The theme of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s season embraces the off-the-grid instincts that power the best in contemporary music. It also honors the visionary founders of the United States, now celebrating its 250th anniversary.
Creating any new architecture of sound and voice requires imagining something beyond. To compose is to envision, to dream a new suite of musical possibilities. And to create a new country is to dare, boldly, and against all rational odds. As Cabrillo Festival Music Director Cristian Măcelaru puts it, “At this historic moment, we are asking how music can help us imagine a more expansive we, one that listens deeply, embraces complexity, and dares to hope.”
How fitting it is that this year’s festival begins with music that embraces our utopian republic, most hypnotically in the form of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 15, entitled Lincoln. In this symphony written for baritone and orchestra, the words of President Abraham Lincoln’s most powerful speeches and letters will be sung and spoken by Zachary James, Glass’s muse for various iterations of our 16th President. The new symphony offers quotes from the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Lyceum Address of 1838, and Lincoln’s Farewell Address of 1861.
It’s impossible to resist the glistening undercurrent of Philip Glass’s imagination. The restless surge of his mesmerizing repetitions, his almost excessive minimalism. The extraordinary reach of his curiosity ranges from avant-garde abstraction to Hindu and Egyptian mythology. Glass’s fifteenth symphony, offering his signature dissonances and arpeggiated undercurrents, was jointly commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and The Kennedy Center. Glass famously cancelled his participation in the scheduled premiere when the Trump name was added to the Kennedy Center façade.
Last week I spoke with Zachary James, the Grammy-winning Broadway and opera performer, who has appeared in seven Philip Glass creations, from Akhnaten to a robotic version of Abraham Lincoln.
How did your synchronicity with Philip Glass begin?
Zachary James: Well, it’s an interesting story. I was a huge fan of his, and never really imagined that we would cross paths. I was at the start of my career. I was doing The Addams Family on Broadway and my director asked me to audition for a new Philip Glass opera called The Perfect American, coincidentally to play Abraham Lincoln. Oh, wow, so I went from playing Lurch in The Addams Family on Broadway to playing Abraham Lincoln at the Teatro Real in Madrid. I had some classical horse training, but I really needed to suddenly learn how to be an opera singer and perform without a microphone with a large orchestra.
That’s how my opera career began and my long collaboration with Philip Glass. And then I continued on with that piece for quite a while. Then his opera Akhenaten, which I’ve been doing now for 10 years, and then, because of kind of the natural connection with me and Lincoln, when the Lincoln Symphony was being developed, I was asked to do a demo recording.
How was the audition for Lincoln Symphony?
I was quite nervous going into audition for him. I sang for him and he immediately told me how much he liked how I used text and words, and he really liked that I was an actor, and thought about words that way. So we connected immediately on that and now I’ve done two world premieres, both of which have me playing Abraham Lincoln.
You were on board then when it was scheduled to premiere at the Kennedy Center. Was that a big shock when Glass pulled out of that program?
It was not a shock at the time. I was part of the conversation about doing this, and my stance on it for a while was let’s continue on and do it, if anything, as a quiet protest, speaking these words in this place that’s been… taken over.
When it was pulled, I, of course, trusted Philip’s judgment, but it was also a bit of a heartbreak.
The Glass Symphony is spoken and sung, an eight-movement symphony, and I have a lot of text in it. It’s a big, big challenge on focus and attention to detail, but how do you express everything Lincoln had to say in 30 minutes?
I think what Philip has done is so incredibly beautiful. Now I’ve been working hours and hours a day on it, because this next weekend we’re premiering at Tanglewood (July 6), and now the West Coast premiere at Cabrillo.
A baritone plus symphony is an unusual composing style, isn’t it?
Oh yeah, it is. It really is. When I first looked at it, I said, I think this is a theater piece. This is kind of like a solo opera. I even wondered if it would be staged, with costumes. But no, it’s a symphony. Since I’m more of a theatrical performer, I had to really wrap my head around what it is.
If you had to choose opera or Broadway, which one gives you the biggest thrill?
Well, Broadway raised me, and I just did a couple of West End shows in London in the past couple of years. But when I look at all my experiences on stage, it is opera, and specifically Phillip’s operas. Those experiences have changed my life and are the most vibrant moments of my life on stage. My opera career has taken twists and turns. I’ve sung lots of Verdi and Mozart, but my home in an opera space is really contemporary works and new works. It’s incredibly cool that I’m doing Einstein on the Beach next year.
A really interesting time to make art, and riding the wave of Lincoln this summer for me.
ISLAND STRINGS
This year’s Festival gives audiences a genre-breaking experience on August 1, the Defiant Dreams concert. Composer and multimedia artist Leilehua Lanzilotti explores time and place through vibrant cinematography, experimental string groupings and instrumentations. Radical composing and tuning styles explore the bittersweet legacy of old Hawai’i into new and disarming territory. Lanzilotti teaches at various universities and performs her string compositions with ensembles and orchestras all over the world.
A widely recorded viola instrumentalist, Lanzilotti’s work with eyes the color of time, was a Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Lanzilotti has worked with countless international conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, who led the world premiere of light and stone with the New York Philharmonic. This provocative and poetic piece receives its West Coast premiere at the Festival on August 1.
Leilehua Lanzilotti has shared background of her piece of light and stone (West Coast premiere), which draws on the legacy of Nā Lani ʻEhā—the “Heavenly Four” of Hawaiian royalty—to honor Indigenous Hawaiian identity, gathering, and the enduring power of cultural lineage.
“This new work, of light and stone, will, like me, be born in the diaspora but connected to home: an experiment of melodies passing each other in the night,” she says. ‘The brass chords throughout frame the architecture of the palace. The second movement opens with foreboding sounds of loss: a ship’s bell signaling the death of Kalākaua. Taking the place of a traditional scherzo, the third movement is a dance of wind, the memory of the melody is passed around the winds in fragments.
Can you say more about indigenous Hawaiian culture as an inspiration to your work?
The four siblings of the Kalākaua dynasty were all composers and contributed extensively to both preserving cultural traditions and encouraging innovation. In their music, this manifested in combining western hymn styles with traditional Hawaiian poetry and chant.
Lanzilotti provides an example of the interbraiding of instrumentation and of cultural origins in her of light and stone program notes. Lanzilotti’s instrumentation for this piece engages classic orchestral instruments such as flutes, oboe, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, trombones and percussion, plus triangle, various drums and strings. It’s how she uses these instruments that makes her work utterly unique.
“The brass chords throughout frame the architecture of the palace, sourcing their harmonic material from the opening chords of “Hawaiʻi Pono’i,” she adds. ‘“Written in 1874 with words by King Kalākaua and music by Royal Hawaiian Band conductor Henri Berger (1844–1929), Hawaiʻi Pono’i became the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s National Anthem in 1876, and continues to be used in present-day. Shimmering below, the strings light up the stage with harmonics.”
As an experimental sound artist, how do you begin a piece? with an idea? or a sound?
The kernel that develops into a full work is often a resonance in relationship with a conceptual idea, a shimmering in the air around a strong logical framework.
How did being a Pulitzer Finalist enter into your opportunities?
My composition with eyes the color of time for string orchestra (the piece that was a finalist for the Pulitzer) commemorated The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu where I grew up playing as a child, in the sculpture gardens, in the permanent David Hockney installation, which played Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges on loop.
The museum closed its doors permanently in December 2019 as I was writing my string orchestra work. The most beautiful, and perhaps tragic, thing about that work being honored in such a big way is that the former docents, curators, staff, and grounds people frequently come up to me still today and thank me for remembering that place in a way that everyone can experience outside of time and space. It helps them to know that it was a place that let lots of different kinds of people feel welcome and seen, that it gave so many of us tools for processing the world and our own hardships and defeats through contemporary art.
BULLET POINTS
The Grand Finale on Sunday August 9 offers, in addition to the work of three daring composers, a rare and timely Post-Season Reflection—a West Coast Premiere reading of original poetry by U.S. Poet Laureate Emerita Rita Dove.
The legendary poet will be at the Festival to read her work honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, spoken to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. And given the overarching theme for this season—We the Dreamers— words inspired by the great civil rights dreamer will make a poignant and fitting close to the concerts.
In a two-week season of highlights, several items on the program should sparkle with surprises. Watch for these:
Friday July 31, the opening program includes Philip Glass’s Symphony No.15, Lincoln, plus Festival commissions by Vivian Fung as well as Pedro Emanuel Pereira.
Saturday August 1, the program opens with genre-defying composer Leilehua Lanzilotti, honoring indigenous Hawaiian identity, and closes with the Creative Lab Commission by Sarah Hennies.
At 2:30 that day Meet the Composers offers a chance to hear composers Vivian Fung, Pedro Emanuel Pereira, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Sarah Hennies, talk about their process. Led by Cristi Măcelaru.
Saturday August 8, showcases a Festival commission by Clarice Assad, featuring violinist Philippe Quint, an experimental work combining narration, projections, and solo violin.
Sunday August 9 the Festival Finale includes a piece by one of the country’s brilliantly edgy composer Lisa Bielawa. Her West Coast premiere work, interwoven with the sounds and folk melodies of Appalachia, will be performed by violinist Tessa Lark.
Festival regulars never miss the FREE Open Rehearsals (afternoons and mornings, Sunday July 26 (7-9:30pm) Monday July 27 (2:30-5pm), Tuesday July 28 (10am-12:30pm; 7-8pm), Wednesday July 29 (10am-12:30pm), Thursday July 30 (2-5pm), Wednesday, August 5 (10am – 12:30pm;2:30-5pm), Thursday August 6, (10am-12:30pm;2:30-5pm) Friday August 7 2:30-5pm; 7-9:30pm). Fascinating inside glimpse of the works and their makers adds musical power to this 64th season of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
For a complete schedule: cabrillomusic.org/2026-season
