Chicago-born cellist Gabriel Cabezas prefers the unconventional path

Little about Gabriel Cabezas could be called conventional, and that’s exactly the way the Chicago-born cellist likes it.

“I tend to get bored pretty easily,” he said in a recent interview. “So I enjoy bouncing around between different kinds of projects, because I also think it allows me to deepen my musicianship globally. You get to a sense where everything starts to feed into each other, and the music is always fresh to me, whatever I’m doing. I don’t feel trapped in any one thing.”

Sure, he plays chamber music, but it’s often with groups like yMusic, a six-piece ensemble that occupies an experimental space between classical and pop music. Or Owls, which calls itself an “inverse quartet” because it consists of one violin, one viola and two cellos. Cabezas also plays with orchestras, but he’s rarely heard in the oft-heard concertos of, say, Antonín Dvořák or Edward Elgar.

Indeed, when Cabezas joins guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a set of concerts Feb. 5-7, he will serve as soloist in the ensemble’s first performances of Gabriella Smith’s 2023 concerto, Lost Coast.

Cabezas has several connections with the CSO, including an appearance in 2022 as part of MusicNOW, the orchestra’s contemporary music series. In addition, he previously played with the CSO after winning the Crain-Maling Foundation’s Young Artists Competition in 2008. In 2013, he was a soloist for one program with the orchestra when he was just 21.

But these upcoming concerts can in many ways be seen as his subscription debut as a mature artist with the orchestra. “It’s my first real week that I have to stretch my legs [with the orchestra],” he said. “It’s not a bad way to start 2026.”

It’s not surprising that playing with the CSO holds special meaning for Cabezas, 33, because it is his hometown orchestra. He spent most of his childhood on the North Shore, graduating from New Trier High School and was a member of the debut class of the Music Institute of Chicago’s now well-established Academy, which stands with such elite programs as the pre-college division of the Juilliard School in New York City and the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

“It’s always a pleasure to play in Chicago, no matter where,” he said, “but [performing] with the orchestra is very special. It’s not something you get to do every day, and it’s an orchestra I grew up listening to. We’re going to have a really nice time.”

Cabezas has known Smith since the two met on the first day of their student orientation at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, and they subsequently have been friends, collaborators and even some-time roommates. The two occasionally perform together, with Smith providing keyboards, violin, electronics and vocals, including a pair of concerts April 10-11 at the SF Soundbox.

The two released an album, which was listed as one of NPR Music’s “26 Favorite Albums of 2021” and a “Classical Album to Hear Right Now” by the New York Times. Titled “Lost Coast,” the album features three tracks that contain the seeds of what would become two years later Smith’s full-fledged concerto for amplified cello and orchestra.

According to the California-born composer’s accompanying notes for the 26-minute work, it was inspired by a five-day solo backpacking trip that she took on the Lost Coast Trail. It runs along a remote section of the northern California coastline with what she described as jagged precipices and stomach-turning drops above the pounding surf.

“The piece,” Smith wrote in her program note, “is a raw, emotional expression of the grief, loss, rage and fear, experienced as a result of climate change — as well as the joy, beauty and wonder I have felt in the world’s last wild places, and the joy and hope in getting to work on climate solutions.”

Music director Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave the premiere of the concerto in 2023, and it has since been performed by a range of other orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. In October, conductor Gemma New and Cabezas teamed for performances of the work with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, England, and the Seattle Symphony, allowing the two to build a rapport in the piece.

“I feel very lucky to play something I feel very connected to and that’s very natural for me,” Cabezas said. “It’s really fun, and everyone approaches it a little differently, and that’s a lot of joy of it, I think.”

Nowhere is Cabezas’ versatility more evident than with his 12-year participation with yMusic, a group that New Yorker magazine has described as “six contemporary classical polymaths who playfully overstep the boundaries of musical genres.” The sextet has toured with singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby and released an album with The Staves, an English indie folk trio. It also has collaborated with musical great Paul Simon and choreographer Bill T. Jones and has worked with such leading composers as Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Caroline Shaw.

The cellist enjoys working with the diverse group of musicians in the group. “I find them all very inspiring,” he said. “What’s kept me going is just how fresh the instrumentation is and the different projects we’ve done over the years.”

Owls began in September 2019, when Cebezas was asked to curate a concert as part of a series in New York overseen by the Metropolis Ensemble. He decided to put together a foursome of string players he admired, even though they didn’t fit the conventional string-quartet instrumentation. They gathered for a week in the Brooklyn apartment of cellist Paul Wiancko and violist Ayane Kozasa (now members of the famed Kronos Quartet), and they collectively hashed out a program for the event.

The concert went so well that they decided to keep performing together, but their launch was disrupted by the COVID-19 shutdown. They have a tour in March with stops at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “It’s a really fun group, a lot of energy and real open-mindedness with repertoire and the things we can do,” Cabezas said.

If all that isn’t enough, the cellist finds time occasionally in his busy schedule for work as a studio musician, appearing on releases by disparate artists such as Phoebe Bridgers, John Legend, Rufus Wainwright and Taylor Swift.

There are many fine cellists performing and touring today, and Cabezas believes the best thing he can do is just be himself. “What is most honest and most relatable for everyone is to focus on what makes them them,” he said, “and this array of different things I’ve been doing has become me over the years. As I move forward in my career, I want to deepen and expand on those things.”