Our 2026–2027 Season!

Ever Present Past!

Explore the season below for concert details, composer stories, program insights, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the music and the people bringing it to life.

Some exciting news about a composer featured in our upcoming concert!

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s orchestral album FORWARD INTO LIGHT is on the Grammy® ballot in five categories, including Classical Compendium, Contemporary Classical Composition, and Orchestral Performance. The album, recorded by Metropolis Ensemble and conducted by Andrew Cyr, has also been shortlisted for the 2026 Opus Klassik Award.

While the recognition is for a different work, we’re excited to share the news because Snider’s music is part of our upcoming season opener, The Enduring Spirit.

At the concert, we’ll perform her O Sweet and Beloved Mother, a lyrical, dreamlike work inspired by Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century saint, composer, and visionary. Drawing on melodies from two of Hildegard’s antiphons, Snider creates a musical world that feels at once ancient and new, a brief, beautiful invitation to listen differently.

Curious to hear more of Snider’s orchestral music? Listen to FORWARD INTO LIGHT

A concert is more than the music on the page. It is the people who bring that music to life, and for The Enduring Spirit, we’re welcoming an especially interesting group of artists to the stage.

Some have deep connections to the Central Coast. Others bring experiences from stages and musical communities far beyond our own. Together, they create the many voices at the heart of this opening concert.

We’re grateful to Sonya Newlyn and Jeffrey L. Stock for sponsoring this concert and helping bring this powerful program to our community.

Alan Truong — Conductor

For local audiences, Alan Truong’s story comes full circle this season.

Alan’s musical journey began here on the Central Coast, where he came up through both Youth Orchestra Salinas (YOSAL) and Youth Music Monterey County. Now, he’s returned to both organizations, serving as Music Director of Youth Music Monterey County and as a guest artist with YOSAL.

Today, he is in his second season with Ensemble Monterey as Resident Conductor and serves as Music Director of Youth Music Monterey County—the organization’s first alumni Music Director.

His conducting career has also taken him to the Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Conducting Academy, and the New York Philharmonic, where he recently served as Cover Conductor.

For The Enduring Spirit, Alan conducts three of the four works and also brings his own arrangement of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony to the program.

Learn more about Alan Truong

Carlin Truong — Guest Conductor

Dr. Carlin Truong 張希 is an educator and conductor whose mission is to make music education more accessible.

As Director of Choral and Vocal Studies at Cabrillo College, he is known for creating student-centered, innovative concerts and for programming both beloved classics and less traditional repertoire.

His work also reflects his belief in the arts as a way to engage with contemporary issues and bring people together.

For this concert, Carlin takes the podium for Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.

Learn more about Carlin Truong

Omar Alejandro — Baritone

Here’s another wonderful Central Coast connection.

Omar Alejandro was born and raised in Watsonville and is the son of farmworkers. His musical journey began later than many professional musicians—he started singing in college after first playing guitar in a heavy metal band.

Today, the Los Angeles-based baritone performs across opera, musical theater, and mariachi. His genre-blurring recordings have earned more than a million streams, and he has performed on major stages across the country.

There’s an especially meaningful connection to this concert: Omar is a graduate of Cabrillo College’s music department and is returning to share the stage with Cantiamo! and Ensemble Monterey for the first time since he was a student.

Meet Omar Alejandro

Cantiamo! Cabrillo

Under Carlin Truong’s direction, Cantiamo! Cabrillo joins Ensemble Monterey for Thompson’s Seven Last Words for the Unarmed.

Their participation brings together musicians and singers from across our region for one of the most powerful works on the program.

Learn more about the Cabrillo College choirs

A concert shaped by connection
There’s a lovely thread running through this opening concert.

A musician returns to the community where he first found his musical voice. A professional singer returns to the college where he was once a student. Young musicians from Youth Music Monterey County join professional performers onstage. And composers from different generations and musical traditions meet in one program.

Jessie Montgomery

GRAMMY-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose music blends classical traditions with improvisation, vernacular music, poetry, and social consciousness.

Sarah Kirkland Snider

An acclaimed contemporary composer whose music has been performed by ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony.

Joel Thompson

Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator whose Seven Last Words of the Unarmed won the 2018 American Prize for Choral Composition.

Dmitri Shostakovich

One of the most important composers of the 20th century, whose Ninth Symphony took an unexpected turn when a triumphant wartime statement was expected.

Dear Friends of Ensemble Monterey,

How does music connect us?

That question is at the heart of The Enduring Spirit, Ensemble Monterey’s opening concert of our 2026–27 season, Ever Present Past.

The program explores belonging, grief, injustice, faith, resilience, and the idea that our humanity is connected to the humanity of others. This program is both serious and hopeful, bringing together four very different works that each offer their own response to history and the human experience.

Jessie Montgomery — Banner

You know the melody very well. But you may not recognize it right away in this iteration.

Jessie Montgomery takes The Star-Spangled Banner and turns it inside out, weaving the familiar tune through musical ideas inspired by an increasingly multicultural America.

Written to mark the anthem’s bicentennial, Banner asks what a national anthem might sound like in the 21st century.

And we’re especially excited that guest musicians from Youth Music Monterey County will join Ensemble Monterey for the performance.

Learn more about Jessie Montgomery’s Banner

Sarah Kirkland Snider — O Sweet and Beloved Mother

In Snider’s Oh Sweet and Beloved Mother, we turn toward the spiritual.

Inspired by Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century saint, composer, visionary, and polymath, Oh Sweet and Beloved Mother draws on melodies from two of Hildegard’s antiphons; the music imagines a moment when prayer expands into a vision.

The result is lyrical, mysterious, and dreamlike—a brief seven-minute work that invites us to listen differently.

Explore Sarah Kirkland Snider’s O’Sweet and Beloved Mother

Joel Thompson — Seven Last Words of the Unarmed

The emotional center of the program is Joel Thompson’s powerful choral work, performed by guest conductor Carlin Truong, Cantiamo! Cabrillo, and baritone Omar Alejandro.

Structured like Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, Thompson’s seven-movement work commemorates the lives and final words of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Kenneth Chamberlain, Amadou Diallo, and John Crawford.

The Renaissance melody L’homme armé—“The armed man”—returns throughout the work, connecting centuries of music while the individual stories remain at its center.

The work has become one of Thompson’s most recognized compositions and won the 2018 American Prize for Choral Composition.

Learn more about the work

Shostakovich — Symphony No. 9

And then comes the surprise.

Written in 1945, at the end of World War II, Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was expected to be a monumental celebration of victory. Instead, he created something compact, witty, playful, and full of unexpected turns.

But this performance has another story behind it.

Alan Truong created his arrangement during the 2021 lockdown, when musicians were questioning whether the symphony orchestra as they knew it would return. Inspired by historic chamber arrangements of large orchestral works, he reimagined the Ninth for a smaller ensemble.

So even the final work on the program carries its own story of adaptation and endurance.

Four works. One enduring spirit.
From a reimagined national anthem to a meditation on faith, a powerful reflection on lives lost, and a symphony born from a time of uncertainty, The Enduring Spirit asks us to consider how music can help us remember, question, connect, and carry on.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

Jessie Montgomery’s Banner — an effervescent reimagining of The Star-Spangled Banner, inspired by the anthem’s bicentennial and questions about what an anthem for a 21st-century, multicultural America might sound like.

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s O Sweet and Beloved Mother — a lyrical, introspective work inspired by the music and writings of the 12th-century saint, composer, and visionary Hildegard von Bingen.

Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed — the emotional center of the program. Performed by guest conductor Carlin Truong, Cantiamo! Cabrillo, and baritone soloist Omar Alejandro, Thompson’s seven-movement work meditates on the lives and final words of seven black men and boys killed at the hands of authority figures: Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, John Crawford, and Eric Garner. Structured like Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, the work focuses on each man’s humanity and last words, incorporating the Renaissance melody L’homme armé, “The armed man must be feared,” throughout.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 — arranged by Alan Truong, this compact and often playful work was composed in 1945 at the end of World War II. Rather than the monumental victory celebration Soviet officials expected, Shostakovich created a work filled with wit, irony, abrupt shifts, and unexpected contrasts.

Together, these four works offer very different musical responses to The Enduring Spirit—from the reimagining of a national anthem and a meditation inspired by medieval sacred music to a contemporary work confronting grief and injustice and a symphony responding to the aftermath of war with unexpected humor and ambiguity.

A New Way to Experience Ensemble Monterey

This season also brings a new Pay What You Can ticketing model, with recommended pricing to help guide your selection. We want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to experience these performances, and we invite you to choose the price that works for you.

We hope you’ll join us as we begin this new season together. It has been a true pleasure to help shape this year’s lineup, and we are very proud of what we have created.