2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

54 CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 2026 HOPE AS OUR BANNER PROGRAM NOTES ASCENDING CREATURES EUNIKE TANZIL (B. 1998) [West Coast Premiere] One sunny day in Los Angeles, I looked up at the sky and saw a flock of birds soaring overhead. They flew in groups, their wings flapping asynchronously, each bird moving to its own rhythm, yet all heading in the same direction. Their motion immediately translated into shapes of melodies in my mind. This piece is inspired by that moment. Like the birds, each instrument in the ensemble moves independently, yet together they push forward with a shared momentum. Ascending Creatures explores the interplay between individuality and unity—a convergence of distinct voices that find coherence in motion. — EUNIKE TANZIL VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 2 “PULSE ” LISA BIELAWA (B. 1968) [West Coast Premiere] The musical definition of “pulse” takes center stage in this work, composed expressly for a violinist with an impeccable inner metronome. But the word’s other meanings have guided its fascinations as well. This concerto was conceived as a way of keeping my finger on the pulse of American life during a period of seismic change and self-examination. Composed over a six-month period starting just before the 2024 presidential election, it is also informed by my immersion during this time in our sentimental history as told through our traditional musics. Tessa Lark’s artistry draws from multiple musical traditions, from Old-time to jazz to the classical avant-garde. I have had the enviable opportunity to hear Tessa play in the Smoky Mountains with Appalachian traditional musicians, at the Blue Note in midtown Manhattan, and on concert stages in concertos and chamber music both new and old. I turned first to the surging popular song market of Tin Pan Alley, during the time just before, during and after the Great War. Composers and lyricists, many of them recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, churned out their songs all along 28th Street in Manhattan. The same musical materials could be used to fan any flame–heart-rending refrains tailored to support the war effort onemonth and protest it the next. The songs kept women company in their parlors while their husbands and sons were away fighting, fueling their patriotismor soothing themwithnostalgia. Thefirst two orchestral sections of this first movement, Tin Pan Alley (separated by a freely composed first cadenza) are actually mosaics, faithfully comprised entirely of small fragments–from a couple of beats to a couple of measures–of 27 different songs published between 1914 and 1923. The remainder of the movement captures some of the rich sonorities created by the chromatic passing harmonies and stretches them out into “changes” over which the soloist dances virtuosically, eventually improvising over them as in a jazz chart. The second movement, The Shapes , takes its name from the directive “Sing the shapes,” which is what song leaders in the Old Harp tradition say when they are standing in the “hollow square” of a traditional shape-note singing. This lyrical movement is a meditation on the traditional American hymn Wondrous Love , which was a favorite of mine when I was a child in my mother’s church choir. The verse that declaims “While millions join the theme, I will sing” evoked vivid scenes of collective musical joy in my childhood imagination, an image that helped shape my understanding of what music-making is actually for. I collected five separate harmonizations, in five different keys, from the shape note harps and hymnals I encountered in my research and in my travels around the country, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Alabama (the Original Sacred Harp, Southern Harmony, the New Harp of Columbia, the Primitive Baptist Hymn & Tune Book, and the Trinity Psalter Hymnal) and from my immersive experience leading this hymn at a Singing in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, earlier this year. The movement also derives some of its color from another deeply intimate meaning of “pulse”–lying awake with my ear on the pillow, hearing the sound of my own blood pumping. The movement ends with another musical quilt–phrases from all five harmonic realizations woven together, in their original keys, in a quiet but massive chorale. The last movement gives Tessa a chance to bring her Old-time fiddling onto the orchestral stage. Three traditional American tunes are embedded wholesale in the score– Blackberry Blossom (Texas/Oklahoma), Ducks on the Pond (West Virginia), and Dry & Dusty (Southwest). Only the starting point and the number of verses is given in the score. While Tessa brings this whole other side of her virtuosity to her fiddle, changing eventually to an instrument in traditional “D” tuning, the orchestra partners her with its own enthusiasms and fragmentary looks back to the first two movements. In this movement, as in the other two to some degree, I likenmy encounter with amusical tradition that is outside my own experience to the philosophy guiding traditional Japanese cuisine: different elements must balance each other perfectly but must never actually touch on the plate. Tessa’s own American voice comes through in its purest form, and the orchestra pulses along with her. — LISA BIELAWA RAINBOW PROMISE ELENA KATS-CHERNIN (B. 1957) [U.S. Premiere] My orchestra piece for the BBC Radio "25 for 2025" Commission is dedicated to the legalisation of the gay marriage in UK in 2013.