2024 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 15 LEMBIT BEECHER  Sponsored by Rhonda Martyn & Joseph Novello and Dee Vogel & Lin Marelick FEATURED COMPOSERS JUAN PABLO CONTRERAS  Sponsored by Phyllis Rosenblum and Claire Schneeberger & Joshua Salesin homemade speaker systems, and stop-motion animation into his projects. His three operas with noted Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch have drawn particular acclaim. Starring Frederica von Stade and Marietta Simpson and directed by Joanna Settle, his opera Sky on Swings , exploring the relationship of two women diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, was praised as “a monumental achievement” (Parterre) and “a shattering musical and theatrical evocation of what it feels like to have Alzheimer’s disease” ( Wall Street Journal) .  Recent premieres include Say Home for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, 100 Years Grows Shorter Over Time for the Juilliard String Quartet, and A Year to the Day , a song cycle with librettist Mark Campbell, written for tenor Nicholas Phan and violinist Augustin Hadelich. Lembit has been in residence at the Copland House, Bogliasco Foundation, and MacDowell, taught at Denison University and the Hartt School, and earned degrees from Harvard, Rice and the University of Michigan. Lembit is also active as a pianist and animator.  musical language full of fragile lyricism, propulsive energy, and visceral emotions, which draws raves for its “astonishing musical invention” ( Philadelphia Inquirer ) and “exquisite touches” ( San Francisco Chronicle ). Lembit grew up under the redwoods of the California Central Coast, a few miles from the wild Pacific. A childhood filled with family stories of homeland, migration, and displacement led to an interest in documentary, and beginning with his 2009 documentary oratorio And Then I Remember , Lembit has created numerous works incorporating interviews and personal testimonies into his music. Noted for his collaborative spirit and “ingenious” interdisciplinary projects ( Wall Street Journal ), Lembit has served three-year terms as the Music Alive composer-in-residence of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the inaugural composer-in-residence of Opera Philadelphia, working with devised theater actors, poets, ethnographers, and engineers, and incorporating Baroque instruments, electronically-controlled sound sculptures, Estonian-American composer and animator Lembit Beecher writes “hauntingly lovely and deeply personal” music ( San Francisco Chronicle ) that stems from a fascination with the ways memories, histories, and stories permeate our contemporary lives. Threading together fragments of family lore, distantly experienced legends, imagery, and songs from Estonian folk culture, and explorations of place, migration, natural processes, and ecology, he has created an idiosyncratic and thoughtful Festival of Modern Music in San Diego, the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio, and at the Turtle Bay Music School and Concerts on the Slope in New York. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Southern California (D.M.A.), the Manhattan School of Music (M.M.), and the California Institute of the Arts (B.F.A.). His most influential teachers include Richard Danielpour, Daniel Catán, Nils Vigeland, Andrew Norman, and Donald Crockett. Contreras’ music has been recorded on Universal Music Mexico, EMI, Albany Records, Epsa Music, and Urtext Digital Classics. Contreras serves on the Board of Directors of New Music USA. He lives in Los Angeles, and currently teaches orchestration and music theory at the USC Thornton School of Music. Philharmonic (Colombia), and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. He is the winner of the 2023 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Music and is celebrated as the first Mexican-born composer to sign a record deal with Universal Music, serve as Sound Investment Composer with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and win the BMI William Schuman Prize. Contreras has received commissions from Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic, Tucson Symphony, ROCO, and Richmond Symphony. He has won awards including the Presser Music Award, the JaliscoOrchestral Composition Prize, the Brian Israel Prize, the Pi Kappa Lambda Award, the Arturo Márquez Composition Contest, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Dutch Harp Composition Contest, the Nicolas Flagello Award, and the Young Artist Fellowship of Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts. Contreras has also served as Composer-in-Residence with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the soundON Juan Pablo Contreras was born in 1987 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and is a two-time Latin GRAMMY-nominated composer who combines Western classical and Mexican folk music in a single soundscape. His works have been performed by 50 major orchestras around the world including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra (United States), the Extremadura Orchestra (Spain), the Jalisco Philharmonic (Mexico), the Córdoba Symphony (Argentina), the Medellín ☆ ☆