The 2007-2008 Choir

The Davis Youth Flute Choir for the most part performs in Davis. However, the choir has members from Sacramento, Dixon and Woodland. It has performed in Sacramento and Woodland, but its concentration is in the Davis community.

The choir is celebrating its 25th anniversary and because of that, director Maquette Kuper decided in 2006 to organize something special. City Council members Ruth Asmundson and Don Saylor introduced her to Yoshio Kobayashi, president of the Friends of Davis from Inuyama, Japan, Davis’ sister city. All four decided that it would be spectacular to send the Davis Youth Flute Choir to Inuyama to represent the city of Davis in the first-ever cultural exchange involving a Davis group. The choir is most honored to represent Davis in June 2008 when it travels to Japan and performs in three major concerts in Inuyama.

In preparation for this event, the flute choir, which historically was a summer music program, now performs year-‘round. It has performed in many venues to raise funds for and promote awareness of the group. It played at Woodland Memorial Hospital in a memorial service in December for patients who had lost their lives in 2007. It performed in a Patriotic Concert in Sacramento in which a video was made to send to troops in Iraq for holiday entertainment. It played at various holiday parties, including the Davis Sunrise Rotary party. It performed in the lobby of the Veterans Memorial Theater at the Holiday Concert benefiting the Davis Arts Foundation. It will appear free to the public at Watermelon Music in Davis along with presenting a flute workshop for the young flutists of Davis on Sunday, March 9 and it will be performing free to the public at the Davis Farmers’ Market on Saturday, March 15. Finally, the choir will perform a benefit concert on Saturday, March 22 at Davis High School’s Brunelle Theater. Prior to the concert that evening, there will be a silent auction in the choir room and hors d’ouevres in the lobby. In May, the choir will perform a jazz concert at the Davis Community Church over Memorial Day weekend, at the same time as the nationally famous Sacramento Jazz Jubilee festival.

The Davis Youth Flute Choir is one of the few flute choirs that trains in both jazz and classical music. It provides young musicians with the rare opportunity to cross over from classical to jazz. The choir has Fredrick Lange to thank for not only conducting the jazz section of its performances, but also arranging a lot of exciting music specifically for the group. This past year Davis’ own jazz musician Adam Jenkins benefited the chior by arranging Japanese folk songs in the jazz idiom. The choir premiered his Awa Dori last summer and will premiere both the revision of Awa Dori and a new work, Sakura Sakura, on the March 22 concert.

Director of Jazz

FREDRICK LANGE completed his undergraduate studies in music, graduating with departmental honors, and received his M.A. in Musicology at the University of California at Davis in 1974. He is currently Director of Bands at Davis Senior High School, a school that is nationally noted for excellence in music.  His Symphonic Band has performed twice at the Western International Band Clinic in 1990 and 1994, and his Jazz Band has performed over 10 times at the Monterey Jazz Festival High School Jazz Competition and 3 times at the internationally known Monterey Jazz Festival.

A charter member of the Davis Comic Opera Company, Lange served them as musical director from 1981 through 1996.  With that group he won the Sacramento Area Regional Theater Alliance’s Elly for best musical director for their production of Ken Ludwig’s Sullivan and Gilbert in 1995.

He is on staff at the American Band College sponsored by Southern Oregon University.  He has commissioned various works for band and jazz band among them Johann de Meij’s “Ratatouille Satirique” (published by Amstel Music), Warren Barker’s “A Celebration Of Life” (published by TRN Music), and Bruce Pearson’s “Rejouissance”(published by Neil A Kjos Music).  He has also commissioned numerous works for jazz ensemble.

Fred and Davis flute teacher Maquette Kuper worked extensively with the Gemeinhardt Corporation for the commissioning of a composition for symphonic band with flute choir to be written by Robert W. Smith, known for his work as a composer for CPP Belwin.  The result was “The Gemeinhart Suite,” which had its premier in November of 1997.

In 1997 Fred was invited to be guest conductor at Ms. Kuper’s annual flute camp, where he introduced jazz to some of the area’s outstanding student flute students.  He subsequently wrote a number of arrangements for flute choir with jazz accompaniment, including “Georgia On My Mind,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Satin Doll,” and “Doxy.” In the summer of 2004 Lange wrote an arrangement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #4 for flute choir.  That was soon followed by arrangements of Bach’s “Wachet Auf.” and Moreaus “Rondo” and most recently the “Concerto in G Major for 2 Flutes” by Domenico Cimarosa.  ALRY Press has published the Brandenburg Concerto.

Fred has been been honored by the Capitol Section of the California Music Educators Association as Music Educator of the Year in 1996, by the Highwheelers Barbershop Chorus who presented him with the Harmony in our Lives Award in 1991 in appreciation of his contributions to the musical enrichment of the Davis community, by the City of Davis as winner of the A. G. Brinley Citizen of the Year Award in 1990 for outstanding contribution to the arts, and by the Sacramento News and Review with their “Jammies Award” in 2004.

Native American Flute Soloist

DEBORAH PITTMAN holds the BS and MA degrees in music performance from Brooklyn College Conservatory and has done doctoral studies at the Manhattan School of Music. She is currently Professor of Clarinet, and specializes in the history of the American Musical Theatre, at California State University Sacramento.
            
A native New Yorker, Ms. Pittman moved to Sacramento in 1981 to play second and bass clarinet with the Sacramento Symphony, a position she held from 1981-1990. Other orchestral positions include: the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the State Symphony of Mexico, the Orchestra of New York, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the pit of Broadway shows.

For several years she was an Artist in Residence for the Sacramento Light Opera Association’s Theater Education Project, presenting the Metropolitan Opera’s Creating original Opera program at various schools in the Greater Sacramento area.

She has Co-Directed the Chico/Sac Chamber Music Workshop, Directed the ArtsBridge Program at CSUS and Directed of The California Arts Project at UC Davis. Her experience as Musical Director includes the following musicals and operas: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Lost in the Stars and Honk!

In the summer of 2002, Ms. Pittman became a Festival Artist at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire; she performs and teaches there each summer.
She specializes in creating theatrical works for young audiences. Her compositions to date include:

Currently, she is in collaboration with Peter Nowlen and Puppet Art Theatre Company on a young audience theatrical work based on the tales of Scheherazade, and the music of N. Rimsky-Korsakov.
years ago, she became enamored of the sounds of the Cedar Flute (Native American Flute), and last year was fortunate to take some lessons with Grammy winner, Mary Youngblood. She was also the featured soloist in Two Worlds Concerto, by composer James DeMars, at CSUS.

About ten years ago, she discovered pottery. She throws pots in her copious amounts of free time.