Chad Cannon & Hui Wu: Music for the Ocean

Music for the Ocean is a one-of-a-kind concert experience that brings the sea to the stage. Emmy-nominated composer and violinist Chad Cannon joins pianist Hui Wu and animator Timothy Rauch to conjure an entire ocean world from a concert hall through original compositions, spontaneous improvisation, breathtaking animation, and immersive sound design. Featuring special guest harpist Cate Todd.

The show builds to its emotional peak with "The Rebel Reef" — a sweeping theme Cannon wrote after diving into Tela Bay, Honduras, where miles of critically endangered elkhorn coral still flourish in defiance of global reef collapse. It's the kind of piece that stays with you. A portion of proceeds supports Tela Coral, the nonprofit working to protect this extraordinary place.

The night concludes with a special Q&A and book signing with Juli Berwald, Tela Coral co-founder and award-winning author of Life on the Rocks, along with special guests Tiff Duong, WINGS Women of Discovery Flagbearer and Tela Coral co-founder, Dr. Tali Vardi, Executive Director of the Coral Restoration Consortium, and Richard Vevers, subject of Netflix's Chasing Coral documentary, founder of The Ocean Agency, and Director, Room 71, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Chad Cannon:

Composer-violinist Chad Cannon (Harvard AB 2011, Juilliard MM 2013)'s work can be heard in the Oscar-winning Netflix documentary, American Factory, the BAFTA-winning PlayStation hits Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei, and the Peabody-winning HBO film Night is Not Eternal. He was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy for his score for Exposing Muybridge, featuring Gary Oldman, and has received 7 International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) nominations, including for PBS' Harbor from the Holocaust, with special guest performer Yo-Yo Ma. Fluent in Japanese, Chad works as a symphonic arranger for the globally celebrated composer Joe Hisaishi, of Studio Ghibli fame, and is currently preparing orchestrations for Hisaishi's upcoming Radio City and Hollywood Bowl shows in July and August 2026. Chad is recently scuba-certified and is a U.S. Masters swimmer.

Hui Wu:

Praised as “sparkling” by The New York Times and “a rising star” by China Musical Weekly, pianist Hui Wu has recently premiered Etudes and Glassworks with Raiford Rogers Modern Ballet in addition to chamber music engagements with Martin Chalifour, Rainer Honeck, Stefan Dohr and Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson. A composer and advocate of new music, Hui has performed and recorded works by composers such as Matthew Aucoin, Du Yun, Huang Ruo, Chen Yi, and Eric Nathan. She studied with Jerome Lowenthal, Matti Raekallio and Phillip Lasser at Juilliard for her BM and MM degrees as well as completed her DMA at USC under the guidance of Stewart Gordon and Donald Crockett.

Cate Todd:

Cate Todd has been playing the harp since she was seven years old, and has performed and studied extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Japan. At the age of 17, Cate made her debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. as a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts. She has a degree in Harp Performance from the University of Utah, and has been a featured soloist with the Utah Symphony, the Central Pennsylvania Symphony, the Susquehanna Chorale, and the Master Singers of Northern Virginia. She is also a two-time top prizewinner at the American Harp Society National Competition.