Les Deutsch with Pope John Paul II at a 1997 symposium in Italy dedicated to Galileo. Deutsch gave a technical paper on communications and presented an organ concert of music from the astronomer’s day, in the cathedral Galileo attended.

May is the month for music

Listen up, music lovers! This month is packed with opportunities to hear students perform melodious tunes. All events are free and open to the public.

Caltech’s student chamber ensembles will hold their spring performances in Dabney Lounge beginning Friday, May 9, at 8 p.m. Highlights of the opening concert will be Ravel’s String Quartet, a Saint-Saëns quartet for woodwinds and piano, and a Czerny trio for flute, cello, and piano. A Mother’s Day concert will follow on Sunday, May 11, at 3:30 p.m., in which student musicians will pay tribute to their mothers with pieces by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Jacques Ibert.

Concluding the series will be concerts on Saturday, May 17, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 18, at 3:30 p.m. Chamber music director Delores Bing says, “Be prepared for anything from music for two pianos by Brahms, to music for three recorders by Corelli, to great music for most any other combination of strings, winds, and piano.”

This year’s Bandorama concert, presented by the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band and Caltech’s Jazz Bands and Chamber Singers on Saturday, May 10, will feature works and solos by JPL staff member and Caltech alum (BS 1976, PhD 1980) Leslie Deutsch.

Deutsch, the chief engineer for JPL’s Interplanetary Network Directorate, is an accomplished musician and composer. In addition to playing numerous keyboard, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments, he has been Caltech’s organist since his sophomore year, performing annually at commencement. The program will include Deutsch’s Fantasy and March for Three Trumpets and Theme and Perturbations, performed by the Concert Band, as well as his Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, his Suite 343, and a choral piece, performed by the Monday Jazz Band, the Thursday Jazz Band, and the Chamber Singers, respectively.

Other numbers will be Count Basie’s Kid From Red Bank, Mendelssohn’s Overture for Band; von Suppé’s Jolly Robbers, conducted by Professor Paul Asimow; and the Star Wars Medley, conducted by senior Chad Kishimoto. The program will begin at 8 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium.

Rounding up the spring music is the annual Caltech Glee Clubs and Caltech-Occidental Orchestra concert on Friday, May 16, at 8 p.m. in Ramo Auditorium. Opening the program, the orchestra and combined choruses, conducted by Allen Robert Gross, will present Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), featuring Los Angeles Opera principal Ralph Wells as the Cantor. Gross describes Bloch’s setting of the Jewish Shabbat morning service as “one of the most important and beautiful settings of that liturgy composed in the twentieth century.” The orchestra will also perform Smetana’s The Moldau, and the women’s chorus, directed by Desiree Lavertu, will present Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine. Concluding the concert, the men’s chorus will premier director Donald Caldwell’s Dream on a Text by Whitman, based on Whitman’s poem “Song of the Universal.”
This concert will also be held on Sunday, May 18, at 8 p.m. at the Pasadena Jewish Temple, 1434 North Altadena Drive; call (626) 798-1161 for more information. For information on the other performances, contact Caltech Public Events at 1 (888) 2CALTECH, (626) 395-4652, or events@caltech.edu, or visit www.events.caltech.edu. Individuals with a disability can call 395-4688 (voice) or 395-3700 (TDD).
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