2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

CABRILLO MUSIC.ORG 11 Our story begins in the summer of 1961 when young composer- musician Robert Hughes stepped from a Greyhound bus at the Sticky Wicket, an Aptos, California coffee house along the then two-lane Highway One. He had just arrived from Italy to study with composer Lou Harrison. At the same time, Hughes joined Sticky Wicket owners Vic and Sidney Jowers and others to present quality music and theater at the coffeehouse. Nearly 200 people could be seated before a wooden stage in the field next door to enjoy a Stravinsky opera or a chamber music concert. A year later, Cabrillo College opened its Aptos campus. Faculty choral director Ted Toews and soprano Alyce Vestal joined the Sticky Wicket gang and Lou Harrison to help shape the expansion of the Sticky Wicket Concert Series into Cabrillo Music Festival. Gene Hambelton and area newcomer Bud Kretschmer became part of that group as it progressed. About 300 people attended opening night at the Cabrillo College Theater, August 21, 1963. A thrill rippled through the audience when the Festival’s first music director, Gerhard Samuel, stepped to the podium! For 15 years the Festival continued under the wing of Cabrillo College, until the passage of Proposition 13 dealt a devastating blow to arts funding. In the years to follow, the Festival travelled from church to church around the county and even into a big tent on the UCSC campus. As well, it made a much-beloved pilgrimage to Mission San Juan Bautista for more than four decades. In 1991, following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Festival made the Santa Cruz Civiic Auditorium its home venue and has been an important part of downtown’s summertime experience ever since. Cabrillo Festival has been led by a succession of distinguished music directors dedicated to new music for orchestra including Gerhard Samuel, Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, conductor Dennis Russell Davies, American composer John Adams, and Music Director Laureate Marin Alsop. In 2017, Cristian Măcelaru took the helm, ushering in a new era of brilliant music-making. Crucial to the success of the Festival is extraordinary executive and administrative leadership, including Ellen Primack who served the Festival for 33 years (1991-2024). She facilitated the commission of over 50 works during her extraordinary tenure, and was a key visionary behind the Artistic Initiative Reserve fund. Since its founding, the Festival has presented 188 world premieres, 80 U.S. premieres, countless West Coast premieres, and during the unprecedented 2020-2021 virtual seasons the Festival presented four digital world premiere commissions and dozens of online programs. Over six remarkable decades, Cabrillo Festival has commissioned more than sixty works and included the participation of more than 400 composers, including John Adams, William Bolcom, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Anna Clyne, Michael Daugherty, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Lou Harrison, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larsen, Tania Leon, James MacMillan, Wynton Marsalis, Thea Musgrave, Pauline Oliveros, Arvo Pärt, Kevin Puts, Joseph Schwantner, Virgil Thomson, and Joan Tower. WQXR named Cabrillo Festival “one of the top five incubators of new music” in the world, and The Wall Street Journal described the Festival as "two of the most thoughtful and original weekends anywhere in America.” Following Cristian Măcelaru’s second season at its helm, The Monterey Herald claimed “Santa Cruz’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is a national treasure with a strong international identity and importance. The Festival is a bright beacon of creativity and inspiration for living composers and new music lovers throughout the world.” FESTIVAL HISTORY STICKY WICKET, 1960s CONCERT AT THE STICKY WICKET, 1960s THE FESTIVAL TENT AT UCSC, 1987 FESTIVAL MOVES TO SC CIVIC AUDITORIUM, 1991 MARIN ALSOP (right) LOU HARRISON (left)