Commissioned Works & Composers in Residence
Pacific Symphony's Composers in Residence
Over the past 35 years, Pacific Symphony has hosted five internationally renowned composers-in-residence, each creating new works for the orchestra and advising Music Director Carl St.Clair. Their relationships with the Symphony have continued through ongoing collaborations beyond their tenures.
- Frank Ticheli (1991 to 1998)
- Richard Danielpour (1998 to 2001)
- Michael Daugherty (2010-2011)
- Narong Prangcharoen (2013-2016)
- Viet Cuong (2022-present)
Works Commissioned by Pacific Symphony
Pacific Symphony demonstrates its commitment to fostering new music by commissioning and recording new works, thus adding to the extensive body of the classical repertoire. Below are many of the pieces premiered by the orchestra.
Premiere: 2/3/1993
A hopeful response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots
https://issuu.com/manhattanbeachmusic/docs/radiant_voices_for_orchestra_conduc
Premiere: 2/2/1994
Originally written for Symphonic Band, Postcard was written for Ticheli’s friend, colleague, and former mentor, H. Robert Reynolds, in memory of his mother, Ethel Virginia Curry. Pacific Symphony commissioned the version for full orchestra.
Premiere: 4/26/1995
Written to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
Season: Premiered on 5/10/1995
Premiere: 1/7/2000
The Night Rainbow is a work about leaving the old behind and walking into a new world or a new time. It is a piece about life and death or, perhaps put more relevantly, about death and life. It takes its title from a children’s book by Carol Edens which ends with the line, “If you’re afraid of the dark, remember the Night Rainbow,” which Danielpour saw as a metaphor for hope and consolation in the face of death.
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/27166/The-Night-Rainbow--Richard-Danielpour/
Premiere: 12/6/2000
Originally written for wind band in 1996, Blue Shades pays homage to New Orleans blues and jazz sounds that influenced the composer while growing up near New Orleans. Pacific Symphony commissioned the arrangement for full orchestra.
Premiered on 10/24/2001
Premiere: 11/15/2001
Initially intended as a tribute to the American solider, the piece took on additional meaning after the attacks on September 11, 2001 as the composer was finalizing the piece. It bears the additional dedication to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy.
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/27128/An-American-Requiem--Richard-Danielpour/
Premiere: 10/2/2002
Written for Baritone and Orchestra, Three Love Sonnets is based on poems by Pablo Neruda.
Premiere: 01/28/2003
A brief pop inspired piece based on a short riff that the composer borrowed from an Amsterdam street musician.
Part of the American Composers Festival
Premiere: 10/8/2003
According to the composer, Shooting Stars; is “a symbol of my enduring friendship with conductor Carl St.Clair, and as a gesture of thanks for the seven years I enjoyed as the Pacific Symphony's Composer in Residence (1991-98).” It was commission for the opening concert of 25th anniversary season.
https://issuu.com/manhattanbeachmusic/docs/shooting_stars_score?fr=sYzQ1NDE3ODM0OQ
Premiere: 10/29/2003
Commissioned by Pacific Symphony for the 25th anniversary
Premiere: 3/7/2004
A chamber work for double bass and piano which features the large string instrument imitating the pitch-bending characteristics of Chinese music. It was commissioned by Pacific Symphony for an interactive program of commentary discussion and live performance as part of the "Tradewinds From China" American Composers Festival.
Premiere: 3/10/2004
Originally a string quartet that became a four movement work for string s quartet and orchestra that evoked the culture of the Tang Dynasty, Pacific Symphony commissioned a version of the third and fourth movements where the string quartet was transformed into an East-meets West variant with the second violin part arranged for erhu (Chinese fiddle) and the viola part arranged for a pipa (traditional Chinse lute). It was included on the "Tradewinds From China" American Composers Festival.
Premiere: 3/10/2004
Commissioned by Pacific Symphony for the esteemed cellist YoY o Ma for the "Tradewinds From China" American Composers Festival, this concerto for cello and orchestra draws on musical traditions from the Silk Road that once connected the East with the West.
Premiere: 10/27/2004
Premiere: 11/30/2005
"Prangcharoen first came to the attention of local audiences when he won the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Competition in 2005, an event adjudicated by the audience. The prize was $5,000 and the commission of another piece, which the Pacific Symphony performed the next season. That piece, called “Sattha,” was part meditation on, part musico-graphic depiction of the 2004 tsunami that hit, among other countries, Thailand.
Premiere: 4/6/2006
A co-commission from Pacific Symphony and the Utah Symphony, this work features only solo “pitched” percussion (i.e. mallet instruments) with the orchestra.
Premiere: 9/15/2006
A Song Cycle for Tenor and Orchestra based on poems of Federico Garcia Lorca that was written for tenor Placido Domingo, who gave the premiere. It was commissioned for Pacific Symphony by the Orange County Performing Arts Center (OCPAC ), now Segerstrom Center for the Arts (SCFTA), for the opening of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.
Premiere: 9/16/2006
A co-commission from Pacific Symphony and the Nashville Symphony, The Passion of Ramakrishna was written for choir and orchestra as a tribute to the 19th century Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna and is based on his texts. It was performed as part of the inaugural concerts for the opening of Pacific Symphony’s new home, the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.
https://philipglass.com/compositions/passion_of_ramakrishna/
Premiere: 11/16/2006
Originally a piano trio written in 1999 in the memory of Carl and Susan St.Clair’s 18-month-old son, Cole Carsan St. Clair, following his untimely death, Pacific Symphony commissioned the orchestra version in 2006. This new arrangement featuring solo violin and cello with orchestra was written for the husband/wife team of violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson for whom the original trio was also composed for their trio with pianist Joseph Kalichstein.
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/35244/A-Childs-Reliquary-for-orchestra--Richard-Danielpour/
Premiere: 4/26/2007
Featuring three percussion soloists, Caribbean Airs explores the sound world of Afro-Cuban music and its rhythmic complexities. With this work, Mexican composer Daniel Catán was commissioned and featured in the 2007 American Composers Festival: "Los Sonidos de México."
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/35241/Caribbean-Airs--Daniel-Cat%C3%A1n/
Premiere: 2/7/2008
Written by Stephen Scott for his own Bowed Piano Ensemble, this work calls for 10 musicians, acting together as the bowed piano soloist accompanied by the orchestra, to stand around a grand piano and play it in all sorts of unusual ways like pulling a rosined piece of fishing through the strings along with other alternative percussive effects to produce unique sound inside the piano.; Pacific Crossroads was commissioned for the American Composers Festival 2008: The West: Music Inspired by the American Frontier.
https://www.npr.org/2008/02/05/18666248/the-bowed-piano-fishing-for-a-new-sound
Premiere: 4/7/2008
Inspired by Pacific Symphony’s 2006 Tour of Europe, Principal Tuba player and LA studio legend James Self wrote Tour de Force. It features nine musical episodes that happen to equal the nine concerts of the tour, but are not intended to depict the individual cities.
Premiere: 9/12/2008
For the opening of the City of Hope in Orange County, California, Alva Henderson was commissioned to write From Greater Light, a cantata with baritone and tenor solos, chorus and orchestra. The work was first performed with reduced forces in the chapel of the City of Hope, and the following evening with larger forces in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall with Carl St. Clair, Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale.
Premiere: 9/18/2008
Paul Jacobs, organ
Commissioned by the Pacific Symphony for organist Paul Jacobs, this work takes inspiration from the famous antiphonal (alternating groupings of ensembles) writing of the last Renaissance master Giovanni Gabrieli.
Premiered on 2/26/2009
Part of the American Composers Festival 2009: "Hollywood's Golden Age"
Premiere: 6/11/2009
Gustavo Delgado, organ
Premiere: 2/4/2010
A co-commission from Pacific Symphony and the Phoenix Symphony, Mount Rushmore is written for chorus and orchestra. The composer states, “drawing from American musical sources and texts, my composition echoes the resonance and dissonance of Mount Rushmore as a complex icon of American history. Like Mount Rushmore, my libretto is carved out of the words of each President.
Part of the American Composers Festival 2010: "The Greatest Generation"
https://michaeldaugherty.net/works/orchestra/mount-rushmore/
Premiere: 22/25/2010
Jeffrey Biegel, piano
Though not a traditional piano concerto, Mirrors is a 22-minute, five-movement suite for piano and orchestra written for pianist Jeffery Biegel, a regular collaborator with Pacific Symphony and former classmate of the composer.
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/43086/Mirrors-Piano-Concerto-No-4--Richard-Danielpour/
Premiere: 11/18/2010
Jeffrey Biegel, piano
Commissioned for pianist Jeffrey Biegel by a consortium of orchestras, headed by Pacific Symphony and involving: VocalEssence, Dayton, Springfield, Detroit, Calgary, Knoxville, and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestras, the idea behind Prometheus was to create a companion piece to Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, which was written for piano, chorus, and orchestra, with the piano representing the mythological Greek Titan.
For the text for the choral parts, Bolcom turned to Lord Byron's poem Prometheus, which the composer saw as a cautionary tale about technology that is still relevant today. Whereas Prometheus gave fire to man, that fire in our time is represented by modern technology, which can both free us and enslave us.
Pacific Symphony Premiere: 1/12/2012
Sidereus was composed at the request of the Henry Fogel Commissioning Consortium, a group of 35 American orchestras seeking to honor the former League of American Orchestras President and long-time administrator and champion of classical music. Sidereus was premiered by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra on October 16, 2010 under the baton of Mei-Ann Chen. The title of the piece is a reference to a book by Galileo called Sidereus Nuncius or "Sidereal Messenger,” which inspired its composition.
https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Osvaldo-Golijov-Sidereus/55773
https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Osvaldo-Golijov-on-Sidereus-Henry-Fogel-Commissioning-Consortium/12086
Premiere: 2/23/2012
Paul Jacobs, organ
Commissioned by Pacific Symphony, Music Director Carl St.Clair and the San Diego State University School of Music and Dance (SDSU) for its 75th anniversary celebration and the SDSU Wind Symphony conductor Shannon Kitelinger. The Gospel According to Sister Aimee is written for organ, brass and percussion.The composer calls the piece a “musical portrait of the rise, fall and redemption of Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), the first important religious celebrity of the new mass media era of the 1930s.”
https://michaeldaugherty.net/works/large-chamber-ensemble/the-gospel-according-to-sister-aimee/
Premiere: 3/22/2012
Hila Plittmann, soprano
Pacific Chorale, John Alexander, director
Co-commissioned by the Pacific Symphony and the Dallas Symphony, the oratorio Toward a Season of Peace contemplates violence and war in the name of religion, while exploring forgiveness and peace through the metaphor of spring as rebirth. It premiered during Pacific Symphony’s first Nowruz Festival, celebrating the Iranian New Year, during the American Composers Festival 2012.
Danielpour: Journey Toward a Season of Peace, Part 1
Danielpour: Journey Toward a Season of Peace, Part 2
The Journey Toward The Piece -- Part Three
The Journey Toward The Piece -- Part Four
The Journey Toward The Piece -- Part Five
The Journey Toward The Piece -- Part Six
The Journey Toward The Piece -- Part Seven
Premiere: 5/31/2012
The choral work There Will Be Rest was written in 1999 in memory of Cole Carsan St.Clair, the son of Carl and Susan St.Clair. In 2012, Pacific Symphony commissioned a string orchestra adaptation of the work. It has been performed both as a stand-alone piece as well as in combination with the original choral version.
https://issuu.com/manhattanbeachmusic/docs/rest_strings_score_text
Premiere: 5/8/2014
Written for Pacific Symphony’s 2014 American Composers Festival “From Screen to Score,” which featured the lesser-known classical works of major film composers, Goldenthal’s Symphony was the composer’s first large-scale concert work since the Pacific Symphony commission Fire, Water, Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio, 20 years earlier. Goldenthal is best-known for his film scores for Alien 3, Frida, Pet Sematary, Interview with the Vampire, Demolition Man, Batman Forever, and Batman and Robin.
Premiere: 9/25/2014
A co-commission by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Pacific Symphony, Supplica is a 10-minute "companion piece" to the composer’s Fourth Symphony. Rouse said, “both were works I felt an inner compulsion to write, but both also possess meanings for me that must remain personal. This certainly does not mean that either piece is intended to be ‘impersonal’ - rather that what I hope will be heard as both an intimate and an impassioned communication in sound must mean to each listener what it will, without further intercession or guidance from the me.”
https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Christopher-Rouse-Supplica/100335
Premiere: 12/11/2014
Composed to commemorate Maestro Carl St.Clair's 25th Anniversary season with Pacific Symphony, the title refers to the “journey of our friendship,” as the composer states, which began when Prangcharoen won Pacific Symphony’s Young Composers Competition and was commissioned to write a piece in 2005. St.Clair's first name is used as pitch material in the work. CARL which can be translated as C = C, A = A, R = Re, and L = La.
Premiere: 3/12/2015
James Ehnes, violin
The second of two concert works the renowned film composer has created for Pacific Symphony, the Violin Concerto was written specifically of violin virtuoso James Ehnes.
Pacific Symphony Premiere: 5/28/2015
A co-commission with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kansas City Symphony, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Previn’s Double Concerto was written for the husband/wife team of violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson.
Premiere: 6/11/2015
Conceived as a new multimedia work accompanied by video, animation and poetry, Siren Songs explores women and the ocean. The video and animation was created by Tempe Hale, who used footage from Gregory MacGillivray, Academy-Award nominated cinematographer of films such as "The Living Sea" and "Dolphins," while three poems by internationally known poet Amy Gerstler, a professor at UC Irvine, served as inspiration for the instrumental work and appear in the visual presentation.
Premiere: 10/1/2015
During Prangcharoen’s tenure as Pacific Symphony’s Composer-In-Residence, Carl St.Clair requested that he write a piece inspired by Orange County. For over a year, the composer explored the county as he visited its people and places, learning information and discovering inspiration. The result was a 20-minute orchestral work called Beyond Land and Ocean.
Premiere: 2/4/2016
Paul Jacobs, organ
Written for Organist Paul Jacobs, in honor of composer Stephen Paulus (1949–2014), Resilience explores the human capacity for tenacity and perseverance. The composer describes the piece as “a 13-minute exploration of two seemingly limitless spheres.” It was performed as part of Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Festival 2016: "Organ Splendor."
Premiere: 9/22/2016
Pianist and composer Conrad Tao is best known to Pacific Symphony audiences as a brilliant piano soloist performing many of the famous concertos with the orchestra for many years. However, in the 2016 – 17 Season, Tao’s talents as a composer were called upon. I Got a Little Wiggle That I Just Can’t Shake, a title inspired by the central montage of the 2010 Zach Clark film Vacation!, was the result of that commission.
The composer’s previous experience performing the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall served as an inspiration. He said, “The hall is alluring and sinuous, and I found myself attracted to the wavy sense of line that pervades the building. I wanted to write a piece about those wavy lines. I imagined them colliding gleefully into one another in three-dimensional sonic space before settling down into a more ordered fashion.”
Premiere: 10/20/2016
As the composer stated, “Einstein saw time as the relationship of the motion of one object relative to the position of another object, as measured through observation.” Absence of Time is a concerto for woodwind quartet and orchestra that explores this concept of time, represented by two different musical bodies: the woodwind quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon) and the orchestra. Unlike a typical concert where the soloist(s) are “in contest with the orchestra,” the orchestra here embodies real time as we know it, where as the solo group lives in “imaginary time” or the “absence of time” around the “keeper of time,” that is the main ensemble.
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/absence-of-time-21313719.html
Premiere: 4/11/2019
Composed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the first walk on the Moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969, To The New World is a 22-minute composition written for orchestra and soprano. It’s an eclectic mix of spirited rhythms, otherworldly music, lounge jazz and exotic music with all kinds of interesting instrumental effects.
The soprano, aside from singing traditional words, most notably Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind,” creates vocal glissandos mimicking a theremin, an early electronic musical instrument known for its eerie sound effects often used in sci-fi movies. A waterphone, which is bowed percussion instrument filled with water, adds further to the ethereal ambience. The cartoonish glissing percussion instrument the flexatone is also featured.
Additionally, there are musical nods to Armstrong, who played the euphonium in college and brought a recording of Dvořák’s New World Symphony on his mission. Daugherty adds a solo euphonium to the brass section and includes musical fragments and chords from Dvořák’s Symphony as tribute.
https://michaeldaugherty.net/works/orchestra/to-the-new-world-for-orchestra/
Premiere: 12/5/2019
Composed as a tribute to Maestro Carl St.Clair’s 30 years with the Pacific Symphony, October Light, Adagio for Orchestra borrows its title from title from a John Gardner novel of the same name, which references “the pull of the earth” as well as blinding autumnal light in the northern hemisphere in October which inspired the composer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1UZsAbLBK0
Premiere: 5/25/2021
A joint commission with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Fresno Philharmonic, Monterey Symphony, and Pacific Symphony, Alone Together is a piece that addresses the social issues faced during the pandemic as the world sheltered-in-place. The 11-minute work was first performed in a live-streamed virtual concert on May 25, 2021 in Costa Mesa, California by Pacific Symphony with Carl St.Clair conducting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXKJ1NV3m88
Premiere: 3/29/2021
Commissioned by Pacific Symphony for a virtual version of the Café Ludwig Chamber Music Series during the pandemic, the idea behind Parallel Isolations was that the musicians would play and record their parts from their homes instead of working as an ensemble. It was designed specifically to be streamed as live concerts were not happening at the time.
Originally composed for wind ensemble in 2009, Pacific Symphony commissioned the orchestral version Tower Ascending which the composer describes as “my own depiction of an ongoing aspect of urban city life: the construction of modern skyscrapers.”
This piece was originally scheduled for the 2020-21 season, but had to be postponed due to the COVID pandemic
Premiere: 10/14/2021
Commissioned to commemorate Carl St.Clair’s 30th anniversary as Pacific Symphony’s Music Director, the interactive piece asks the audience to become performers as well by contributing finger snaps, whistling and singing through prior instruction and live cueing from the Maestro at the beginning and end of the piece, making each performance unique.
This piece was originally scheduled for the 2019-20 season, but was postponed due to the COVID pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJtxjAjvmac
Premiere: 2/20/2022
Commissioned by Pacific Symphony for the Café Ludwig Chamber Music Series. underwritten by Dot & Rick Nelson.
Premiere: 2/23/2022
Dennis Kim, violin
Composed for Pacific Symphony Concertmaster Dennis Kim, this violin concerto commemorates the beautiful yet challenging landscape of Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert.
https://pacificsymphony.blog/2023/01/31/news-of-world-premiere-this-month/
Premiere: 6/15/2023
Elissa Johnston, soprano
Christopher Maltman, baritone
Pacific Chorale: Robert Istad, artistic director
Commissioned for Pacific Symphony and to mark the consecration of Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light) is a large 30-minute work for chorus, orchestra, organ and soprano and baritone soloists that incorporates Latin biblical texts with a poem by Dana Gioia, a California poet laureate and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Originally scheduled for the 2020-21 season, but postponed twice due to the COVID pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKYyL-_-c0g
https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/James-MacMillan-Fiat-Lux/104088
Premiere: 2/6/2025
Premiere: 2/6/2025
Jeffrey Biegel, piano
Commissioned by Jeffrey Biegel, the composer wrote, “My second piano concerto… is a tranquil fantasy piece subtitled ‘the peaceable kingdom’ based on a series of paintings of the same name. But the third concerto subtitled ‘the way things really are’ reflects the opposite: the meanness and cruel belligerency in the world, with two wars—which began during the composing of the piece—serving as examples. There is a slight reference to a medieval Ukrainian lullaby."
Performance date: 5/28/2026
Co-commission, West Coast Premiere
Performance date: 5/28/2026
Co-commission, West Coast Premiere