2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

15 Foundation—she brings music creation and improvisation to participants of all ages and backgrounds. Assad holds a Bachelor of Music from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan, and is the recipient of the Aaron Copland Award and multiple ASCAP composition awards. LISA BIELAWA SPONSORED BY LAURELL & WAYNE HUBER AND RHONDA MARTYN & JOSEPH NOVELLO Composer, producer, and vocalist, Lisa Bielawa is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner who takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. She has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, OPERA America, and American Antiquarian Society, Loghaven Artist Residency, and was part of the inaugural Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps. She received a Los Angeles Area Emmy nomination for her unprecedented, made- for-TV-and-online opera Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, among others. Orchestras that have championed her music include: The Knights, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ROCO, and the Orlando Philharmonic. Premieres of her work have been commissioned and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Rider, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Radio France, Yerevan Concert Hall in Armenia, the Venice Architectural Biennale, American Music Week in Salzburg, the INFANTFestival inNovi Sad, Serbia, andmore. Bielawaconsistently incorporates community-making as part of her artistic vision. She has created music for public spaces in Lower Manhattan, a bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, KY, the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, and on the sites of former airfields in Berlin and San Francisco. She used submitted testimonies and recorded voices from six continents through her work Broadcast from Home , now archived by the Library of Congress. CLARICE ASSAD SPONSORED BY HENRY & CAROLE KLYCE GRAMMY® Award–nominated composer, pianist, vocalist, and educator, Clarice Assad is one of the most compelling and versatile creative voices in contemporary music. Born in Rio de Janeiro and based in Chicago, the Brazilian-American artist is celebrated for her evocative colors, rich textures, and fearless range across classical, world, jazz, and pop idioms. In February 2026, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Assad the Andrew Imbrie Award in Music, recognizing a mid-career composer of demonstrated artistic merit. The previous year, she was named a recipient of the 2025 Meier Achievement Award by the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Charitable Foundation for the Arts, which honors Chicago-area artists who push the artistic envelope for their talent, persistence, and community involvement. That same month, she delivered the Kageyama-Hunt Global Speaker Series address at Belmont Hill School—a distinguished lecture series dedicated to global citizenship—speaking on the transformative power of music and creative life. In March 2026, her new string quartet work NEXUS received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, performed by the Takács Quartet. Praised by the New York Classical Review and featured in The Strad under the headline “Let’s Clarice It Up,” the work guides four players through a dramatic arc of individuality, collision, and dissolution—asking, through music and choreography, what it truly means to play as one. With more than 130 works to her credit, Assad has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the LA Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and many others. Her music has been recorded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, and violinist Nadja Salerno- Sonnenberg, and released on Cedille Records, SONYMasterworks, and Nonesuch. She is currently composer-in-residence with the Allentown Symphony and recently concluded a residency with the University of Maryland, and has previously served in residence for the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. As a performer, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Le Casino de Paris, sharing stages with Bobby McFerrin, Paquito D’Rivera, and Anat Cohen. Through her VOXploration education series—presented worldwide and supported by New Music USA and the McKnight FEATURED COMPOSERS CABRILLO MUSIC.ORG