2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

In theWorks 7pm TUE JULY 28 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium This performance is made possible through support from: THE ALICE M. DITSON FUND at Columbia University You’ll find yourself at the very center of contemporary music-making with a special free concert featuring new works by four young composers–conducted by six emerging conductors. All are studying in the prestigious Conductors/Composers Workshop. OSWALD HU Ỳ NH OswaldHu ỳ nh—laureate of a 2026GuggenheimFellowship and the 2025/26 Frederic A Juilliard | Walter Damrosch Rome Prize in Musical Composition— is a Vietnamese American composer whose music navigates Vietnamese aestheticsandtradition,languageandtranslation,andtherelationshipbetween heritage and identity. His work is characterized by intricate contrasts of timbre and interweaving textures that are rooted in narrative, culture, and memory. Hu ỳ nh has collaborated with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Music From Copland House, and more. Other accolades include the ASCAP Foundation Leo Kaplan Award, CAG Louis and Susan Meisel Prize, Luigi Nono International Composition Prize, and Musiqa Emerging Composer Commission. Hu ỳ nh is represented by Concert Artists Guild. KAI KUBOTA-ENRIGHT Kai Kubota-Enright is a composer based inNewYork. Hermusic focuses on the relationship between sound and spatial environments, as well as how these elements interact with personal memories and subjectivities. In her work she creates meditative spaces—often incorporating improvisational, electronic, and site-specific elements. Finding the balance between discomfort and stasis, her process asks a question and suggests possibilities while avoiding a specific answer, instead seeking emotional resonance through the space between boundary conditions. Receiving the 2022 ROSL Composition Award she has been commissioned by London Sinfonietta, and won first prize at the 2025 Graham Sommer Competition. As a performer and producer she has created mixes for NTS and dublab radio, exploring postwar Japanese avant-garde art collectives, early tape music, and voice therapy. PAUL NOVAK The "spellbinding" ( Washington Post ) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams andmemory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. Novak has been commissioned by and collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world. He has received awards from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, BMI, and American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is 2026-29 composer- in-residence of the California Symphony, the co-artistic director and flutist of Chicago-based ensemble MyceliumNewMusic, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. ZOE VERDUIN Zoe Verduin (age 16) is a composer and violinist fromHastings-on-Hudson, New York. She is an advanced violin student at the Hoff-Barthelson Music School inWestchester, where she also studies composition under the mentorship of Dr. Derek Cooper. Verduin has been awarded several scholarships inmusic composition, which is her passion, including an ASCAP Foundation scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music’s Summer Composition program. Her work was also selected for performance at the Young Composers Honors Concert at the annual NYSSMA conference. In her free time, she plays bass in a rock band. 33 CABRILLO MUSIC.ORG