25th Anniversary Season
New Voices: Musiqa, Inprint, & LunaLab
Program
- Poem #1: Glenn Shahenn — Last Second Inprint collab
- Justin Weiss — A Line Becoming 8′ Emerging composer commission winner
- Poem # 2: Glenn Shaheen — Ring Roads Inprint collab
- Joanna McDonald — A Glimpse 3′ LunaLab collab
- Poem # 3: Glenn Shaheen — Misery & Bells Inprint collab
- Rolando Gómez — The Two Clocks 9′ Cross-country Chamber Consortium Winner
- Poem # 4: Glenn Shaheen — Hiraeth Inprint collab
- KiMani Bridges — pith 3′ LunaLab Collab
- Poem # 5: Glenn Shaheen — Zero BeatInprint collab
- Jaylin Vinson — This Saturated City7′ catalyst commission winner
Program notes
Last Second
Glenn Shaheen
Low key awful. Loincloths. Lewd magazines. Luddites. Lazer Tag. Loudmouths. Links, hyper, golf, cuff. Lysergic Acid, Diethyl. Lumps, one or two? Lifted cars. Lifted dresses. Ladies and germs. Last calls. Leeway. Levees. Levy by Paul Otremba, a great guy we lost too soon. Lost souls, lost kittens – the latter makes me sadder. Listen, shh! … Lying to get in. Laying to get out. Lie or lay, I get em mixed up and I’ve got a dang literature PhD. Laurels, lillies. Laurie!!! Leerers. Lakes. Listening devices. Laser printers. Lasers generally. Look, over there! Lying to get deep. Labrador and Newfoundland. Luxemburg. Lips (heh). Loose ones, sunk ships. Letting the air out. Lest we forget. Lugnuts. Ladles. Lopping it all off. Lake City, Florida. Linda and Larry. Last chances. Lists—hey! Long roads. Living. Living well. Louvre, La. La dee da. Lust— have we been desired? Loot. Love, over and over. Lost love. Lungs. Lepers, leopards. Lychees. Lynchings, they don’t go away. Lion to get dead. Linguini cheese. Lesser evils. Limberger. Licking to keep on ticking. Learners’ permits. Lambos. Lucky ducks. Loose change, loose women, loose men. Los Angeles. Losing, over and over. Lost lives. Lasting memories. Lashes, forty. Llewyllens. Llamas. Leopard print tights. Lackadaisacal, I had to look it up. Luge. Loogies. Lumbar support. Laws, I guess. Lunar eclipses. Lunacy. Last week, last year. Last day. Lambs, shanks, sacrificials. Loop de loop. Loup-garou. Limitless options for lifelong misery. Lemons, limes, one of them is artificially created though I don’t remember which. Lemonade, limeade. Loquats. Los Caballeros. Laughter, god I hope it’s not at me. Losing the point, but on purpose. Leaves. Latest victims. Lag on the online video. Last minute. Lane changes. Lumieres. Lumps. La llarona. Leeks. Loki as a concept, the ancient god and the hero. Liminal spaces. Lentils. Lemmings. Leaping before you. Locks. Lack, it is not a. Looking for glove in all the. Limbs. Leaky pipes, hopefully they belong to someone you don’t love. Like, like. Ligers. Loads and loads of carrots in a barn, the carrot smell is overwhelming. Lhasa Apso. Let em in. Lil friends all bloody. Lumberyards. Ladders in the left lane. Leftists vs liberals. Liberals are more easygoing, leftists are more fun. Letting the tablecloth pull down the dishes. Little tremor. Looms. Lenses, without them I’m blind. Lennon v Lenin. Lushes. Library hours. LAX. Lumps. La guerre. Laffy Taffy. Laminated vaccination card, oops! Laertes. Lurching in the dark. Lurking in the bright eyes of mid day. Lunch!
A Line Becoming
Justin Weiss
a line becoming responds to Ruth Asawa’s sculptural work from her 2025 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Much of Asawa’s sculptures consist of suspended shapes inspired by natural or organic structures and are made from interwoven wires that all connect to or branch from each other. What emerges is a delicate, floating image where multiple structures seem to be embedded within or stemming from another. In a sense, the shadows of the structures show the images in the most clear manner, where the density or clarity of the shadows display the layering of the nested structures. In a line becoming, I draw on Asawa’s goal to create “forms within forms” through her wire captures and capture the energies and atmospheres I experienced with these sculptures through three miniatures; a floating and lyrical first movement, a driving and jagged second movement, and a crystalline and suspended third movement. A line becoming was commissioned by Musiqa.
Ring Roads
Glenn Shaheen
I’m curled up, I’m hurt in Texas.
Pain and sorrow like a spring
pressed down and ready to jump
and be lost amidst the roadside trash.
Paid up, sorry in Katy, Spring,
Woodlands, Humble, Pasadena,
the suburbs lost in traffic’s trash
the unending flooded roads of Houston,
our wood lands’ humble past edema
swelling into asphalt, chain stores,
rings of submerged roads we’re sluiced in,
one more lane bro, I swear that’s it.
I’m well at fault, buy my chains from stores,
the suburban life an inner pull to nature.
One more lawn, I swear, is all
we need to live a life of bliss and buzz.
Suburban, urban, inert pulls of nature,
press X to doubt. It’s capitalism, baby,
to need, to buy, to bliss, to buzz.
Houston has no natural borders,
it exes out upon our map, capital’s baby.
Hurled up when I wasn’t ready, hurt in Texas.
Houston cannot be stopped by borders,
it squats down and readies itself to jump.
A Glimpse
Joanna McDonald
Hammering, chiseling… small chunks of concrete fall away. Hammering, chiseling… the sound echoes through the room. Hammering, chiseling… a cloud of dust slowly rises, a glimpse of the sculpture to-be slowly takes form.
Misery and Bells
Glenn Shaheen
Let other pens dwell on guilt
and misery. Here there are funds, of course, yet there
the funds are more
attractive. Marriage is a unity of two distinct companies, of two
ideologies. What is lost in fabrics, what is lost
in speeches. We pray that in death
we only be allowed to live
everybody else’s life. Animals
hovering near us, we can afford
to feed them less and less. A letter
arrives and we feel the impression the pen has made days ago when
it was crafted, words carefully
chosen and combined with lines from
famous works of literature. Desire is made of impressions.
A person is a collection of funds and treasures,
educations spilling
from our lips. We don’t mean it.
We are a wealth of compassions, depending on the definition. A horse
collapses by the road. Quelle dommage
for the horse and those who considered it a companion. Bells
from a church or a mistake of the ear as wind
falls against discarded metals.
The Two Clocks
Rolando Gomez
Hiraeth, The Welsh Word That Means Longing For Home, A Good Poem Word My Friend Tells Me But He Also Calls Dibs On It So Hands Off Not That I’m Even Welsh
Glenn Shaheen
What will be the last song ever
played, notes drifting over some
ruinous hellscape. Ah, I do mean
played, not sung or dreamed. A
person selects it or it is shuffled
in. And, I mean, played via some
sort of device, like a record
player, a cassette deck, a holo
graphic transmitter. Hm, I was
trying to be deep, imagining
the easiest thing, humanity’s
demise. Do you think you’ll
hear it, the last song? Will you
even like it, or will it be one
of those songs that irritates you
at parties, dances, supermarkets?
I won’t hear it, let’s get that
straight. Like I’d be around, like
I’d be a little annointed so and so
who’d get the privilege of hearing
the last song played. Is that a
privilege? The European scientists
tell us it’s too late, we can do
nothing, climate bulking to wipe
us out, then they sip an expensive
wine. Post or pre apocalyptica
the easiest vision, a real genius
move to picture failure, I do that
every day for free. What if we
picture success, helping the poor,
the early victims – what if we
imagined doing something
for them? It might cost us a trip
across the country to trade beers
and lament our future failures.
It’s the white friends with their
very own houses on social media
who say it’s too late. Well can I
at least come over for dinner?
Can I hold the aux for a little bit?
I think I’m getting too specific,
the bird smashing its head into
the picture window. People only
like specificity, only like a
familiar melody, only like to
do a little nothing. The heavy
machinery breaking the gas line
causing thousands to evacuate
is music too. The squeal of the
rat as the child breaks its neck.
Pith
KiMani Bridges
pith (2021; 2024) is a solo and interlude from my voice and piano piece AURA (2021). As the core of the duo, pith begins in a place where time is fluid and light – a daydream. As the ear moves through the work’s warm, sweet, peaceful, and colorful texture, we slowly return to an awakened state. pith explores harmony and time while also incorporating a touch of weight and gestures of interrupted and contemplative thought.
Zero Beat
Glenn Shaheen
In stark heat I’m trying not to trip
over the sidewalks all jumbled by tree roots
like that’s easy. Behind the legally graffitied shop
the tossed steel pipe rings and the tone does not stop
hollowed out in the air. Disc rot on the best
albums in their digital creation. Took the self
out of the shelter took the shelter out of the self.
You must hit the kick drum any time you hit the crash.
Look, a bird! No, a bat. In college a friend
thought the pupil was an uncovered hole into
the eye, that things could fall through and get
trapped inside the orb. Save some dust for later,
we’re all darkness on the inside. When the white
man enters the room it changes the energy, we
don’t know what he will do. The news always a
fingerprint away, never good but gives us something
to talk about. What if you threw a fire and nobody
came? I prefer the bats, they eat more cockroaches.
I’m never far from heat, never as far as I want to be.
Eating pavement in front of a number of car-driving
strangers. Hope no one has a dashcam. My friends get
to be Emotional Online ™ but my job expects
professional enthusiasm. Love to see Americans
exercise their constitutional right to assemble in the face
of another unpunished murder by police! 3 Hearts,
1 Sadface, 2 likes, zero comments. I use my phone to
watch a video of the same model of phone being smashed,
boss of my own little company of devices. I thought the
record set was worth $1200 but it was only worth $900.
Now I’m in the age range where the weather app says
I should not exercise outside in this kind of weather.
I prefer the weather inside but it’s hard to do laps
in the living room. Everybody now a beer snob which
is cool but I just can’t get into sours or goses. I can’t
drink more than three beers without getting wreckted.
Being a lightweight means spending less money but
I’ve always loved the project of self-destruction more
than the result. Lovey, close the window, much bugs
in the night, they all lived through the cold, the freeze.
It all seems made up now that we’re living in this heat.
This Saturated City
Jaylin Vinson
This Saturated City is an homage to Houston, Texas, the place I called home for the most formative years of my artistic life. Houston is no stranger to the large, the expansive, the sprawling. I lived through its torrential downpours and its inhumanly large plates of food. I watched a saturated population push the city outward and upward.
The subtitle, “Space Sender,” honors Houston’s ties to NASA and our American journey to the moon. You can’t go anywhere in that city without running into outer space, from the baseball team to the highways. But the deeper connection is imagination. The same reach that carried us to the moon, to a place no one had ever stood, is the reach I saw in Houstonians every day: the refusal to be held by the gravity of one’s own world.
Houston has its problems. But it is also full of people who will lift you into orbit when you fear you’ve lost your own gravity.
A city of constellations. A Space City.
About the composers
KiMani Bridges
Pith
KiMani (Key-Mahn-ee) Bridges is a composer and flutist from Louisville, Kentucky with an emphasis on collaboration and abstract ways of storytelling. She has been commissioned, performed, and premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, and many others. Bridges has performed at venues including Auer Hall at Indiana University, Bird Hall at the University of Louisville, the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and the National Flute Association. KiMani has participated in bespoken, the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, Ensemble Evolution, and New Music on the Point. In 2019-20, she was named a Luna Composition Lab Fellow and awarded the 2020 G. Schirmer Prize. In addition, she has been named a NextNotes High School Creator Award Winner of 2020 by the American Composers Forum and is an honorable mention of the 2022 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and the 2025 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. KiMani has also written for film, electronics, performance art, for various genres/styles, and collaborative interdisciplinary projects. She has earned her BM in composition with a flute performance concentration at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 2024 and her MM in composition from The Juilliard School in 2026.
Rolando J. Gómez
The Two Clocks
Rolando J. Gómez is a Miami-born composer, tresero, and music educator whose music moves between Cuban popular music, American jazz, and European classical traditions. He began his musical studies with his father on classical guitar at the age of eight. At Miami Arts Charter, he discovered classical music through the cello and began writing his first compositions, eventually leading him to study composition at Oberlin Conservatory. While at Oberlin, he began studying the Cuban tres—a stringed instrument similar to a mandolin. He later earned his M.M. in Composition from Syracuse University, where he developed a body of solo repertoire for the tres.
Gómez’s music engages with a wide range of styles, often approaching familiar idioms from unexpected directions: Sit And Play, a bebop-inflected wind quintet; Whisky Sour, a tongue-in-cheek art song; Jest, a neoclassical scherzo for violin and piano; and Disquiet, an impressionistic nocturne for solo tres that stretches the instrument into classical and reflective territory before returning to its native Cuban voice. His work has been recognized by The American Prize and the Society for New Music, and in 2025 he was a Copland House CULTIVATE Fellow. His music is published by Dulcamara Press.
Justin Weiss
A Line Becoming
Justin Weiss is a composer and conductor whose music has been described as “mesmerizing… simultaneously colorful and sparklingly direct” (Amici per la Musica) and “powerfully visual” (Third Coast Review). Justin’s work has been recognized with a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the League of Composers/ISCM Prize, the Steven R. Gerber Prize, the Prix Langage Musical from Les Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, the Musiqa Emerging Composers Award, the Walter E. Aschaffenburg Prize and awards and recognitions from institutions such as ASCAP, Society of Composers, Inc., and the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. Justin’s work has been performed by ensembles including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Quatuor Diotima, San Fracisco Contemporary Music Players, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the Grossman Ensemble. As a conductor, he was previously the co-director of the University of Chicago and Montclair State University New Music Ensembles and has led performances with the VICE Ensemble, Oberlin Sinfoneitta and Contemporary Music Ensemble, and soundSCAPE Sinfonietta. Justin holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and is Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida. www.
Joanna McDonald
A glimpse
Joanna McDonald is a composer and jazz dancer interested in how interdisciplinary exploration of movement and visual stimulation a ects storytelling and auditory experiences. These interests led her to her choral project, Untamed, commissioned by the May Festival in collaboration with Luna Lab. She collaborated with deaf ASL translator/dancer, Arriana Bedgood, to act out the text for deaf audiences alongside the choir and other choreographers for the premiere. She also created two short films with electronic and acoustic music such as, Decomposing and Blossoming Thirds, for her interdisciplinary concert and exhibition she curated in 2024, in collaboration with gardeners, birders, technicians, vocalists, and performers. Joanna’s curiosity constantly leads her to try to expand these experiences.
Jaylin Vinson
This saturated city
Jaylin Vinson is an African-American composer whose music has been described as “an awakening” (Sioux City Journal), marked by “insatiable curiosity” (Heifetz Institute) and “bold and compelling” (DC Theater Arts). His work celebrates the intrinsic beauty of human connection. His compositions investigate depth of humanity and the complexities of identity in the United States, with a constant pursuit of unadulterated joy.
His works were performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and across the U.S. by ensembles including the New York Youth Symphony, the U.S. Navy Band, and Apollo Chamber Players (Houston). Recent projects include Future of Dreams, a chamber opera commissioned by Washington National Opera (2025), and Dark Matter, an Afrofuturistic flute concerto featuring flutist Tyler Martin with KINETIC Ensemble.
A Finalist for the San Francisco Symphony’s Black Emerging Composer Project, Vinson’s honors include Composer of the Year by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, a composition fellow with Aspen Music Festival, the Hermitage Prize in Composition from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and winning the inaugural Altus Adams Prize by the U.S. Navy Band.
Vinson holds a B.M. from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree at the Juilliard School as a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship.
About the musicians & artists
Maiko Sasaki
Clarinet
Dr. Maiko Sasaki is a distinguished clarinetist known for her dynamic performances as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. She has collaborated with prominent ensembles, including Musiqa, ROCO, Opera in the Heights, the Sarasota Orchestra, and the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Houston. Dr. Sasaki has also been featured in prestigious chamber music concerts such as the Kennedy Center Conservatory Project and ROCO’s Connections series. Her artistry has earned her the prestigious Presser Music Award, recognizing her excellence and outstanding promise in the field of music. Originally from Japan, Dr. Sasaki is admired for her kind and reserved demeanor off-stage, which contrasts with the vivid emotion and expressiveness she brings to her performances. Houston critic Sydney Boyd praised her clarinet solo in Act Two of La Traviata as “exquisite and full of overwhelming emotion.” In addition to her performing career, Dr. Sasaki serves as Artist Liaison for ROCO. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University and enjoys sewing as a creative hobby outside of music.
Nanki Chugh
Violin
Nanki Chugh is an Indian-American violinist and multidisciplinary artist passionate about the intersection of music, art, and science and its impact on education and society. She is Creative Education Director of Musiqa, a Houston-based music collective. She recently created and performed Musiqa’s “The Sound of Houston” and DACAMERA’s “The Science of Sound” through the Hobby Center Discovery Series, and the musical adaptation of her upcoming children’s book Symba and the Lobster has been performed in local libraries, bookstores, and at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. Nanki’s new concert series “Between Worlds” explores connections between Indian and Western classical music. A versatile violinist, Nanki is an alumnus of the DACAMERA Young Artist Program, performs new works with Musiqa, Kinetic, and Loop38 Ensembles, and has performed in festivals including Orford Musique and Valdres Academy. She was awarded first prize at the 2024 Emerging Researchers National Conference for her research on the effects of collaborative music-making on the brain. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and a Master of Music in Violin Performance from the Rice University Shepherd School of Music.
Caio Diniz
Cello
Regarded as “Truly Enchanting” by the New York Concert Review, Caio Diniz is a Houston-based Brazilian cellist and musician. He joins his passion for new music with his deep roots in Brazilian folk traditions, often collaborating with emerging composers in the commission of works exploring different aspects of his heritage. For two consecutive years Caio was awarded the Houston Arts Alliance SACI Grant in support of his artistic initiatives. In 2024, his project Impressions in Translation brought to stage works for cello and piano that reimagined northeastern-Brazilian folk genres through the lenses of 5 unique composers. Most recently, his project REFRACTED commissioned 7 works for string trio that blended the cultural and musical backgrounds of the artists involved in the project.
Finding himself at home in Houston’s spirited New Music scene, Caio often collaborates with prominent groups such as Musiqa, ROCO, Kinetic and Loop38, as he explores new sounds and artistic expressions. Additionally, Caio also performs with the Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet. When not performing, Caio works behind the scenes as a Producer, Videographer, Sound and Recording Engineer as well as the Live Stream Director for the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
Zhu Zhu
Piano
Dr. Zhu Zhu is an internationally active pianist, educator, and studio director whose career spans the concert stage, the university classroom, and the private teaching studio. She is a graduate of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the University of Michigan, and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she earned her Master’s and Doctorate on full scholarship. She has performed across the United States, China, Mexico, and Europe, including the Gilmore Festival, the Conservatory Project at the Kennedy Center, and Houston’s Musiqa series.
She currently serves as President of the Houston Music Teachers Association and as Director of the Kawai School of Music in Houston.As a teacher, Dr. Zhu Zhu holds her students to the highest musical standards while cultivating love for music, for art, for discipline, and for one another. Her students have been accepted into some of the most elite music schools and conservatories in the country, including The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes, and Oberlin Conservatory.
She directs her studio alongside her husband, Dr. Richard Marshall, and is the mother of Vivi and Jackie.
Glenn Shaheen
poet
Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collections Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press 2011, winner of the 2010 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and runner-up for the 2012 Norma Farber First Book Award), and Energy Corridor (University of Pittsburgh Press 2016); the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions 2013); and the flash fiction collection Carnivalia (Gold Wake Press 2018). He is editor of the chapbook press Tram Editions. Shaheen lives in Houston and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Prairie View A&M University.
Board and staff
Meet Musiqa’s board of directors and staff, and the composers of its Artistic Board.
Avant-Guardians
Calendar Year 2025–2026
The Avant-Guardians are Musiqa’s community of supporters — individuals and corporations whose contributions make new music possible in Houston.
Visionary ($5,000+)
Karen Arnold
Albert & Anne Chao
Jan van Lohuizen & Sandra Tirey
Anonymous
Trailblazer ($2,500+)
Pamela Horton
George John
Lillie Robertson
Pioneer ($1,200+)
Judy Nyquist
MaryLou Swift
Adventurer ($600+)
Meg Boulware
Sherry Cheng
Mike Clark & Sallie Morian
Martha Gannon
Heidi Gerger
T A Oplt
Kathy Shanley
Alana Spiwak
Emily Todd
Cyvia Wolff
Supporter ($150+)
Isabelle Asakura
Alison Bieser
Minnette Boesel
Shari Bosco
Kathleen Boyd
Dr. Brian Chin
James Conlan
Carolyn Durchholz
David Harris
Nancy Henderek
Judi Johnson
Richard Meisch
Colleen Morimoto
Evelyn Nolen
Annie Ong
Karen & Larry Ostrum George
Brenda Peters
Steve Rosencranz
Geoffrey Walker
Friend ($25+)
Keoni Bolding
Patti Grammer Kirkham
Derrick Huang
Samantha Mendez
Courtney Michels
Christopher Mill
Candice Moore
Arjumand Mubaarak
Diana Negrete
Nicholas Platoff
Jean-Marc Andre Rodriguez
Meredith Rossi
Alexander Rush
Eliseo Salazar
Daniel Schein
Mary Seminario
T Lavois Thiebaud
Glenn Thrower
Keisha Watson
Funders
Musiqa’s 2026–27 season is supported in part by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Amphion Foundation, Inc., The Brown Foundation, Inc., City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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