2025 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

24 CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 2025 GUEST ARTISTS OCTAVIO MAS-AROCAS SPONSORED BY LOIS SPRINGSTEEN & BILL BRYANT Octavio Más-Arocas is the Director of Orchestras at Michigan State University, Music Director of the Mansfield Symphony in Ohio, the Marquette Symphony in Michigan, and the Clinton Symphony in New York, and Conductor-in-Residence at the Cabrillo Festival in California. Previous positions include Principal Conductor of the Green Bay Symphony, Resident Conductor of the Unicamp Symphony in Brazil, Director of Orchestras at Ithaca College, Lawrence University, Baldwin Wallace University, and Interlochen Arts Academy, Resident Conductor of the Sewanee Music Festival and the National Repertory Orchestra. He is the winner of the Felix Mendelssohn Award, the Robert Harth Conducting Prize, the Thelma Robinson Award, and a prize winner at the European Conductors Competition. In the last few years Mr. Más-Arocas has conducted orchestra across North and South America and Europe including the Filarmonica George Enescu in Romania, the Orquesta de Valencia and Granada City Orchestra in Spain, the Leipziger Symphonieorchester in Germany, the Orquestra Sinfônica da Unicamp in Brazil, the Syracuse Orchestra, Green Bay, Traverse City, Bluewater, Catskill, Clinton, Fort Worth, Spokane, Toledo, Phoenix, Memphis, Kansas City, and San Antonio Symphonies, the National Repertory Orchestra, the Manhattan School of Music Symphony, the orchestras of Viana do Castelo and Artave in Portugal, the Interlochen Philharmonic, the Amsterdam Brass in the Netherlands, the Ciudad Alcala de Henares Symphony and the National Youth Orchestras of Portugal and Spain among others. TIM MCALLISTER SPONSORED BY BRUCE & LINDA NICHOLSON, AND MARY JAMES Widely regarded as today’s most celebrated classical saxophonist, TimothyMcAllister hasappearedwiththeworld’sfinestorchestras in over twenty countries. He is a champion of contemporary music credited with over sixty recordings and two hundred fifty premieres of works by eminent composers worldwide. John Corigliano composed Triathlon: Concerto for Saxophonist and Orchestra for McAllister, who premiered the work with Giancarlo Guerrero and the San Francisco Symphony, followed by a recording with the Nashville Symphony. Longtime collaborator Tyshawn Sorey wrote his 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning work, Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith) for McAllister, which was premiered by the Lucerne Festival and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. McAllister premiered the John Adams Saxophone Concerto with the Sydney Symphony. He is honored with a GRAMMY Award for his Adams Concerto and City Noir recordings with the St. Louis Symphony under David Robertson. He later appeared with Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony at the London Proms performing the Adams Concerto to widespread acclaim. His recording of Kenneth Fuchs’ Rush , with the London Symphony, won another GRAMMY, and his reprisal of Adams’ City Noir with the Berlin Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel appears on the composer’s GRAMMY-nominated anthology. Recent performances include the Spain and BelgiumPremieres of Guillaume Connesson’s concerto: A Kind of Trane under Stéphane Denève, recorded with the Brussels Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. Notable soloist debuts recently include the New York Philharmonic and the symphonies of Buffalo, Detroit, Galicia, Hong Kong, Houston, Indianapolis, Lyon, Milwaukee, Mineria (Mexico), and Seattle. McAllister is the soprano saxophonist of the acclaimed PRISM Quartet, and he has been Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan since 2014, following previous posts at Arizona State University and Northwestern University, among others. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, having studied with legendary saxophonist, Donald Sinta. JENNIFER KOH SPONSORED BY RUSS IRWIN Grammy Award-winning violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. She is a forward-thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her. Named Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a BA in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, working with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. In December of 2023, Koh was appointed to the position of Artistic Director for the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Chamber Music Series, newly partnering with ARCO Collaborative , a non- profit she has upheld since 2014 dedicated to illuminating underrepresented voices in music. As a staple of this season, Koh will perform Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin at the Kennedy Center, as well as curate Sounds of US , an immersive new music festival featuring world premieres of new chamber works, and an emphasis on highlighting previously unheard artists in classical music. Additionally, Koh will perform other works from her critically acclaimed commissioning projects including Alone Together , Bach and Beyond, Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless , and Shared Madness.