Tommy Mesa, cellist +

Olga Kern, pianist

Touring October 2026

Following their successful collaborations at the Virginia Arts Festival, cellist Tommy Mesa and pianist Olga Kern launch a new tour together in October 2026. Their program, American Immigrant, includes commissions fully funded by Mesa’s 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant.

American Immigrant

Program: The program’s first half includes fully-funded premieres byClarice Assad, Quenton Blache, Curtis Stewart, Andrea Casarrubios, and Derrick Skye. All works will be completed by early Summer, 2026.  The program’s second half includes major recital works of immigrant composers, including Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata in C minor, Op. 6, Villa-Lobos’ Song of the Black Swan, and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for cello and piano in G minor, Op. 19

Project Synopsis from Tommy Mesa: As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I grew up surrounded by the story of my family’s journey to the United States with nothing in their pockets where they built a plumbing business from scratch. That history shaped me not only as a person but as an artist, and it inspired American Immigrant: a CD project commissioning young, acclaimed composers who are all immigrants or first-generation themselves.  They’ve been asked to write works for cello and piano that tell their own immigrant stories or those of their families.  In today’s climate, where immigrants are too often demonized and reduced to headlines, I want to humanize those narratives and give them voice. Each piece in this recording project is an intimate portrait of migration, resilience, and identity.  The aim is to transform deeply personal histories into music that speaks to the shared American experience. Blending my own heritage with the voices of these remarkable composers, American Immigrant is both a musical statement and a call to empathy: a celebration of the humanity, courage, and hope that define what it truly means to belong.