Pacific Symphony plans tour

The Pacific Symphony will interrupt its 2005-06 season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center to make its first European concert tour in its 27-year-history.

Music director Carl St.Clair and the orchestra will kick off a nine-city tour with a concert in Munich, Germany, on March 20, 2006.

The tour will continue with stops in the German cities of Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hanover and Wuppertal and also include Lucerne, Switzerland. It will end March 30 in Vienna.

Tour repertory, which will also be part of the regular home season, will include Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben,” Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, Zhou Long’s “Two Poems from T’ang” (a Pacific Symphony commission) and selections from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”

The regular season, which runs Sept. 28 through June 8, 2006, will be the orchestra’s last in Segerstrom Hall before the opening of its new home, the center’s Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, which will open in fall 2006.

Highlights will include a Lou Harrison program as part of the orchestra’s annual American Composers Festival (May 24-25), the West Coast premiere of Harold Meltzer’s “Fortunes” (Oct. 19-20) and the world premiere of the work that wins the orchestra’s 2005 American Composers Competition (Nov. 1-Dec 2).

St.Clair will conduct eight of the 10 pairs of subscription concerts.

Guest conductors will include David Lockington, music director of the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Symphony (Jan. 11-12, 2006), and Robert King, founding director of the London-based King’s Consort (April 26-27, 2006).

The European tour is being underwritten with a lead gift of $750,000 from longtime symphony supporters Sandy and John Daniels of Newport Coast. Other sponsors include Pimco, Allianz Global Investors and the Segerstrom Foundation.