Plan on waiting to hear how it ends

HERE’S an unusual way to premiere a work. Hollywood film composer David Newman’s six-movement Concerto for Winds, commissioned by the Long Beach Symphony, will unfold movement by movement over the course of the orchestra’s nine-month season, opening Saturday at the Terrace Theater.

“It’s a kind of musicians’ project,” says Newman, still in the middle of writing the work. “I know all the people in the orchestra, and I’ve worked with them. So how I’ve been thinking about the work is making each movement personal to the musician, so that it’s about the player, in an abstract way, as much as it’s about the instrument.”

The sequence of the featured soloists will be flutist Heather Clark on Saturday, bassoonist Julie Feves (Nov. 18), oboist Leslie Reed (Jan. 20), French horn player Calvin Smith (March 17), and clarinetist Gary Bovyer (May 12). The last movement, on June 9, will include all five musicians. Enrique Arturo Diemecke will conduct. Each soloist will also play an additional complete concerto on the day of his or her individual concert.

“It’s been tremendously fun,” says Newman, who was trained as a violinist. “It was kind of a weird idea at first. But I’ve learned a lot. It took me aback how much color and things you could do with woodwind instruments playing solo. There’s a lot more than I first thought.”

-- Chris Pasles