A Journey Not Only of Sound, but of Sight : Music: The Pacific Symphony will launch a concert called ‘The Planets,’ which will be accompanied by photos taken via satellite.

If you think the folks at the Pacific Symphony are spacing out, you’re right.

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After all, the orchestra ended 1993 with a “Voyage to 2001” and starts the new year with a concert called “The Planets.” And this time out, they’re showing photos taken from satellites.

But the idea may not be as out there as it sounds.

“ ‘The Planets’ certainly seems like a natural,” said Marc Jacobs, whose multimedia interpretation will be featured in tandem with the orchestra’s performances of Gustav Holst’s most popular work Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“I know there are many people who feel that music should stand on its own and (that) to try to give it some kind of visual presentation is dictating what the audience should imagine. I don’t want to say I agree 100% or I’d be out of some work!”

British conductor Christopher Seaman will also lead the orchestra in Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” Overture and, with Bion Tsang as cello soloist, Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.” (Bion Tsang replaces Jian Wang, released from his contract to pursue a recording project.) Both concerts begin at 8 p.m.

“My goal was to take what the music was doing emotionally and to try to enhance it,” Jacobs, 47, continued. “You put certain images together with certain music, you create a certain reaction--that’s what Spielberg does all the time. You can take the audience where you want to go, and there’s an instant emotional response.

“The music in this case is full of surprises, and I tried to do the same with the visuals. I also tried to do something very universal. The thrust of this piece is (that) everything affects everything. Holst wrote it after becoming interested in astrology, and it was always about how the cosmos affect our behavior, not about what’s happening on Mars.”

The Boston-born stage director has lived in Los Angeles for 16 years, but, he noted, “I rarely work here.” He did, however, assist Sir Peter Hall on a Los Angeles Music Center Opera production of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutti,” and subsequently mounted his own English-language version for the company. He’s also directed productions for Texas Opera Theatre, Opera Madison (Wis.) and Greater Buffalo Opera (N.Y.).

Jacobs’ multimedia version of Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins,” originally staged in 1988 for the Sacramento Symphony, was performed again last year with the Utah Symphony as a 90th birthday tribute to conductor Maurice Abravanel.

Pacific Symphony executive director Lou Spisto and music director Carl St.Clair had been considering a visual component for “The Planets,” and Jacobs was recommended.

“They were thinking of showing slides of planets,” Jacobs recalled. “I said, ‘How long can you look at planets?’ I came up with a different concept--the planets’ effect on man.”

Two 9-by-12-foot screens will float above and to the sides of the orchestra. Jeffrey Ault, who assisted Jacobs in Utah, will man the six projectors. Many of the 450 photographs were taken from NASA satellites and through powerful telescopes.

Holst’s own movement titles suggest Jacobs’ treatments: “Mars, Bringer of War,” for instance, focuses on man’s inhumanity to man; “Venus, Bringer of Peace,” on love and brotherhood; “Mercury, the Winged Messenger,” speed and travel; “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” humor, and “Saturn, Bringer of Old Age,” sadness and wonder.

“Finally, I use ‘Uranus, the Magician’ not just to show religious icons, but to tie religious symbolism to man’s quest in space,” Jacobs said. “Man has achieved the magic through technology. The last fortissimo burst of music in Uranus not only shows the shuttle blasting off but also the astronaut flying inside.

“I also originally intended ‘Neptune, the Mystic’ as a journey through space. The music is very spiritual . . . incredibly impressionistic. I had the idea of linking a child with the sense of discovery, but I abandoned that. Using space as a metaphor for the search of spiritual, the music led me instead to a visual search for the eternal feminine.”

Are multimedia presentations a throwback to the Romantic era, when critics and performers alike would routinely assign programmatic interpretations to music, no matter how absolute? Or is this the shape of things to come?

Both, said Jacobs: “I was thinking the other day of ‘Howards End,’ where (the characters) go see a concert called ‘Music and Meaning,’ and some man is standing on a platform, telling them about Beethoven’s Fifth, saying this is where the giants come, and so on.

“It’s a throwback and it’s something going on today.

“In terms of the younger audience blasted by MTV and VH-1, they are certainly conditioned to get their music with images. More and more symphonies are looking for some kind of visual production to bring in an audience that isn’t necessarily just devoted to classical music.”

Jacobs insisted that this is very different from, say, Disney’s “Fantasia,” which made classical music more accessible to the masses by assigning animated images.

“With ‘Fantasia,’ it was clear from the beginning that the emphasis would be solely on the visual and the artist’s imagination,” Jacobs said. “I’ve got to walk a narrower line here. This is as much about Christopher Seaman and what he does with this piece.

“When I go to a concert,” he continued, “at certain times things affect me emotionally, at times I look at what musicians are doing, at other times how the composer put together the notes, or what the conductor is doing with his body. I hope this doesn’t preclude any of that.”

Jacobs hopes merely to offer one more option. In so doing, he admitted, “You don’t want to distract from the music, but at the same time, how can you not?”

* Guest conductor Christopher Seaman leads the Pacific Symphony in works by Holst (with visual adaptation by Marc Jacobs), Tchaikovsky (with cello soloist Bion Tsang) and Berlioz on Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Both concerts begin at 8 p.m. $14-$39. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).