Hope as Our Banner – Grand Finale, 2026 Cabrillo Festival

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Cabrllo Festival of Contemporary Music

Conducted by Cristian Măcelaru

Eunike Tanzil: Ascending Creatures (West Coast premiere)

Lisa Bielawa: Pulse (Tessa Lark, Violin) (West Coast premiere)

Elena Kats-Chernin: Rainbow Promise (U.S. premiere)

Sean Shepherd: Wanderlust (West Coast premiere)

The season concludes with a luminous program looking toward collective possibility, resilience, and belonging. 

Ascending Creatures (West Coast premiere) by Festival newcomer, Eunike Tanzil, draws inspiration from the coordinated flight of birds, exploring the interplay between individuality and unity through motion and sound. Through interlocking musical lines and evolving textures, Tanzil emphasizes the power of collective movement. 

Lisa Bielawa’s Pulse (West Coast premiere), featuring violinist Tessa Lark, unfolds as a driving, heartbeat-like concerto, weaving rhythmic intensity and American musical threads into a shared sense of motion and momentum. Drawing on Lark’s deep roots in Appalachian fiddle traditions, the work evokes the spirit of folk dance and storytelling, blending vernacular musical language with Bielawa’s contemporary orchestral voice. 

Celebrating marriage equality with both joy and remembrance, Rainbow Promise (U.S. premiere) honors the struggle that made it possible. Composed by Elena Kats-Chernin, the piece rings with a spirit of pure celebration and joy, but not without offering reflection on the struggle that made such celebration possible. 

Sean Shepherd‘s Wanderlust (West Coast premiere) closes the season with an homage to movement and belonging by “an exciting composer of the new American generation” (New York Times). A self-proclaimed “well-treated vagabond,” Shepherd composed Wanderlust as an homage to his cosmopolitan experiences across the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, representing both his paradoxical, palpable sense of rootlessness and his desire to sink roots, pulling inspiration from disparate places and searching for the idea of home.

SEASON REFLECTION  – with support from Bookshop Santa Cruz, in honor of their 60th Anniversary
Former (1993-1995) U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove joins the Festival for a special closing reflection, performing original poetry honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. alongside Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. This will be the poem’s West Coast premiere, offering a profound coda to a season of remembering, reckoning, and imagining what comes next.

Stay after  the show for our annual street party and celebration of the season with cake and bubbly!

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.