Season Schedule

About the Featured Artists

Jeffrey Zeigler is one of the most innovative and versatile cellists of our time. Strings Magazine says Zeigler is “widely known for pushing boundaries and breaking conventions”. The New York Times has described Zeigler as “fiery”, and a player who performs “with unforced simplicity and beauty of tone”. Acclaimed for his independent streak, Zeigler has commissioned dozens of works, and is admired as a potent collaborator and unique improviser. As a member of the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet from 2005-2013, he is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the National Academy of Recorded Arts (Grammy’s), the Chamber Music America National Service Award and The Asia Society’s Cultural Achievement Award.

Following his tenure with Kronos, his multifaceted career has led to collaborations with a wide array of artists and innovators such as Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Hauschka, Vijay Iyer, Robin Coste Lewis, Yo-Yo Ma, Julie Mehretu, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Carl Hancock Rux, Foday Musa Suso, and Tanya Tagaq. He has also performed as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony, the Royal Danish Radio Symphony, the New Century Chamber Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra under the batons of Peter Oundjian, JoAnn Falletta, Dennis Russell Davies and Dmitry Sitkovetsky.

His most recent solo album, Houses of Zodiac, is his first full collaboration with his wife, trailblazing composer Paola Prestini. It is a multimedia experience that combines spoken word, movement, music, and imagery into a unified exploration of love, loss, trauma and healing.

This season’s highlights include being featured in a new cello opera entitled The Old Man and the Sea directed by Karmina Silec with music by Paola Prestini and libretto by Royce Vavrek. The world premier will take place at Arizona State University and then go on to the University of North Carolina, New York and Los Angeles.

Alongside Paola Prestini, Zeigler is the Co-Artistic Director of VisionIntoArt, a non-profit new music & interdisciplinary arts production company based in New York. He is the Director of the National Sawdust Ensemble of National Sawdust, an artist-led, multidisciplinary new music venue in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he sits on the Advisory Board. Additionally, he is a member of the Board of Directors of Chamber Music America and CelloBello and is on the Honorary Committee of the Sphinx Organization.

Zeigler was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Chamber Music and Innovation at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

Andy Akiho is a “trailblazing” (Los Angeles Times) Pulitzer Prize finalist and GRAMMY-nominated composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. Known as “an increasingly in-demand composer” (The New York Times), Akiho has earned international acclaim for his large-scale works that emphasize the natural theatricality of live performance. He is the only composer to be nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category in both 2022 and 2023.

Highlights of the 2022-2023 season include the world-premiere of a new interdisciplinary work for Omaha Symphony honoring visual artist Jun Kaneko, the world-premiere of a new commission for Imani Winds, and a sold-out run of Akiho’s “Seven Pillars” at Théâtre du Châtelet, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied and performed by Sandbox Percussion and LA Dance Project. Equally at home writing chamber music and symphonies, Akiho is the Oregon Symphony Orchestra’s 2022-2023 composer-in-residence.

Recent engagements include commissioned premieres by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Music@Menlo, LA Dance Project and The Industry.

Akiho has been recognized with many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. His compositions have been featured by organizations such as Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival.

An active steel pannist, Akiho has performed his works with the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, the International Drum Festival in Taiwan, and more. Akiho’s recordings No One To Know One, The War Below, Seven Pillars, and Oculus feature brilliantly crafted compositions inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan.

The physicality of playing that Akiho experiences as a steel pannist is an embedded aspect of his musical practice and naturally extends itself into his compositional output. Music making is inextricably linked to shared human experience for Akiho from inception to performance. Akiho’s compositional trajectory has been an untraditional one, he spent most of his 20s playing steel pan by ear in Trinidad and began composing at 28, and these social roots laid the foundation for his current practice. He can frequently be found composing into the wee hours of the morning at coffee shops, nightclubs, bars and restaurants, taking breaks to get to know those around him. Similarly, Akiho develops relationships with his collaborators as he writes for people, not instruments.

Akiho was born in 1979 in Columbia, SC, and is currently based in Portland, OR and New York City. He is represented by CAMI Music.