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—Leigha Amick, Ethan Gonzalez Soledad, and Sam Wu, 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
Leigha Amick
Composer Leigha Amick writes music to spark intellectual curiosity and express human experience. Her compositions have been performed by orchestras including the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, and the Boulder Philharmonic. In 2023, she was a composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival.
Amick wrote both the libretto and the music for Rhiannon’s Condemnation: a one-act chamber opera based on a medieval Welsh legend.
She teaches music theory for the Young Artists Initiative at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Amick received her Master of Music degree in composition from the Curtis Institute of Music where she held the Jimmy Brent Fellowship. She received her Bachelor of Music in composition from IU Jacobs School of Music, completing minors in mathematics and electronic music.
Ethan Gonzalez Soledad
Bold, dramatic, with an exquisite attention to detail, Ethan Soledad (b. 1999) is a Filipino-American composer whose work aims to express emotions in their most raw form. His musical style is marked by unapologetic expression, dynamic extremes, and the ability to do more with less but never shying away from doing more with more.
His music has been performed and recognized by ensembles such as Musiqa, Hub New Music, New York Youth Symphony (First Music Commission Honorable Mention), DACAMERA Houston, the Momenta Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, Bent Frequency, the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (ECCE), and Fear No Music among others.
He is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Music in Composition at the University of Michigan studying under Kristy Kuster.
Sam Wu
Sam Wu’s music “abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures” (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.
Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, the New York City Ballet, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Marin Alsop, Osmo Vänskä, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dina Gilbert, and Benjamin Northey, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei.
From Melbourne, Australia, Sam Wu holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard, and Rice. He is currently on faculty at Whitman College, as their Visiting Assistant Professor in Theory and Composition.
In the Works Program Notes
Gossamer Depths (2023)
Leigha Amick (b. 1997)
Gossamer Depths was inspired by the 2006 Hubble Space Telescope image of the Orion Nebula that was created using 520 different Hubble images. The piece features three primary musical materials: expansive chords representing the whole of the Orion Nebula, accented long notes representing the light from individual stars, and swirling gestures representing the cloud of dust and gas that makes up the nebula.
– Leigha Amick
Cages of Jade (2024)
Ethan Soledad (b. 1999)
Composed for the Shepherd School of Music Symphony Orchestra
San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island acted as an immigration station for mostly Chinese immigrants in the beginning of the 20th century during the Chinese Exclusion Act. Those held at the station would spend weeks, months, and even years on the island before being released or sent back to their origins. Several poems are inscribed on the walls telling of their feelings of anxiety, fear, boredom, and despair in the terrible living conditions and grueling questioning by the immigration officers. The title of the piece, Cages of Jade, comes from one of these poems. I sought to portray the journey of this author from their arrival at the station to their eventual release into the U.S.
The end of the piece features a prominent violin solo which is at first echoed by the rest of the strings before they join in in unison. This represents the author’s “fellow villagers” rejoicing with them and the Asian American community as a whole coming together to thrive in spite of the violence, racism, and other hardships they have faced coming to the U.S.
– Ethan Soledad
Poem 135, Translated from Toishanese by Genny Lim
Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days
It is all because of the Mexican exclusion law which implicates me.
It’s a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess.
I can only await the word so that I can snap Zu’s whip.
From now on, I am departing far from this building
All of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me.
Don’t say that everything within is Western styled.
Even if it is build of jade, it has turned into a cage.
Hydrosphere (2022)
Sam Wu (b. 1995)
Hydrosphere is inspired by the water cycle–a macroscopic, planetary process that shapes oceans and continents. Water is the source of life as we know it: its eternal cycle accompanies generations across the aeons. Despite its ubiquity, water is precious; we must protect Gaia’s lifeblood.
– Sam Wu