Featured Composers (26-27 Season)

Karim Al-Zand

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. His works explore connections between music and other arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th century graphic art, fables of the world, folksong and jazz. Learn more

American soprano Caitlin Aloia enjoys a flourishing career in opera, chamber music, and art song, with particular recognition for her work in contemporary music.

This season, Ms. Aloia was awarded a Career Grant at the Pasadena Vocal Competition and was named a District Winner in the Houston District of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition. Recently, she performed with Pittsburgh Festival Opera excerpts from La bohème, Rusalka, Pagliacci, and Street Scene. She appeared as the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor with the Woodlands Chorale and joined Des Moines Metro Opera as an Apprentice Artist, where she covered the soprano soloist in Szymanowski’s King Roger and performed scenes as Magda (La rondine), the title role in Rusalka, and Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann.

Keaton Brown is emerging as a versatile baritone, establishing an expansive career as an opera, musical theatre, oratorio, and teaching artist performer.

This summer, Mr. Brown was a resident with Opera North in New Hampshire, where he sang Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof and covered Dandini in La Cenerentola. This coming season, he will sing with Opera San Jose, covering the role of Edward Teller in Doctor Atomic. In Houston, he will be featured as the baritone soloist in the Brahms Requiem with St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, alongside members of the Houston Symphony. He will also join the roster of Bach Society Houston. Previous operatic engagements include appearances with Nashville Opera, Hopera HTX, Festival Napa Valley, and Seagle Festival. Previous orchestra engagements include appearances with the Symphony of Southeast Texas and the Brazosport Symphony. Mr. Brown received his Master of Music from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and received his Bachelor of Music degree from San Francisco Conservatory Of Music.

Cody Ryan Arthur, tenor, is a dynamic and versatile performer whose work moves fluidly between opera, oratorio, chamber music, musical theatre, and contemporary concert performance. He has appeared with Houston Grand Opera, HGOco, Opera in the Heights, Theatre Under the Stars, Bach Society Houston, Ars Lyrica Houston, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Harmonia Stellarum, and other ensembles throughout the United States.

Arthur’s repertoire ranges from Baroque opera and the major works of Bach and Handel to musical theatre, jazz, and contemporary music. In 2025, he was tenor soloist for the premiere of Heather Sorenson’s Solas, and in 2026 received Third Place in the National Oratorio Competition of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park. His 2026–27 season includes Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with Hopera, Bach’s Coffee Cantata with Point of Departure, St. Matthew Passion with Bach Society Houston, and his Carnegie Hall solo debut.

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 community. She is Creative Education Director of Musiqa, a Houston-based music collective. She created and performed DACAMERA’s The Science of Sound” through the Hobby Center Discovery Series and Musiqa’s “The Sound of Houston”. The musical adaptation of her upcoming children’s book “Symba and the Lobster” has been performed in schools, libraries, bookstores, and at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. Nanki’s new concert series “Between Worlds” explores connections between Indian and Western classical traditions. A versatile violinist, Nanki is an alumnus of the DACAMERA Young Artist Program, performs with Houston ensembles including Musiqa, Kinetic, and Houston Music Festival, and has presented lecture-recitals in Houston, Los Angeles, and Mumbai, India. Nanki’s creative work has been funded by the Houston Arts Alliance and The City of Santa Monica. 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.

Flutist Allison Asthana enjoys a diverse career as an educator, performer, and chamber and orchestral musician. An active performer across Texas and the country, Allison is the Executive Director and a core member of Monarch Chamber Players in Houston, TX, a core member of Emissary Quartet, and performs as piccolo and third flute with the Mid-Texas Symphony and Harmonium of Texas. She has also appeared with the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, Houston Ballet Orchestra, East Texas Symphony, West Texas Symphony, Central Texas Philharmonic, and the Waco Symphony. A sought-after clinician and lecturer, she has presented workshops and masterclasses at universities and music studios throughout the country, including appearances as a guest performer and presenter at the National Flute Association, Houston Flute Fest, Austin Flute Festival, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. As an educator, Allison maintains a full private studio and is on faculty at Floot Fire and the American Festival for the Arts. As the recipient of the Presser Graduate Music Award and subsequent immersive study in India with notable bansuri experts Sunil Gupta and Harsh Wardhan, Allison is the author of the e-book “Bansuri to Boehm”, which explores the intersection of Indian and Western flute teaching and traditions. She volunteers actively, including serving as the President of the Houston Flute Club, and Junior Soloist Coordinator in the National Flute Association. She holds a D.M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, M.M. from Boston University, and B.M.E. from Baylor University where she respectively studied with Marianne Gedigian, Linda Toote, and Francesca Arnone.

Caio Alves Diniz

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.

Rebecca Benjamin

Praised for her “captivating and warm sound” (The Strad), Rebecca Benjamin is a violist whose work is shaped by curiosity, versatility, and deep artistic collaboration. A prizewinner at the 2025 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, she received the award for best performance of the commissioned work. Equally at home on the violin, Rebecca has soloed with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the Fort Wayne Youth Symphony, and the Music Institute of Chicago Academy Chamber Orchestra. Her festival appearances include Music@Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, Aspen Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, Gstaad Menuhin Academy, Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Caroga Lake Music Festival, among others. Passionate about education and outreach, she joined the violin faculty of the Kneisel Hall Maine Students Program in 2021 and has led and participated in community-centered performances nationwide. As a Young Artist with DACAMERA, she has brought chamber music to schools, galleries, and public venues, fostering engagement through music in communities around Houston. Rebecca holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music; the Yale School of Music, where she received the Broadus Erle Prize in Violin; and the University of Delaware, where she was in residence with the Abeo Quartet. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Matthew Lammers

Violinist Matt Lammers is a member of the American Prize-winning Axiom Quartet and a Lecturer of Violin and Chamber Music at Rice University. In addition to coaching chamber music at the Shepherd School, he is a Founder and Director of the Opus 1 Chamber Music School and Preparatory Program.

Now in its eleventh year and as Texas Touring Artists, the Axiom Quartet have given critically acclaimed performances and premieres across the U.S. and abroad. Their concert series in Houston attracts a wide variety of audiences, known for inventive programs that view traditional, undiscovered, and new quartet repertoire through a lens of unexplored storytelling. Most recently they performed the complete Shostakovich Quartets contextualized by contemporaneous works. Matt is also a Core Member of the Grammy-nominated and National Endowment for the Arts recipient Kinetic Ensemble, recognized as one of the nation’s most adventurous conductor-less chamber orchestras. He has performed and taught chamber music alongside members of the Miro, Concord, St. Lawrence, Cavani, Aizuri, and Carpe Diem Quartets and appears yearly at the Snake River, Northwoods, and University of Tennessee chamber music festivals.

On historical instruments, Matt appears in recital with harpsichordists Malcolm Matthews and Wolfgang Rubsam. He has published solo violin transcriptions of Lute Sonatas by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, as well as J.S. Bach’s D-minor Toccata and Fugue, proposing that it was composed for solo string instrument. Matt also explores the effects of acoustical construction on the characteristics of violins with research partner and luthier Keith Hill.

Matt holds degrees from Vanderbilt University and Rice University, where he earned his DMA as the Itzhak Perlman Fellow. His primary teachers include Paul Kantor, Carolyn Huebl, and Christian Teal.