Pacific Symphony sets 2006 schedule

WORLD premieres by composers William Bolcom and Philip Glass, a collaboration with conductor Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra, and a series of four festivals will highlight the Pacific Symphony’s 2006-07 season. It will be the Orange County orchestra’s inaugural season in its new home, the $200-million Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall designed by architect Cesar Pelli and acoustician Russell Johnson.

“We have programmed music that will literally give the hall a test drive,” Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair said Wednesday, announcing the season. “We’ve created a new platform for the arts and raised a new banner for Orange County.”

A Bolcom song cycle written for tenor Placido Domingo will open the season Sept. 15. The work, to be named, will utilize poems by Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.

Glass’ “The Passion of Ramakrishna,” based on the life and sayings of the important 19th century Indian religious figure, will be given its premiere Sept. 16. The work features the Pacific Chorale.

St.Clair, who enters his 17th year at the helm of the orchestra next season, and Kirov Orchestra conductor Gergiev will share the stage Oct. 8 in Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements and Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony.

The four festivals will begin Sept. 21 with concerts exploring the influence of jazz on Stravinsky, Gershwin and Bernstein with Russian pianist Alexander Toradze and Georgian pianist Edisher Savitski. A second festival, Oct. 26 to 28, will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution.

The orchestra’s annual American Composers Festival, hosted by author and festival advisor Joseph Horowitz, will be devoted to the music of Mexican and Mexican American composers. It will take place April 26 to 28. A June festival titled “Pulse” will feature the Nexus Percussion Ensemble.

Other commissioned works during the season, which will expand from 20 subscription concerts to 36, will include a new piece by Daniel Catan and an orchestration of Richard Danielpour’s “A Child’s Reliquary,” composed in memory of Cole Carsan St.Clair, the 18-month-old son of Carl and Susan St.Clair who died in a drowning accident in 1999.

Guest conductors will include Eri Klas, Andrew Litton and Douglas Boyd.

Soloists will include violinists Midori, Jaime Laredo, Cho-Liang Lin, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the Pacific’s concertmaster, Raymond Kobler, as well as cellist Sharon Robinson and pianist Shai Wosner.

The orchestra will also tour Europe in March 2006.