Symphony Unveils Ambitious Opening Slate for New Hall in Costa Mesa

by Timothy Mangan (Excerpts) / The Orange County Register (November 10, 2005)

The Pacific Symphony unveiled plans at a Wednesday morning news conference for its first season in the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, scheduled to open in September 2006. The ambitious season slate, dubbed “Sonic Explorations” and intended in part to showcase the acoustical qualities of the new hall, represents a historical step for the Orange County-based orchestra, with a significant increase in the number of concerts offered. “I believe that the Pacific Symphony and Orange County are on the verge of a tipping point,” said Pacific Symphony president John Forsyte, in reference to the orchestra’s growth and the concert hall’s opening.

As part of a reorganization of its concerts, the Pacific Symphony will produce four distinct music festivals during the 2006-07 season. They are: the “American-Russian Festival: The Jazz Connection,” featuring jazz-inflected music by Stravinsky, Gershwin and Bernstein and a collaborative concert with Valery Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra; a festival marking the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, offering gypsy and folk music as well as pieces by Liszt, Brahms, Bartok and Kodaly; and an inaugural “SpringFest,” this first year devoted to rhythmic and percussive music and including performances of music by Tan Dun, Toru Takemitsu, Orff and Ravel.

The annual “American Composers Festival” will focus on the music of Mexican composers Daniel Catán (who will create a new work), Manuel Ponce and Silvestre Revueltas.
“To better engage our listeners we have adopted an ambitious ‘Festival’ style of thematic programming,” music director Carl St.Clair said in a written statement. “With input from our festival adviser, Joseph Horowitz, (we create) a context and story for music to live, to be understood and to be experienced.”

The orchestra will also offer an array of concerts outside the festival format. Guest artists include violinists Midori (who will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto as part of the opening celebrations), Cho-Liang Lin and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, pianist Alexander Toradze, and guitarist Pepe Romero. As previously announced, Plácido Domingo will sing in a new work by William Bolcom, commissioned for the opening.

With the new concert hall offering a thousand fewer seats than the orchestra’s current home, the expanded Classical Series will go from 10 programs played twice each to 12 programs played three times each. The orchestra will also be able to move from its current Wednesday and Thursday night concert schedule to more attractive Thursday through Saturday dates.

The $200 million hall, designed by architect Cesar Pelli with acoustics by Russell Johnson, will feature flexible acoustics for both amplified and purely acoustic concerts, adjustable reverberation chambers accessed by motorized doors, and low ambient noise. “I think you will hear music with a different kind of intimacy,” St.Clair said. In addition to the Bolcom and Catán works, the orchestra will commission new pieces by Philip Glass and Richard Danielpour.
The orchestra will move its popular Café Ludwig chamber series from Founders Hall to the 500-seat Samueli Theater, and its chamber orchestra series from the Irvine Barclay Theatre to the new concert hall. The Pops series, led by Richard Kaufman, continues apace in the new venue as well, with visits from Davis Gaines, Maureen McGovern, Patti Austin and others.

St.Clair will conduct eight of the subscription programs and associate conductor Michael Hall makes his debut on the subscription series. Guest conductors include the veteran Estonian Eri Klas, Dallas Symphony music director emeritus Andrew Litton and Douglas Boyd.