Maestro Măcelaru leads the Festival Orchestra in works by composers Daniel Kellogg, Nathaniel Heyder, Lembit Beecher, and Iván Enrique Rodríguez. Daniel Kellogg‘s music has been celebrated for its “palpable intellectual energy… superbly crafted and controlled” (The New Yorker). Receiving its West Coast premiere,The Golden Spike commemorates the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad and explores the prolific economic, cultural, and genocidal changes brought about by its creation. The Festival presents unbound: Phase 1, a world premiere by the rising composer Nathaniel Heyder, whose piece embodies a pivotal moment in Heyder’s life, a period marked by a sense of artistic and spiritual freedom. Heyder is the recipient of the inaugural Emerging Black Composers Cabrillo Festival Prize, a prestigious award established to support emerging talent, and given to a finalist of the Emerging Black Composers Project, in partnership with San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Lembit Beecher writes music stemming from a fascination with the way memories, histories, and stories permeate our contemporary lives. His West Coast premiere of Tell Me Again, delves into narratives of immigration and heritage. It was composed for the virtuosic cellist Karen Ouzounian, whose Armenian grandmother immigrated from Beirut to Canada during the Lebanese Civil War. Beecher’s own grandmother, an Estonian, fled to the U.S. during the later stages of World War II, spending five years in displaced persons camps. Beecher composed this concerto with the “cello as the embodiment of” these deeply personal stories and familial histories. Human movement through migration and immigration will also be powerfully portrayed by a new orchestral work by Puerto Rican composer Iván Enrique Rodríguez in a world premiere commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival. Narrated live by Rodríguez himself, using texts sourced from individuals around the world, his new work will explore the lived experiences of those displaced, delving into the connections of immigrants and refugees with their homelands, and their personal journeys as they navigate new territories.