Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Pacific Rim Composers, Including 2026 Composer of the Year, Featured at Sierra Madre Playhouse

[photo credit: Sierra Madre Playhouse]

Brightwork newmusic performs works spanning Peru to Cambodia in an April concert near Pasadena

A chamber concert next month at Sierra Madre Playhouse will feature music by four composers drawn from cultures ringing the Pacific Ocean, including a Latin Grammy winner who was recently named Musical America’s 2026 Composer of the Year.

Brightwork newmusic, a Los Angeles ensemble in residence at the Playhouse, performs “Ring of Fire” on Friday, April 3, at 8 p.m. The program traces musical connections across the Pacific Rim through contemporary works rooted in Peruvian, South Asian, Cambodian, and American traditions — all performed by four musicians on clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.

The centerpiece is Hilos, a quartet by Gabriela Lena Frank, who in December was named Musical America’s 2026 Composer of the Year. Frank, who holds a Latin Grammy Award and has been nominated for Grammys as both a composer and pianist, wrote Hilos in 2010 as a set of short movements inspired by Peruvian textiles, drawing on sounds evocative of indigenous instruments including panpipes, charangos, and percussion, according to the composer’s published program notes. Her opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego, is scheduled for new productions at the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago this year.

The program also includes Spiral VI by Chinary Ung, a Cambodian American composer who in 1989 became the first American to win the Grawemeyer Award for musical composition. Ung, born in Takéo, Cambodia, is known for blending elements of Cambodian folk traditions with Western concert music techniques.

Akshaya Avril Tucker’s Melting rounds out the international portion of the program. Tucker, an alumna of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, draws on music and dance traditions of South Asia in her work, according to a press release from the Playhouse. She is pursuing a doctorate in composition at the University of Southern California.

The concert closes with Andy Akiho’s Lost on Chiaroscuro Street, a 2017 work commissioned for Music@Menlo. Akiho has said the piece was inspired by chiaroscuro, the Renaissance painting technique that uses contrast between light and dark to suggest depth.

The performers are Brightwork newmusic artistic director and pianist Aron Kallay, clarinetist Brian Walsh, violinist Shalini Vijayan, and cellist Maggie Parkins. Kallay founded the ensemble in 2013; a Grammy-nominated recording artist, he is on the faculty at Pomona College and Scripps College.

Brightwork newmusic’s residency at Sierra Madre Playhouse is part of the venue’s 2026 “Small Stage, Big World” season, which features more than 90 programs, according to the Playhouse. The ensemble performed “Pop Up!” at the Playhouse on February 28. The Los Angeles Times has described the group as “dazzling.”

Sierra Madre Playhouse is at 87 West Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, about five miles from Pasadena. Tickets are $12 to $35 and are available at www.sierramadreplayhouse.org or by calling (626) 355-4318.

The April 3 concert is the second of multiple Brightwork performances at the Playhouse this season. The ensemble’s residency is scheduled to continue with additional programs.