California Symphony opens its 40th season with 'American Connections' concert featuring Jennifer Higdon's Cello Concerto at Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

The California Symphony opens its 40th season this week with "American Connections," a program tying together three works that premiered in the United States, at the Hofmann Theatre inside the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek.

Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26 and 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27. Tickets range from $50 to $110 at californiasymphony.org.

The centerpiece is the Northern California premiere of Jennifer Higdon's new Cello Concerto, composed for cellist Julian Schwarz, who first performed it with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in April. The Grammy Award-winning Higdon wrote the concerto after Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra at the University of Miami, asked her to create the piece for his son Julian.

"It has fun moments in it that are real toe-tapping," Higdon said, according to a report from Piedmont Exedra. "But I also have a lot of poignant duets between the cello solo and players in the orchestra, very melodic stuff."

The concerto was written to mark the nation's 250th anniversary. Artistic and music director Donato Cabrera said the full program extends that theme: Jean Sibelius' "The Oceanides," which premiered in the U.S. in 1914, and Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, premiered here in 1943, round out the evening.

"The excitement of hearing something for the first time is inherently thrilling," Cabrera said. "The genesis and premiere of both Sibelius' 'Oceanides' and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, which were also premiered in the U.S., create a very strong and interesting connection between all three pieces."

New composer-in-residence

The symphony also announced Paul Novak, 28, as its new composer-in-residence. Novak, a native of Reno, Nevada, is co-artistic director and flutist with the Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music.

The three-year residency gives an early-career composer a chance to write a new orchestral work each season and participate in workshops. Novak was selected through an anonymous submission process and learned of his appointment in January.

"This position is unique in that it's not just an in-and-out thing where you write one piece — you get to build a relationship," Novak said. His recent compositions have drawn on themes including dreams, memory, queer identity and the natural world. He is also an avid birder whose music frequently incorporates bird song.