of the art form, and has been featured in festivals and other venues throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Washington has combined a life in music with a life of the mind, and is a scholar of black music and culture, having written several articles and co-written with Farah Jasmine Griffin Clawing at the Limits of Cool, a book about the collaboration between Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He currently serves as professor of Global Jazz Studies and Music at UCLA. He works to combine his artistry and pedagogy with his political conviction that we must work to improve our society with greater justice for all.

Canadian-American saxophonist Jan Berry Baker has performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician on many of the world’s great stages. Recent engagements include performances across the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, Scotland, England, Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Canada, Ukraine, USA, and most recently with the Sinfonica de Oaxaca in Mexico.

An advocate of contemporary music, Jan is Co-Artistic Director and saxophonist with Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency. Founded in 2003, Bent Frequency brings the avant-garde to life through adventurous and socially conscious programming, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and community engagement. Committed to exploding marginalized programming in classical music, one of BF’s primary goals is championing music by women, composers of color and LGBTQIA+. In the last few years, she and Co-Artistic Director and percussionist Stuart Gerber have formed the Bent Frequency Duo Project. Together, they have commissioned over 50 new works for saxophone and percussion and have given countless performances of these works across the USA, Mexico, and Europe including their Carnegie Hall debut in 2016. Their work to fund the creation, performance and recording of new music has been supported by numerous national and international grants such as the Copland Foundation, French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), Barlow Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Ditson Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (National Endowment for the Arts/Andrew Mellon Foundation), and Culture Ireland to name a few.

Jan regularly performs with orchestras such as the LA Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet and has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Joffrey Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Chicago Chamber Players, and American Ballet Theater. She can be heard on American Orchestral Works with Grant Park Orchestra (Cedille), The Golden Ticket with the Atlanta Opera (Albany), The BF Duo Project recording Diamorpha (Centaur), Citizens of Nowhere featuring works for clarinet and saxophone (Albany) and is a featured performer on John Liberatore’s Line Drawings (Albany) and Robert Scott Thompson’s Folio, Vol.1, Vol. 2 and Solace (Aucourant).

As an artist and educator, Jan has held residencies at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), Nürnberg Tage Aktueller Musik, Sam Houston State New Music Festival (TX), Charlotte New Music Festival, University of Georgia, New Music on the Point (VT) and Dakota Chamber Music Festival. She is highly sought after as a masterclass teacher and speaker, and has given presentations on contemporary music, entrepreneurship, nonprofits and grant writing, community engagement, socially conscious programming, career development and mentoring at major schools of music across the country.

Dr. Baker is Professor of Saxophone and Woodwind Area Head at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA and currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Department of Music and Special Assistant to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring. Prior academic appointments include Georgia State University, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, Northwestern University and University of Alberta. She studied with Frederick L. Hemke, William H. Street and Barbara Lorenz and earned a Doctor of Music degree in saxophone performance from Northwestern University. She is a founding member of the Committee on Gender Equity in the North American Saxophone Alliance and served as the inaugural leader of the CGE Mentoring Program. Jan Berry Baker is a Selmer Paris, Vandoren, and Key Leaves performing artist.

Dante De Silva is a Los Angeles-based composer and musician. His music has been described as “haunting” (Classical Sonoma) and “beautiful” (Los Angeles Times) to “sparkling” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “fun” (Sequenza21). From his early days in a rock band up until the present, Dante has always aimed to create music that evokes emotions ranging from the simple to the complex. To conjure those emotions, his compositions incorporate a characteristic balance of lyricism, simplicity, humor, fragility, and even savagery.

He has received commissions from Grammy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng, Opera Parallele, the Verdehr Trio, the B Band, and the Humboldt State University Percussion Ensemble, among others. In addition to his commissions, performers of his work include Talea Ensemble, Pacific Serenades, pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, What’s Next, and Composers Inc. His music has been performed throughout the U.S., as well as parts of Canada and Europe.

De Silva holds a Ph.D. in composition from UCLA, where his primary teachers were David Lefkowitz and Paul Reale, an M.A. in composition from UC Santa Cruz with David Cope and Paul Nauert, and a B.A. in music with an emphasis in piano performance from Humboldt State University, where he studied with Brian Post (composition), Eugene Novotney (percussion, composition), and Deborah Clasquin (piano).

Grammy® Nominated Jazz singer, composer and arranger Carmen Lundy hails from Miami, Florida and received her B.M. degree from the University of Miami. After an early successful career in Miami, Lundy moved to NYC in 1978 and in 1985, she released her first solo album entitled Good Morning Kiss, which topped the Billboard chart for 23 weeks.
Currently on the Afrasia Productions label, Carmen is a 2-time Grammy® Nominated artist for her 16th and newest album Fade To Black, released on September 30, 2022, and her previous album Modern Ancestors, both for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Her 2017 release Code Noir, debuted at #6 on the Billboard Jazz Chart and received both critical and popular acclaim. Carmen’s other releases and discography consist of “Good Morning Kiss” (CLR/Afrasia Productions), “Moment To Moment” (Arabesque/Afrasia Productions), “Night And Day” (CBS/SONY and re-issued by Afrasia in 2011), “Old Devil Moon” (JVC), “Self Portrait” (JVC), “Something To Believe In” and “This Is Carmen Lundy” (both for Justin Time), “Jazz and The New Songbook – Live at The Madrid” (2-disc set and DVD, Afrasia Productions), “Come Home”, “Solamente”, “Changes”, “Soul To Soul” and “Code Noir” (Afrasia Productions). All have topped the Best Albums and Top Ten Albums lists on JazzWeek, Downbeat, and JazzTimes.

In November of 2023, she was awarded the Inaugural Centennial Medal of Honor from the University of Miami as a distinguished alumna, along with such honorees as Gloria Estefan, Jon Secada, and Dawnn Lewis. Among Lundy’s other awards and recognitions are a Grammy® Award for Terri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic Project, Grammy® Winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album of 2011, which features the Carmen Lundy composition “Show Me A Sign”, with Lundy’s original performance from the album “Solamente” reinvented on the arrangement.

In January 2018, Carmen Lundy received the RoundGlass Music Award for her song “Kumbaya” from Code Noir. In 2016 she was given the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz by Black Women In Jazz and The Arts, in Atlanta, GA. Additionally, she was honored with Historymaker status by the esteemed The Historymakers® organization, the nation’s largest African American video oral history collection based in Chicago, IL. Among her other awards and recognitions, especially rewarding was Miami-Dade’s County Office of the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners proclaiming January 25th “Carmen Lundy Day”, along with handing Ms. Lundy the keys to the City of Miami.

As a composer, Ms. Lundy’s catalogue numbers over 150 published songs, one of the few jazz vocalists in history to accomplish such a distinction. Her compositions have been recorded by such artists as Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts, Terri Lyne Carrington, Straight Ahead and Regina Carter. Carmen’s far-reaching discography also includes performances and recordings with such musicians as brother and bassist Curtis Lundy, Ray Barretto, Bruce Hornsby, Mulgrew Miller, Kip Hanrahan, Courtney Pine, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Randy Brecker, Oscar Castro-Neves, Robert Glasper, Jamison Ross, Patrice Rushen, and the late Kenny Kirkland and Geri Allen among others.

Carmen Lundy’s work as a vocalist and composer has been critically acclaimed by Jazz Times, Downbeat, Jazziz, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair among numerous other foreign publications.

Currently teaching at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as the Global Jazz Studies Lecturer, Lundy is an esteemed educator, having acted as Resident Clinician at Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. for 20 years. She has conducted Master Classes around the world, among them the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Master Classes in Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and throughout Europe. In 2023, she was named and served as Harvard University Jazz Master In Residence. Lundy also serves on the Board of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation.
Also a burgeoning filmmaker, Carmen’s first documentary, “Nothing But The Blood – The True Story Of The Apostolic Singers Of Miami,” won the prestigious Best Music Documentary Award at its world premiere at the DTLA Film Festival (Los Angeles) in 2022. The Apostolic Singers (featuring singers from several generations of Carmen’s family) have performed for over 40 years in the Florida area and never made a studio recording documenting their incredible gospel voices until December 26, 1991. A true labor of love, “Nothing But the Blood” documents the taping of their first recording session ever, complete with interviews.
In addition, Carmen Lundy is a celebrated mixed media artist and painter, and her works have been exhibited in New York at The Jazz Gallery in Soho, at The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, and at a month-long exhibition at the Madrid Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. Several of her mixed media sculptures are currently touring and on exhibit at The Carr Center in Detroit, MI and at Emerson College in Boston, MA for the installation “Shifting The Narrative: Jazz And Gender Justice”, curated in part by the celebrated jazz drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington.

Ms. Lundy is also a gifted actress active in theatre. “Acting,” as she told Dr. Billy Taylor in 2006, “helps me to get more comfortable and acquainted with the art of performance.” She performed as Mary Lou Williams alongside pianist Geri Allen in the musical “A Conversation with Mary Lou”, directed by S. Epatha Merkerson and written by Farah Griffin, as well as performing the lead role as Billie Holiday in the Off-Off Broadway play “They Were All Gardenias” by Lawrence Holder. She starred in the lead role of the Broadway show, Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies,” and she made her television debut as the star of the CBS Pilot-Special “Shangri-La Plaza” in the role of Geneva, after which she relocated to Los Angeles, where she currently resides.

Hailed by the LA Times as a “powerfully inventive” and “remarkably versatile L.A. musician with a penchant for crossing all over the musical place,” saxophonist and composer Hitomi Oba’s work emphasizes the integration of improvisation with pre-composed music.
She has written for and performed in various jazz and classical new music settings, including commissions by the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series and the Seattle Symphony’s chamber series, and as a member of Kenny Burrell’s Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra Unlimited and the Jon Jangtet. In addition to leading her own ensembles, ranging from trios to big band, Oba is a co-founder of the new music collective, LA Signal Lab, premiering and recording stylistically diverse new music including a collaborative, multi-genre cantata. Her second jazz album, “Negai,” released under Japanese label M&I and distributor Pony Canyon, received a prestigious “Swing Journal 42nd Annual Jazz Disc Award.” Her most recent album, “Water Stem,” was released from Asian Improv Records in May 2023. A new orchestral work, co-composed with Erika Oba and based on the writing of award-winning author and organic farmer, David “Mas” Masumoto, will be premiered by the Fresno Philharmonic in February 2025.

Originally from Berkeley, CA, Oba is currently based in Los Angeles, teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles directing several progressive and exploratory jazz ensembles, teaching jazz saxophone lessons, and developing and teaching multi-genre music theory curricula. Oba was previously a faculty member at Cal State Los Angeles and Pasadena City College and presents masterclasses and workshops on improvisation, composition, and saxophone at various institutions.

“There are many fine pianists with impressive technique and swing who are convincing in a number of styles and play with real feeling. What increasingly distinguishes Hendelman is his gift for imaginative arranging…. He will compose an introduction that makes it difficult to predict what follows, but seems perfectly suited—even organic—once the tune begins.” (www.allaboutjazz.com)

Born in Tel Aviv, Tamir Hendelman began keyboard studies at age 6, moving to the U.S. in 1984 and winning Yamaha’s national keyboard competition two years later. Concerts in Japan and the Kennedy Center followed. Drawn to the impressionistic and jazz harmonies of composers such as Ravel and Bill Evans, he studied at the Tanglewood Institute and received a B.M. in Music Composition from Eastman School of Music in 1993. After a brief period exploring film scoring, he focused on jazz piano, forming his own trio, which features original compositions, bebop, blues and Brazilian music. Since 2000 he has toured the US, Japan and Europe with his trio and as a member of the Jeff Hamilton Trio and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

Hendelman was a soloist with the Henry Mancini Orchestra in 1999. In 2001 he premiered Clayton’s orchestration of Oscar Peterson’s Canadiana Suite with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Peterson wrote in his online journal: “It was a satisfying but strange feeling… to hear a new young voice make some exhilarating and thoughtful solos in the spaces that I used to occupy in those pieces…I look forward to hearing more from him.” In 2011, he premiered John Clayton’s new arrangement of Rhapsody In Blue at the Fujitsu-Concord Festival.

Having received awards from ASCAP and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Hendelman was musical director was for the Lovewell Institute, a national arts education non-profit organization. He has also become a first-rate arranger and accompanist for some of today’s premier vocalists, such as Natalie Cole, Roberta Gambarini, and Jackie Ryan. He has accompanied Barbra Streisand in her return to jazz on Love Is The Answer (Columbia, 2009), at the Village Vanguard as well as on her 2012 North American orchestral tour. He also musically directed classical vocalist Julia Migenes’ genre-bending 2005 release, Alter Ego.

Since 2005, Hendelman has been on the jazz faculty of UCLA and has conducted numerous workshops in universities and music programs in the US and abroad. In 2013, his music was orchestrated for The Penfield Commission Project, which he performed alongside a jazz orchestra and a 115-member studio orchestra. He has also recently arranged and recorded for artists such as trumpeter Claudio Roditi, accordionist Richard Galliano and violinist Christian Howes. In 2014, he performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue with the Winston-Salem Symphony, and in 2018 with the AZ Music Fest Orchestra. In 2018 he performed a tribute to Jobim featuring the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra strings and woodwinds (including his new arrangement of Jobim’s Wave.) In 2017 he was commissioned by Inna Faliks to contribute a Bagatelle to a new tribute to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Opus 126 for artists such as trumpeter Claudio Roditi, accordionist Richard Galliano and violinist Christian Howes. In 2014, he performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue with the Winston-Salem Symphony, and in 2018 with the AZ Music Fest Orchestra. In 2018 he performed a tribute to Jobim featuring the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra strings and woodwinds (including his new arrangement of Jobim’s Wave.) In 2017 he was commissioned by Inna Faliks to contribute a Bagatelle to a new tribute to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Opus 126.

Hendelman has released two recordings as a leader of his trio: Playground (Swing Bros, 2008) and Destinations (Resonance 2010). Reaching #1 on the jazz charts, Destinations takes listeners along on a voyage of musical discovery. The music ranges from originals to Jobim, Keith Jarrett and Maurice Ravel. “Destinations to me is not only about the places I have traveled to, but also about the journey of being a jazz musician.” He has conducted workshops at schools from Oberlin to Indiana, Vancouver to Louisville, and Utrecht to Israel, including an interdisciplinary workshop at the Idyllwild Academy and Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy.

B.M. Composition, Eastman School of Music