2026 Performers
Hub New Music
Founded in 2013, Hub New Music is one of today’s leading contemporary music ensembles. Hub has expanded the repertoire for its distinct combination of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello with over two dozen commissions by today’s most celebrated composers.
Recent and upcoming performances include concerts presented by Tanglewood, Seattle Symphony, Morgan Library, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Williams Center for the Arts, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center, King’s Place (London), Thailand International Composer’s Festival (Bangkok), Soka Performing Arts Center, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Bowdoin International Chamber Music Festival, and the Celebrity Series of Boston.
Current touring projects include Daniel Wohl’s UFO-inspired electroacoustic piece Mirage, and What If We’re Beautiful, a program exploring queerness, chosen family, and identity with music by Daniel Thomas Davis and choreography by Aaron Loux & Brian Lawson. In recent seasons, Hub has collaborated on commissions with Angélica Negrón, Nico Muhly, Tyshawn Sorey, Donnacha Dennehy, Christopher Cerrone, Carlos Simon, and Kati Agócs, among others. The group has also developed genre-defying collaborations with the Asia/America New Music Institute, Boston’s Urbanity Dance, Silkroad’s Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi), and trumpeter/spoken word artist MK Zulu.
Hub New Music’s recordings have garnered consistent acclaim. The group’s recent album with Kojiro Umezaki, a distance, intertwined, featured five works for Hub & shakuhachi which I Care if You Listen called “beautiful, haunting music that presents a clear and authentic dialog between varied cultural paradigms and traditions.” Hub’s debut album, Soul House, released on New Amsterdam Records, was called “ingenious and unequivocally gorgeous” (Boston Globe) and “intensely poignant.” (Textura) In 2022, Hub’s album with Carlos Simon, Requiem for the Enslaved, was nominated for a GRAMMY award for Best Classical Composition.
Lyyra
Lyyra is the new all-women vocal ensemble from The VOCES8 Foundation and is based in the USA. Creating world-class musical experiences to inspire audiences, Lyyra seeks to redefine the genre of upper voice music in the choral landscape, highlighting the astonishing capabilities within the full spectrum of women’s singing.
The sound of this bright, young group combines velvety richness alongside star-like brilliance. With a broad texture and exhilarating range of sound, the group’s talented members specialize in classical, jazz, pop, and folk music from diverse traditions and backgrounds.
In February 2025, Warner Classics & Erato announced an exclusive recording contract with Lyyra. Their first recording under this partnership was a digital single of Vienna Teng’s evocative song “The Hymn of Acxiom,” released on March 7th in celebration of International Women’s Day.
Lyyra tours both at home in the USA and internationally. The group gave its debut performances throughout the USA in 2024, including for the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and released its debut EP More Love on the VOCES8 Records label. Early 2025 saw the ensemble make its debut European tour with concerts and recording in the UK (Kings Place, London), France (La Folle Journée festival, Nantes), and a tour of German cities. In the summer of 2025, Lyyra will give concerts in the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, as well as continuing its US touring.
Lyyra is passionate about music education and is part of The VOCES8 Foundation’s mission to actively promote “Music Education For All.” Engaging in a broad range of work collaborating with schools, universities, and community organizations, The VOCES8 Foundation reaches up to 40,000 people each year.
Reflective of music, harmony, and the night sky, Lyyra takes its name from the constellation that represents Orpheus’ famed lyre. Lyyra is Anna Crumley, MaryRuth Miller, Elizabeth Tait, Aryssa Leigh Burrs, Ingrid Johnson, and Cecille Elliott. Lyyra’s Creative Director is Erik Jacobson.
Quartet i/0
i/0 String Quartet is a project by San Diego–based musicians Jesús Cervantes, Amir Nouroz Nasseri, Myra Hinrichs, and Peter Ko
i/0’s work has taken them across the United States and internationally, including engagements with the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Aspen Music Festival, Domaine Forget de Charlevoix, Next Festival of Emerging Artists, UC San Diego’s Palimpsest Ensemble, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Ojai Music Festival, National Orchestral Institute, and San Diego New Music. I/0’s performance practice spans Renaissance polyphony, 20th-century repertoire, contemporary, and experimental music. This historical breadth informs the ensemble’s commitment to sonic intensity, precision of ensemble, and a rigorously intentional interpretive approach. The quartet is especially interested in works that treat the string quartet as a site of inquiry—foregrounding timbre, texture, physicality, and ensemble interaction as central compositional elements.
Tasha Koontz
Recognized by the San Diego Tribune for her “luscious tone” and by Opera Wire for her “secure silvery high notes,” Tasha Koontz is an artist garnering attention from coast to coast and internationally.
Ms. Koontz has performed roles with the Metropolitan Opera, Ópera Nacional de Chile, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Opera, Central City Opera, and Opera on the Avalon. Her repertoire includes the roles of Tosca, Mimì in La Boheme, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro.
In 2026 Tasha will be returning to San Diego Opera to make her role debut as Berta in the Barber of Seville conducted by Maestro Yves Abel. Tasha will make her debut with Hawai’i Opera Theatre singing the role of Hana Hooper Ha’alilio in the world premiere of The Sheltering Tree written by composer Herb Mahelona and librettist Victoria Nālani Kneubuhl and will be directed by kumu hula Patrick Makuakāne.
Equally comfortable on the concert stage, she has performed as a soloist with the San Diego Symphony, California Chamber Orchestra, La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, Helena Symphony, Glacier Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Arts Orchestra, Newfoundland Orchestra, Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra, and Spokane Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Koontz took first place in the Musical Merit Foundation Awards competition and the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus Young Artist Competition, second place in the Susan and Virginia Hawk Vocal Scholarship Competition, and was the recipient of an encouragement award in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Western Region. She was also chosen to compete in the semi-finals of the Belvedere Competition, the Premiere Opera Competition, and the Mentoris Vocal Competition and was named a Finalist in the Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition and the Zenith Opera Competition. She has also won awards and recognition in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Illinois and Indiana Districts and Central Region as well as the San Diego District and Western Region, the Coeur d’Alene Symphony Competition, the Bel Canto Foundation Competition, and the Brava! Opera Theater Competition.
Ms. Koontz earned her master’s degree in music from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where she studied with acclaimed soprano Carol Vaness, and received her bachelor’s degree in music from Northwestern University.