With the same commendable support for new American music that has marked its entire three-decades-long history, California Symphony will focus on works by alumni of its Young American Composer-in-Residence program during the next season. Former music director Barry Jekowsky created the YACR program in 1991.
The current music director, Donato Cabrera, announced today that each of the 30th-anniversary season 2016-17 subscription concerts will include a composition by one of the alumni. The composers are Christopher Theofanidis (YACR, 1994–96), Kevin Puts (1996–99), Pierre Jalbert (1999 – 2002), Kevin Beavers (2002–05), and current YACR composer Dan Visconti (2014–17), who recently received a prestigious Koussevitzky Foundation grant from the Library of Congress.
The season opens Sept. 18, 2016, at the Lesher Center for the Arts, with Puts’ Network, composed in 1997, during his tenure in residence with the orchestra. Puts is the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Silent Night, and of the Rome Prize in Composition. The program includes Mozart's Flute Concerto in G, with Annie Wu as soloist, and Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2.
The Dec. 20–21 concerts feature the Bay Area premiere of Beavers’ 2011 Bright Sky, along with selections from the Nutcracker Suite, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, with Rita Moreno as narrator, and audience sing-along of holiday songs.
Theofanidis' 2002 Peace Love Light will be heard on the Jan. 22 concert, which features Maria Radutu as the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488; Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 is on the second half of the concert. Theofanidis' 2011 opera Heart of a Soldier was commissioned and produced by the San Francisco Opera.
Jalbert's 2001 Les espaces infinis (Infinite Spaces) is on the program of the March 19 concert, along with Delibes' “Cortege de Bacchus” from the Sylvia Suite, Ravel's Tzigane, with S.F. Opera Orchestra violinist Jennifer Cho as soloist, Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, and Bizet's L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2.
The May 7, 2017, season finale, will have the world premiere of the California Symphony commission of Visconti's Tangle Eye Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Inbal Segev, soloist; Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, and Bruckner's Symphony No. 6.
Subscription ticket packages, $100 to $288 for three, four, or five concerts are available at the orchestra website. Single tickets go on sale on August 11.
Cabrera, who conducts all concerts, describes the season as “celebrating both the lasting work and successes of the many Young American Composers-in-Residence who have gone on to great international acclaim, and the artistic excellence of our own California Symphony musicians, many of whom have been performing with the orchestra for more than 25 years. I am also looking forward to introducing several exciting soloists to our audience, and to performing three beloved symphonies by Beethoven, Bruckner, and Rachmaninoff.”