2025 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

CABRILLO MUSIC.ORG 21 Nina Shekhar is a composer and multimedia artist who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Described as “tart and compelling” ( New York Times ), “vivid” ( Washington Post ), an “orchestral supernova” ( LA Times ), and a “rare composer who opens our ears a little wider each time” ( Chicago Tribune ), her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic,  Chicago Symphony Orchestra,  Seattle Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Albany Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, New York Youth Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, The Crossing, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, ETHEL, violinist Jennifer Koh, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, Ensemble Échappé, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, LyrisQuartet, Ray-KallayDuo, and NewMusic Detroit. Her work has been featured by the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Walt Disney Concert Hall, National Gallery of Art, National Sawdust, I Care If You Listen, ScoreFollower, and WNYC/ New Sounds (New York), WFMT (Chicago), and KUSC and KPFK (Los Angeles) radio. Recent events include China and Germany tours with the New York Philharmonic, her Hollywood Bowl debut with the LA Philharmonic, and international performances by the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony, and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Current projects include a new film & orchestral work for LA Phil in collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, a commission for the New York Philharmonic, a new accordion concerto for a consortium of orchestras led by St. Louis Symphony, a concerto for MIDI keyboard and choir for The Crossing, and a children’s interactive piece co-commissioned by Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), The People’s Music School, and Play on Philly (sponsored by LA Phil and New Music USA). Shekhar is the recipient of the 2021 Rudolf Nissim Prize and the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein Award, funded by the Bernstein family. “Bright, fresh and, in the best sense, innocent.” —Steve Reich “… from a taut murmur to a roaring shout, a raw, passionately vulnerable experience.” —Jeremy Reynolds, New Sounds Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist Darian Donovan Thomas was born in San Antonio, Texas, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He is interested in combining genres and mediums into a singular vocabulary that can express ideas about intersectionality (of medium and identity). Necessarily, he is interested in redacting all barriers to entry that have existed at the gates of any genre—this vocabulary of multiplicity will be intersectional, and therefore all-inclusive.  Darian has been commissioned and premiered by Jennifer Koh, Wild Up, Ensemble Signal, Adam Tendler, So Percussion, ~Nois Quartet, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, among others around the world.  These days, you can find Darian performing anywhere from a salon house show to grungy basements to formal concert halls. He has toured with Moses Sumney, appearing on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and ColorsxStudios, performed in three Tiny Desk concerts with critically acclaimed artists Arooj Aftab, Balun, and Wild Up, and has toured internationally from Iceland with Apartment Sessions to Saudi Arabia with Arooj—performing at Coachella and Glastonbury Festival along the way. In NYC alone, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Appolo Theater, The Guggenheim, The Whitney, The Met Museum, and The Noguchi Museum.  He presently performs with Arooj Aftab, Balun, Wild Up, MEDIAQUEER, String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and occasionally with Ensemble Signal and Bang On A Can. You can also find him performing his “Safe Space” solo set at different performance spaces and festivals around the country.  Darian has been a resident at Marfa Ballroom, Denniston Hill, New Amsterdam Records Composer Lab Fellow, So Percussion Summer Institute Composer Fellow, Infinite Palette composer-performer for Aeon Ritual at MASSMoCA, and a Bang on a Can Summer Institute “Banglewood” Composer Fellow (2019). He has studied composition with Julia Wolfe, Sarah Kirkland Snider, William Brittelle, Andrea Mazzariello, and Troy Peters, amongst others. NINA SHEKAR DARIAN DONOVAN THOMAS SPONSORED BY TOM ELLISON & LARRY FRIEDMAN, SUNSHINE GIBBS, G SCHULTZ, RALPH ALPERT, AND PATRICK TEVERBAUGH ☆