The Next Festival of Emerging Artists

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. 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.

First Prize winner of numerous international competitions and awards, Casarrubios has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts, Madrid’s National Auditorium, and the Ravinia and Verbier Festivals. Recent engagements included the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra’s world premiere of Casarrubios’s large-scale concerto for cello and orchestra, MIRAGE, led by conductor Christopher James Lees and featuring the composer as cello soloist, and concerts at the Brussels Cello Festival, Festival Internacional de Violoncello León in Mexico, and the George Enescu Festival in Romania. From 2023 through 2025, Casarrubios served as resident composer for both CreArtBox in NYC and Festival ADAR in Spain.

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. Original works include the orchestral version of Afilador (2022-23), commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; MIRAGE Concerto for cello and orchestra (2025); and Herencia for String Orchestra (2023), praised as a “stirring creation” (The Strad). Herencia was featured on Sphinx Virtuosi’s 2025 album American Mirrors, released on Deutsche Grammophon and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2023.

Commissioned by cellist Thomas Mesa, Casarrubios’s work SEVEN received its Carnegie Hall premiere in  2021 and has been performed in more than 36 countries since. The piece was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award following its release on the 2024 album of the same name (Odradek Records), which featured Casarrubios as cellist and composer in seven of her most recent works, including collaborations with Manhattan Chamber Players and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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, and Ralph Kirshbaum. As part of her Doctoral degree, Casarrubios also studied composition with John Corigliano. Often incorporating her own compositions into her recital programs, Casarrubios began accepting commissions and writing for other musicians when she was 24.

A dedicated mentor, Casarrubios has taught masterclasses in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, and China, and at numerous festivals and institutions, including The Juilliard School, University of Colorado Boulder, University of North Carolina, Missouri State University, and the City University of New York. Learn more at www.andreacasarrubios.com.

About Niloufar Nourbakhsh

Described as “darkly lyrical” by the New York Times and “séduisante” by Le Monde, Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh is an awardee of 2023 Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant, a winner of 2022 Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation competition, and a 2019 recipient of Opera America Discovery Grant and National Sawdust’s Hildegard Commission Award. Her orchestral work Knell was performed at the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.

Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by Kronos Quartet, L’Orchestre de Paris, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra,  Nashville Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic musicians, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Klangforum Wien, Library of Congress, National Sawdust, International Contemporary Ensemble, Loadbang Ensemble, I-Park Foundation, Camerata Pacifica, Shriver Hall Series, Center for Contemporary Opera, New Music USA, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, PUBLIQuartet, Forward Music Project, Calidore String Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, and Ensemble Connect at numerous festivals and venues including BBC Proms, Ojai Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Mostly Mozart Festival, Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, and many more. A founding member and co-director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nilou is a strong advocate of music education and equal opportunities. She currently teaches theory and composition at Longy School of Music of Bard College and Berklee College of Music. Nilou also regularly performs with her ensemble, Decipher.

Nilou is a music graduate and a Global Citizen Scholarship recipient of Goucher College as well as a Mahoney and Caplan Scholar from University of Oxford. Among her teachers are Lisa Weiss, Kendall Kennison, Laura Kaminsky, Daniel Weymouth, Matthew Barnson, Margaret Schedel and Daria Semegen. She received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University under the supervision of Sheila Silver.

About Adeliia Faizullina

Uzbekistan-born Tatar composer Adeliia (Adele) Faizullina (b.1988) is a vocalist, multi- instrumentalist and Tatar Quray player. As a composer, she explores cutting-edge vocal colors and paints delicate and vibrant atmospheres inspired by the music and poetry of Tatar folklore. The Washington Post has praised her compositions as “vast and varied, encompassing memory and imagination.”

Her recent commissions include works for Longleash Ensemble, Jennifer Koh, the Tesla Quartet, Johnny Gandelsman, and the Metropolis Ensemble. Her works have also been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Brianna Matzke, Ashley Bathgate, the Del Sol Quartet, and Duo Cortona. She herself performed as soprano soloist with the Seattle Symphony in her own work, Tatar Folk Tales, after she won the Seattle Symphony Celebrate Asia Competition in 2019. Adeliia was one of seven composers to be selected for the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute in 2022. She was a guest artist at Play On Philly in 2021, and is a member of Composing Earth 2022-2023, by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Adeliia’s music has been performed at venues such as National Sawdust, The Kennedy Center, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. 

In 2021, she was featured in the The Washington Post, “21 for ’21: Composers and Performers Who Sound Like Tomorrow.” In 2024, Adeliia’s piece Jerlarem (2022) for solo voice and live electronics was selected as one of ten semifinalists for the Beth Morrison Projects. That same year, Adeliia was a winner of the SOLI 30X30X30 Project Competition and a recipient of the annual Student Accessibility Services Odyssey Award at Brown University recognizing her dedication, determination, and perseverance in the pursuit of achieving a Brown University education. Since 2023, Adeliia has worked alongside Joseph Butch Rovan (faculty of Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University) to develop AMI: Asymmetrical Media Interface, a software that allows visually impaired musicians and composers to create interactive electronic music. In 2020, she was a finalist for the All Russia Young Composers Competition Dedicated to the 66th International Rostrum of Composers, in Moscow, Russia. From 2018 to 2020, Adeliia was a Cynthia Jackson Ford Fellowship recipient at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In 2018, she won first prize in the Radio Orpheus Young Composers Competition in Moscow, and was a finalist for International Rostrum of Composers, in Budapest.

Adeliia received her BM in Voice in Kazan, Russia, and BM in Music Composition in Gnessins Russian Academy of Music. She has an MM in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with Yevgeniy Sharlat, and in 2019 started her DMA at the University of Southern California, studying with Nina C. Young. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Music & Multimedia Composition at Brown University.

Adeliia currently resides in Denver, Colorado, where she is working on her PhD dissertation for Brown University. She enjoys taking walks, being in nature, and learning to snowboard with her partner, Eric. She also happens to be blind.

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, Alice M. Ditson Fund, and The Amphion Foundation.