May 29 - Jun 12: The Next Festival of Emerging Artists Announces Details of 14th Season

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Artist PR Contact: Katy Salomon | Primo Artists 
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The Next Festival of Emerging Artists Announces 
Details of 14th Season, May 29 – June 12, 2026

Festival Celebrates Women Immigrant Composers in Honor of the 
250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence 

Friday, June 5 – PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance | Chatham, NY

Saturday, June 6 – National Sawdust | Brooklyn, NY

Cellist and Composer Andrea Casarrubios, 2026 Festival Guest Artist, 
Performs the World Premiere of her own The Book of Signatures
The World Premiere of Adeliia Faizullina’s 6, before she knew and after

World Premiere String Orchestra Arrangements of Wang Lu’s Tangrams and Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s 
for love seemed easy at first, and the U.S. Premiere of a New Arrangement of Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Ur Song 

Composer/Choreographer Workshops with Composer Aaron Jay Kernis and 
Choreography Mentor Sidra Bell at Gibney Dance, June 11  

“The Next Festival of Emerging Artists has brought together young musicians from around the world for twelve years now, giving artists professional opportunities, support, and access to a like-minded community while championing and performing new works.” – The Strad

www.next-fest.org 

 

New York, NY (April 30, 2026) –  The Next Festival of Emerging Artists announces details of its 14th season, taking place from May 29 to June 12, 2026 at PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, NY; National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY; and Gibney Dance in New York City. A trailblazing arts immersion program for early-career string musicians, composers, and choreographers from around the world, NextFest 2026 season celebrates the vital contributions of women immigrant composers to the American musical landscape. In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this landmark Festival continues the organization’s longstanding advocacy for diverse, global voices through a series of evocative world premieres and features GRAMMY®-nominated cellist and composer Andrea Casarrubios as the guest artist/ composer. 

Highlights of the 2026 Festival include Casarrubios’ newly commissioned double concerto for cello, percussion, and strings, The Book of Signatures, a world premiere she will perform as soloist alongside percussionist Garret Arney and the festival fellows. The program also includes the world premiere of a new work by Adeliia Faizullina (Tatar from Uzbekistan), world premiere string orchestra arrangements of existing works by Wang Lu (China) and Niloufar Nourbakhsh (Iran), the U.S. premiere of a string orchestra arrangement of a work by Aleksandra Vrebalov (Serbia), and excerpts from a timely work by Clarice Assad (Brazil). During the second week of the Festival, a collaboration with Gibney Dance featuring a choreographer/composer workshop mentored by Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY®-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis and Bessie-nominated choreographer Sidra Bell.

On Friday, June 5, 2026 at 7:30pm at PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, NY and Saturday, June 6, 2026 at 7:30pm at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY, Artistic Director Peter Askim leads a string orchestra of talented early-career string players in the world premieres of Andrea Casarrubios’ The Book of Signatures, featuring the composer as soloist; and Adeliia Faizullina’s 6, before she knew and after. The program also includes the world premieres of new string orchestra arrangements of Wang Lu’s Tangrams and Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s for love seemed easy at first; the U.S. premiere of a string orchestra arrangement of Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Ur Song; and two excerpts from Clarice Assad’s Impressions. 

A work drawn from her opera Mileva (2011), Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Ur Song distills the work’s final and most inward moment. Set in 1948, at the end of Mileva Maric Einstein’s life, the scene unfolds in a hospital where memories, loss, and ghostly presences converge. In a moment of late clarity, Mileva reflects on her life, recognizing in the infinity of the Universe a boundless potential for human happiness. Vrebalov composed Mileva for the 150th anniversary of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, for which she received the 150th Anniversary Gold Medal of the National Theatre for her contribution to the field of opera, as well as the Mokranjac Prize for the best premiered work in Serbia, awarded by the Society of Composers of Serbia. In addition to its string orchestra arrangement, which will receive its U.S. Premiere at Next Fest, Ur Song has also been choreographed by Dominique Dumais for Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and arranged for string quartet for the Kronos Quartet.

Adeliia Faizullina’s 6, before she knew and after was written as a tribute to her formative years, when music first revealed itself as something essential in her life. Named for the age at which the composer left Uzbekistan with her family for Tatarstan, Russia, the work expresses the sadness, farewell, and bittersweet uncertainty of leaving her home and beloved piano behind. The piece also incorporates the melody of a Tatar folk song whose title translates as “Apple Tree,” reflecting the traditional songs she heard as a child from her grandmother, a bearer of her culture. Faizullina said, “This composition reflects those earliest memories: my childhood’s unconscious delight in touching musical sounds, my first encounters with music theory - such as the IV–V–I chord  progression - and piano lessons with repeated passages, practiced slowly a few times and then faster.”

Clarice Assad's Impressions was commissioned by the New Century Chamber Orchestra in 2008 as a season opener. The purpose of the piece was to showcase the orchestra's performers' diversity and uniqueness and create a musical portrait of the first impressions between the musicians and the composer herself. This Next Fest program features two movements from the suite: Affection. Slow Waltz, inspired by the film noirs of Hollywood, and Precision. Perpetual Motion, which showcases skill and proficiency.

Wang Lu’s Tangrams is the finale of a four-part commission celebrating the September 2024 grand opening of the Community Music Works Center in Providence, an organization that offers free string lessons to underserved local children. Inspired by the Chinese geometric puzzle tangram, the piece reflects the endless possibilities inherent in both the puzzle itself and in teaching young, exploring musicians. Throughout the work, distinct musical motifs act collectively as geometric shapes that are continuously repeated and reassembled into new contexts, creating a piece defined by playful, rapid transformations and invigorating energy.

Originally commissioned in celebration of National Sawdust's 10th season for the Kronos Quartet and Jeffrey Zeigler, Niloufar Nourbakhsh's for love seemed easy at first began as a tribute to the community National Sawdust has cultivated, and organically shifted into a more intimate exploration of family, including the bonds that hold, fray, and stretch across distance and time. Since the passing of the composer's mother in 2019, her family relationships have undergone profound changes. Now dispersed across three continents, they continue to navigate how to remain connected despite their separation. Nourbakhsh said, “The title of this piece is a literal translation of the opening line of a ghazal by the 14th-century Persian mystic poet Hafez. It is also the name of our family’s WhatsApp group chat — a humble but enduring thread that ties us together.” This new version for string orchestra was commissioned by The Next Festival of Emerging Artists and co-commissioned by National Sawdust and PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance. 

Andrea Casarrubios’ The Book of Signatures Double Concerto honors the value of what is made by hand. The first movement, Pulse, creates the space required for authentic human expression, with the cello emerging as a voice that both seeks out and constructs the meaning of its perception. The second movement, Screen, embodies the speed, allure, and saturation of the digital world, the exhausting magnetism of information overload. It is this disorienting sprint that evolves into the final movement: a reflection on the act of writing by hand, symbolizing in the “signature” an intimate and tangible gesture of human connection and identity. Casarrubios said, “The title evokes the intimacy of an autograph book — a collection of names, drawings, and fleeting messages that preserve encounters across a lifetime. At a time when the handwritten self is vanishing in a digital world, the act of writing by hand takes on new poignancy. A signature, once common, now feels like an emblem of authenticity, a physical trace of presence, at once fragile and enduring.”

The following week, 2026 Choreographer, Composer, and Performance Fellows take up residence at Gibney Dance in New York City, where they are mentored by choreographer Sidra Bell and composer Aaron Jay Kernis to create new works at the intersection of music and dance, exploring new possibilities in equitable and collaborative art-making. The residency culminates in a pay-what-you-can showing on Thursday, June 11, 2026, featuring discipline-crossing works-in-progress and world premieres of new compositions by composer fellows.

The Next Festival 2026 Program Information
Friday, June 5, 2026 at 7:30pm
PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance | Chatham, NY
Tickets: From $12.50
Link: www.ps21chatham.org/event/next-fest/ 

Saturday, June 6, 2026 at 7:30pm
National Sawdust | Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: From $30
Link: www.nationalsawdust.org/event/the-next-festival-2026-featuring-andrea-casarrubios  

Program:
Aleksandra Vrebalov – Ur Song [U.S. Premiere Arrangement]
Adeliia Faizullina – 6, before she knew and after [World Premiere]
Clarice Assad – Impressions:
      Affection: Slow waltz
      Precision: Perpetual Motion
Wang Lu – Tangrams [World Premiere Arrangement]
Niloufar Nourbakhsh – for love seemed easy at first [World Premiere Arrangement]
Andrea Casarrubios – The Book of Signatures Double Concerto for Cello, Percussion, and String Orchestra  [World Premiere]

The Next Festival of Emerging Artists 
Peter Askim, Artistic Director and Conductor
Andrea Casarrubios, Guest Artist and Composer
Garret Arney, Percussionist

Thursday, June 11, 2026 at 7:30pm
Gibney Dance Studio H Hall | New York, NY
Tickets: Pay-What-You-Can
Link: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-next-festival-of-emerging-artists-composerchoreographer-workshop-tickets-1987781272295?

About The Next Festival of Emerging Artists
Founded in 2013 by composer and conductor Peter Askim, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists is committed to advancing contemporary music and cross-disciplinary artistic creation through performance, creation, audience engagement, and the nurturing of emerging artists with a passion for 21st-century artistic creation and collaboration. Initially a one-week intensive, The Next Festival quickly expanded into a two-week festival consisting of performances, individual lessons, coaching, masterclasses, multidisciplinary collaborations, and professional recording sessions. With one week in New York’s Hudson Valley and a second in New York City, The Next Festival brings together early-career string players, composers, dancers, and choreographers from around the country and around the world. 

Since its inception, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists has provided more than 250 young artists with opportunities to learn, collaborate, and launch their careers. Festival Fellows work closely with a selection of renowned artists and mentors, including GRAMMY, Pulitzer, and MacArthur winners. Previous seasons have featured some of the most prominent figures in new music today, including guest artists Kronos Quartet, Yvette Young, Matt Haimovitz, Jennifer Koh, Nadia Sirota, Richard Thompson, Pamela Z, Curtis Stewart, Seth Parker Woods, ETHEL; as well as choreographers Sidra Bell, Christopher D’Amboise, and S. Ama Wray. The Festival has appeared at venues such as National Sawdust, Roulette, (le) poisson rouge, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance, as well as on WQXR. Learn more at next-fest.org.

“Next Fest... has been an amazing process of really beautiful exploration... I really feel like we're taking the best of so many different parts of other experiences that I've wanted and just distilled them into one amazing experience...” – Michael Ferri, 2023 Next Fest Performance Fellow 

About Founder and Artistic Director Peter Askim
Composer, conductor, and creative catalyst Peter Askim is Music Director of the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Director and Founder of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Conductor of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, and Director of Orchestral Activities at North Carolina State University. Known for his visionary programming and commitment to uplifting living composers, Askim bridges artistic innovation with community engagement.

A passionate advocate for new music, Askim has commissioned and premiered works by Lisa Bielawa, Christopher Cerrone, Aaron Jay Kernis, Allison Loggins-Hull, Nico Muhly, Curtis Stewart, Christopher Theofanidis, and Paul Wiancko, among others. In 2022, he led the American premiere of Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America. His conducting has been featured on HBO and NPR, earning recognition for his collaboration on the documentary The Cold Blue.

Praised by The Strad as “a modern master,” Askim’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Tokyo Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Stavanger Symphony, and Cantus Ansambl Zagreb, ensembles such as ETHEL and the Aizuri Quartet, and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. 

Through his leadership of the Raleigh Civic Orchestras, Askim has redefined the role of the university and community symphony. Since 2015, every concert under his direction has included a new commission, totaling over 40 to date. 

Askim’s Next Festival of Emerging Artists, founded in 2013, is a trailblazing incubator for early-career string players, composers, and choreographers. The Festival has supported more than 250 emerging artists, offering mentorship, collaboration, and performance opportunities with Pulitzer, MacArthur, GRAMMY, and Emmy-winning artists. Learn more at www.peteraskim.com.  

About Andrea Casarrubios
Praised by The New York Times for performances that "traversed the palette of emotions" with "gorgeous tone and an edge-of-seat intensity," GRAMMY® Award-nominated Spanish-American cellist and composer Andrea Casarrubios has been commissioned by world-class orchestras, ensembles, and soloists and appeared as a featured soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.  

Her compositions have been programmed by organizations including Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic, and the Sphinx Organization, and have been broadcast on NPR as well as national radio stations in Argentina, Brazil, France, Sweden, Australia, and Spain. The title work from her album SEVEN, described as "an intense and elegiac tribute to the essential workers during the pandemic" (The New York Times), was nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.  

Casarrubios was born in a small Spanish mountain village, where she began piano studies at age two and cello at age four. She moved to the U.S. when she was 18 to pursue a Bachelor of Music degree from Johns Hopkins University, later receiving her Master of Music degree from the University of Southern California and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the City University of New York. Her teachers have included Maria de Macedo, Amit Peled, Marcy Rosen, Ralph Kirshbaum, and John Corigliano. Often incorporating her own compositions into her recital programs, Casarrubios began accepting commissions and writing for other musicians when she was 24. Learn more at www.andreacasarrubios.com. 

Funding Partners
Festival programs are made possible in part by the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts, J.M. McDonald Foundation, Fairgame Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Stewart’s Shops, The Williamson Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund, and The Amphion Foundation.

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