MUSE • Musicians United for Social Equity

Biography

Paolo Cabo Wahn is an MD, pianist, copyist and composer currently studying composition and piano performance in the music program in the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley. He is also pursuing a simultaneous degree in chemistry and minor in climate science. Through the College of Chemistry, Wahn teaches organic chemistry as an Undergraduate Student Instructor, and he was recently awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award for the 2025-2026 academic year.

In August 2022, Wahn worked with Domenic Salerni, violinist of the Grammy award-winning Attacca Quartet, at the 2022 Del Mar International Composers Symposium. Salerni subsequently programmed Wahn’s piece, “The Sunflower Rondo,” for his concert in October 2022 at the Rites of Spring Music Festival at Quogue Wildlife Refuge in Quogue, New York.

In the summer of 2024, he was selected as one of five finalists and commissioned by San Diego New Music (SDNM) to write a brass-woodwind quartet (flute, bassoon, trumpet, trombone) for the 2024 SDNM Emerging Composers Concert.

As of 2026, Wahn has been working on a couple of long-term musical projects: a musical adaptation of Frankenstein and a symphonic interpretation of the polymerase chain reaction, a biological lab technique.

His overall goal is to write for musical theater, but he is also interested in classical and other genres. In Fall 2026, he will enter his sixth semester as Music Director for The Intermission Orchestra at Berkeley, a student-led orchestra that specializes in anime, video game, and film/TV music. Starting as a pianist/keyboardist in Spring 2023, he has gradually taken on new roles in the orchestra, becoming a vocalist, arranger, conductor, and Music Director.