New works set for Pacific Symphony

The Pacific Symphony will highlight its 2003-04 season, and its 25th anniversary year, with five commissioned world premieres. It will also devote its second annual American Composers Festival to the works of Chinese American composers. The season opens Oct. 8 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The new works will be written by Frank Ticheli, a former Pacific composer-in-residence; Peter Lieuwen; Zhou Long; Chen Yi; and the winner, to be announced, of the 2003 American Composers Competition.

Long’s new “Poems From T’ang” and Yi’s new cello concerto written for Yo-Yo Ma will be performed March 10 and 11, 2004, as part of the American Composers Festival, which will run Feb. 28 to March 14, 2004. The other Chinese American composers featured will include Tan Dun and Bright Sheng.

In a nostalgic return to its origins, the orchestra will play on Jan. 25 in Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, where the orchestra gave its first concert in 1978. The concert will partly re-create that first program.

Guest conductors for the season, which runs through June 5, 2004, will include Guiliano Carmignola, Kazimierz Kord, Christof Perick and John Williams. Information: (714) 755-5799.