IN THE WORKS
You’ll find yourself at the very center of contemporary music-making with a special free concert of new works performed by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra penned by under-30 composers—Daixuan Ai, Nick Bentz, and Ella Kaale, conducted by six emerging conductors, all studying in the Conductors/Composers Workshop.
The concert is a chance to hear new voices now shaping the future of orchestral music, and a fascinating look at variations offered by a conductor’s interpretation. Don’t miss the excitement when the creative sparks fly!
This concert is free—no tickets required!
The Cabrillo Conductors/Composers Workshop brings together leading faculty, the award-winning Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and early career conductors and composers for a professional training program that focuses on the creation and performance of new music.
In The Works COMPOSERS
Daixuan Ai
Born in Hunan, China, Daixuan Ai’s music combines tradition with modernism and connects Eastern and Western cultures. She is a composer, pianist, and teacher who is dedicated to learning and understanding the musical legacy from the past and opening her ears and heart to absorbing and creating music of today’s world. Her compositions are well-crafted, formally precise, and deeply thoughtful. Daixuan’s music has been performed by ensembles and performers including Chicago Civic Orchestra, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Baldwin Wallace Symphonic Orchestra & Symphonic Wind Ensemble, CityMusic Cleveland, Hub New Music, 5th House Ensemble, and Cleveland Orchestra Trumpeter Jack Sutte. Her teachers include Han Lash, David Dzubay, Katherine Balch, Don Freund, Clint Needham, Philip Lasser, and Emile Naoumoff.
Daixuan received her bachelor’s degree in composition from Baldwin Wallace Conservatory and master’s degree from Indiana University. She is an assistant instructor coordinator for IU’s music theory department and faculty for Jacobs Composition Academy. Daixuan was also composition fellow at 2022 Aspen Music Festival and 2023 National Orchestral Institute.
Nick Bentz
Nick Bentz (b. 1994 – Charleston, SC) is a composer, violinist, and multimedia artist whose work is drawn to remote fringes and recesses of experience. In his work he seeks to render intimately personal spaces imbued with an individual sense of storytelling and narrative. His art centers around the blurring, juxtaposition, and amalgamation of stylistic idioms into singular sonic statements. Nick’s music has been performed by leading artists including the Philadelphia Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Sandbox Percussion, HOCKET, yMusic, and Ensemble Dal Niente, and featured at Lincoln Center, Kimmel Center, Copland House, and the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. His first opera, Having Guests for Dinner, was commissioned by /kor/ productions, and has been performed by Hillman Opera, Hartford Opera Theater, and New Opera West. Current projects include co-commissions from Ensemble Intercontemporain and Wigmore Hall, a piece for percussionist David Moliner to be premiered at the Musikverein, and multimedia collaborations with visual artist Allyson Packer and vocalist Anika Kildegaard. Nick is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, pursuing a doctorate in Music and Multimedia Composition. He holds BMs in composition and violin and an MM in violin from the Peabody Institute, and an MM in composition from the University of Southern California. His mentors include Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, Eric Nathan, Nina Young, Donald Crockett, Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, Felipe Lara, Kevin Puts, and Yiorgos Vassilandonakis.
ELLA KAALE
The music of Ella Kaale [Kah-lee] (b. 2003) is perpetually chasing cathartic release, characterized by collagism, abstraction, and polarity. Her music has been performed by the UCLA Philharmonia (cond. Neal Stulberg), the USC Thornton Symphony (cond. Donald Crockett), TAK Ensemble, CORVUS, Hub New Music, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Bergamot Quartet, and Schroeder Umansky Duo. Kaale is an alumna of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America’s Composer Apprenticeship, Hear Now Music Festival, Composing in the Wilderness, New Music on the Point, and most recently, the Norfolk New Music Workshop. Her honors include a feature on Score Follower, Semi-Finalist for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot Readings with ROCO, Most Valuable Player for the USC Composition Department, a YoungArts Merit Award, and a Luna Composition Lab Honorable Mention. Additionally, Kaale is a composition Teaching Artist Assistant with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) Meet the Music initiative. She is entering her senior year in the B.M. Composition program at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where her pedagogues have included Christopher Trapani, Ted Hearne, and Andrew Norman. She is the Co-Founder and President of Thornton Composers Ensemble (TCE), a student organization providing performance opportunities and curating concerts of new music.
In the Works Program notes
Keep Moving (2024)
Daxuan Ai (b.1998)
World Premiere
In the past few years, I have grieved the loss of people who were once close to me. The past we had shared, and the future I had envisioned with them, is now nothing but a void. Instead of moving forward, I found myself wanting to be left behind in the past when everything seemed to be alright before crumbling. I found myself wanting to pretend that I could hold on to an image or an idea of what I had wished could become reality.
But somewhere during the hopelessness and depression, I’ve reminded myself that there are many new stories in life yet to be written. If I could find happiness in the past, then I can find it again in the future. There are still people, animals, and things left for me to love, to cherish: things to make life meaningful. What I find beautiful now is people’s ability to go through loss and grief, and to come out of the dark tunnel with light on the other side.
This piece is written for the people we have lost, the heartbreak we have felt, and the courage we have gathered time and time again to pick ourselves back up and keep moving.
– Daxuan Ai
Puzzle Box (2024)
Nick Bentz (b.1994)
World Premiere
Some of my earliest memories are of intricate boxes. My father, a furniture maker, often restores antique pieces, and I remember being fascinated by wardrobes and desks that had secret drawers and spaces. These are often only accessible by putting one’s hands in the right spot with the right pressure, a type of haptic code. In writing Puzzle Box, I wanted to create a work that pays homage to these beautifully compact pieces, where one has to explore around an object and test it in various ways until a hidden passageway opens. Puzzle Box was written for the Cabrillo Festival as part of the 2024 Conductors / Composers Workshop and is dedicated to my father.
– Nick Bentz
Bubble-Net (2024)
Ella Kaale (b. 2003)
World Premiere
Bubble-Net is inspired by a group of humpback whales I saw in Alaska. These whales were performing a highly complex and coordinated hunting technique wherein they create an artificial “net” of bubbles around a school of fish and use their deafeningly loud voices to stun them, causing them to swim directly upwards. The whales gather underneath and explode through the surface with their mouths wide open, a terrifying, sublime, and breathtaking sight. This piece is my attempt to capture the experience in the orchestral medium—like the whales’ feeding method, orchestral music can only be accomplished through intense and clever cooperation from a synergetic whole.
– Ella Kaale