Inaugural Summer Festival
July 8-10, 2026
Highline Performing Arts Center
Burien, WA
Starburst by Jessie Montgomery
Concerto for Double Bass by Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte with soloist Rebecca Lawrence
Spider Boots (World Premiere) by Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte and Tessa Brinckman, includes Audience participation!
Selections from the Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds
Kauyumari by Gabriela Ortiz
Repertoire
Concert information
Join us on Friday, July 10, 2026 for our concert!
Ticket holders are invited to watch open rehearsals on July 8 & 9 at 2:00-4:00pm
About the festival
The Unbound Symphony’s Inaugural Summer Festival is a three-day summer gathering of approximately fifty professional musicians in the pacific northwest. Our goal is to celebrate and empower women and female-identifying musicians and use music as a way to express ourselves artistically and uplift the community.
Participants rehearse orchestral repertoire, take part in workshops, presentations or activities, and conclude with a public, family-friendly performance.
Meet our Composers
With a career spanning four decades, Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte is a Canadian-American composer and flutist who loves to play, teach and create music, and focuses her work on social and climate justice. She has received accolades in each of these roles in Iceland, England, Europe, Russia, Mexico, and the United States. The London Symphony Orchestra recorded Dr. Bassingthwaighte’s Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra in 2023, and a full album was released in 2025. Other notable performers include members of the Scottish Royal Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Port Angeles Symphony, and the Beaverton Symphony, and soloists including Megan Lanz, Jill Felber, Claudia Anderson, and Steve Schermer. In fall of 2022, Sarah performed the US Premiere of Marquez’ Danzon #3 with guitarist Alejandra Reyes Zamarano and the Northwest Symphony Orchestra. She will be Composer-in-Residence in Sweden, at the Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC)as well as at the Uncool Residency in Switzerland.
Bassingthwaighte is the winner of many competitions, including European Classical Music Awards Composer of the Year 2025, NACUSA 2025, the 2025 International Couperin Competition in Orchestral Music, the 2024 European Classical Music Awards in Orchestral Music, the Erik Satie International Competition in both Orchestral and Chamber Music, the International Saint-Saëns Competition in Composition in both Orchestral and Chamber Music, and a 2024 and 2025 Finalist for the ICMA Awards, the American Prize and the FeNam Competition. Her compositions also won the Newly Published Music Competition of the National Flute Association in 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Orchestrating the Wild was Album of the Week on the CBC in 2025, too. She is the flutist for The Sound Ensemble, the Ecco Chamber Ensemble, and Windsong Classical Trio. She has served on the faculties of University of Washington, Seattle University, the Rachmaninov Institute in Tambov, Russia, the Seattle Youth Symphony, Music Center of the Northwest, and was Founding Director of Affinity Chamber Players during its 13-year lifespan. At the age of 18, she performed Jacques Ibert’s Concerto with the Seattle Symphony, and has since received numerous awards. Her solo CDs include Songs from the Caucasus, Stalks in the Breeze and Flute MeetsMachine, and she and Mark Wilson recorded Around the World and Through Time as the ensemble Sirocco.
The British journal Pan Magazine acclaims her “hypnotic and rich sound” and goes on to say “The tone quality is full of depth and power. Bassingthwaighte seems to have a particular talent for communicating the message of contemporary pieces,” which are “performed with polish and virtuosity.” A past president of the Seattle Flute Society, Sarah has been a featured lecturer and performer for the National Flute Association, and a presenter at College Music Society conferences. She actively commissions new pieces for solo flute or chamber ensembles, and has been responsible for the commission, performance, and recording of more than 36 new pieces.
She has a DMA in flute performance and an MM in composition from the University of Washington, an MM in theory and pedagogy from Central Washington University, and a BM Honors in performance from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her flute teachers include Carol Wincenc, Julius Baker, Peter Lloyd, James Pellerite, Felix Skowronek, Bonnie Blanchard and Hal Ott and her composition teachers include Richard Karpen, Diane Thome, John Mickel and Margaret Brouwer. Bassingthwaighte is Head of Composition at Seattle Pacific University. Besides playing music, Sarah loves to hike and travel, especially with her son Izzy and her dog Bibi. They’ve gone to Kenya, Uganda, Ecuador, Peru, Norway, Italy, Russia, Iceland, and more, in a spirit of adventure and broadening perspective.
Dr. Sarah Bassingthwaighte,
Composer-in-Residence
Tessa Brinckman,
Co-Composer
Interdisciplinary flutist/composer Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), and as "an adroit creator of sound worlds” (Fanfare). Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, she has premiered hundreds of new works (commissioning over forty), with prominent classical music creators across the globe. In New York since 2022, she builds work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration. Tessa is co-director of the bi-coastal duo, Caballito Negro, with percussionist Terry Longshore, commissioning ground-breaking flute and percussion works, including composers Juri Seo and Baljinder Sekhon. She directs WildLine, a new, interdisciplinary chamber group based in northern Manhattan. Her collaborative videos have won 22 film festival awards for music scoring, animation and experimental film.
Numerous recent projects include her critically acclaimed album Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings), AEON (Rattle Records, New Zealand), commissions from flutists Lisa Bost and Lisa Cella, performances at Baltimore's Livewire Festival, Princeton Sound Kitchen, and headlining with Mexico's Duo Duplum at Festival Cervantino and New Music Forum (Mexico City). www.tessabrinckman.com
Meet our Double Bass Soloist, Rebecca Lawrence
Rebecca Lawrence grew up in Seattle, and following studies in Los Angeles, Paris, and Frankfurt, moved to Berlin in 2025. Her work with the double bass draws on more than four centuries of musical practice, bringing together historical awareness, contemporary experimentation, and a deep curiosity for sound.
Influenced by interests ranging from social movements and feminism to anthropology, ritual, and natural systems, she collaborates closely with leading composers in today’s European music scene. At the same time, a search for simple musical truth and harmony led her to study early music, which evolved into endless experimentation with the sonic possibilities of early instruments in contemporary contexts.
Rebecca is a member of the Berlin-based Ensemble Kollektiv, and plays often as as a guest with a wide range of ensembles and orchestras, including Ensemble Modern, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Folkwang Kammerorchestra, Klangforum Wien, Deutsche Kammerorchester Bremen, and others.
In 2026, she’ll record her first solo album with producer Weston Olencki, supported by a grant from the Deutscher Orchesterstiftung, exploring the possibilities of contemporary improvised pieces and arrangements on historical instruments.
Photo by Jörg Baumann
Meet our Conductors
Dr. Anna Edwards
ANNA EDWARDS’ musical career progression as a violinist, educator, and symphony conductor has inspired her mission to encourage and promote musical diversity at the highest level from professional, educational, and collaborative music organizations across the country. She is a passionate advocate of music from underrepresented composers on the concert stage. The 2025-26 season marks the thirteenth season for Edwards as Music Director of the Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, eleventh season as Music Director of the Saratoga Orchestra, and eighth season as Music Director of the Pacific Northwest Conducting Institute. Currently, Edwards balances her time between conducting in the Pacific Northwest, serving as a guest conductor/clinician across the country.
As a recognized leader for the promotion of musical diversity in symphonic orchestral music, Dave Beck, of Seattle Classical KING FM wrote, “The Seattle Collaborative Orchestra under Dr. Anna Edwards’ excellent musicianship, inspired vision, and creative leadership, is doing everything a modern orchestra should be doing to insure the future of the art of symphonic music. The spirit of collaboration among these professional, gifted amateur and excellent student musicians fosters innovation, diversity, and new possibilities in the life of the 21st century symphony orchestra. SCO is showing the way forward like no other orchestra in our region.” Along with her passion for diversity on the concert stage, in 2022 Edwards launched Anna’s Composer Database; a curated list of underrepresented composers that provides ideas for excellent, well-rounded, and interesting concert programs.
Edwards continues to follow her commitment to program innovative music, which balances traditional classical music with music by women, underrepresented composers, and Northwest artists. Commissioned premieres include works by Joe Jaxson, Sarah Bassingthwaighte, Leanna Primiani, Julian Garvue, Brendan McMullen, Andy Clausen, David Lien, Tim Huling, Angelique Poteat, and Victoria Bond. Anna additionally offers lectures concerning music, gender, and leadership to up-and-coming musicians and community leaders in public schools, community businesses, Colleges, and Universities.
Edwards’ dedication to quality musical performance started with her early career as a professional violinist, performing with prestigious ensembles such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Northwest Sinfonietta, Auburn Symphony, and multiple Seattle area chamber ensembles. As she has turned her career towards conducting, Edwards has attended numerous festivals and workshops, with mentors such as Ludovic Morlot, Michael Jinbo, Diane Wittry, Neil Thomson, and Gustav Meier. She received a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Washington, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education and Masters in Violin Performance.
In 2013, 2014, and 2018, Edwards received 2nd place and then two - 1st place honors (respectively) for conducting in The American Prize, a national competition for conductors and musical ensembles. Seattle Collaborative Orchestra received two - 2nd place and then 1st place honors for The American Prize orchestra performance division. In SCO’s performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra, American Prize described Edwards’ conducting as “strong and committed” and “…always ‘in the moment,’ showing clarity of beat, intensity and focus.…the conductor’s face is alive to each musical gesture and the nuance.”
Hsing-Hui Hsu
Hsing-Hui Hsu is the music director and co-founder of the Emerald City Chamber Orchestra, a Seattle-based ensemble specializing in string repertoire. She has been a guest assistant conductor with the Seattle Symphony, and has also guest conducted the Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, Saratoga Orchestra, Seattle Festival Orchestra, and Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra. She was a founding member of the Amazon Symphony Orchestra and served as Music Director, collaborating with other arts organizations in the Seattle area as well as charitable organizations such as Mary’s Place. Hsing-Hui is currently in her second season as assistant conductor of Harmonia Orchestra and Chorus.
In addition to conducting, Hsing-Hui is an active clarinetist. Last season, she served as acting principal clarinetist with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, where she also serves as bass clarinetist. She has performed with the Seattle Symphony, Pacific Northwest Opera, Sustain Music Project, Tacoma Opera, Seattle Philharmonic, Philharmonia Northwest, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra. She received her Bachelor of Music in clarinet performance from Rice University, where she also served as Music Director of the Rice Light Opera Society.