Pacific Symphony’s new artistic and music director Alexander Shelley arrives in Costa Mesa this week to conduct a program he notes was “a quarter of a millennium” in the making.
Featuring two new, ambitious works around a cherished century-old George Gershwin classic, Shelley has programmed “America @ 250” to, as he framed it, “celebrate and explore ideas in the narrative of American history as we lead into July 4th of this year.”
An intriguing word in that declaration is “we.”
After all, Shelley is London-born and bred. So what are American concertgoers, generations removed from those oh-so-pesky 13 colonies, to make of that? With a laugh, the British native charmingly embraces any international dissonances in play.
“I obviously come in peace. And I come as an admirer of the decisions that were made to secede,” Shelley says. “I also think that the project over the last 250 years has worked out extraordinarily well.”
Something the orchestra is anticipating going extraordinarily well is the presence of Shelley, only the Orange County company’s third music director in its 48-year history.
Shelley has led four programs this season with the word “designate” in his title. That word vanishes when he officially assumes the role on July 1. Shelley says he is taking advantage of this abbreviated stint at the conducting podium to learn about his new band.
“In terms of the nuts-and-bolts aspect of being a conductor, my job is about shaping sound, finding the articulations and phrasings and balance issues within the music,” he says.
“And I have found these are very gifted instrumentalists who are very quick in their response to anything I ask of them. So I feel very optimistic as we begin to gel together this fall, performing together with regularity.”
He is also quite kumbaya with the performance environment of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, too, enthusiasm reverting to top-end British imagery.
“Segerstrom is a Rolls-Royce of a concert hall, that’s for sure.”
This week’s program is a wide-ranging vehicle through American-made music of now and then.
The program begins with a new, modernist work receiving its West Coast debut, “Inscription II.” The 10-minute piece was written by Native American composer Raven Chacon, who claimed the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for music.
This composition was commissioned by Shelley for another American orchestra he leads in Naples, Fla.
The jumping-off theme is the composer’s musical examination of how the American motto “E pluribus unum” — the Latin phrase meaning “Out of many, one” — impacts the American melting pot and lands on differing cultures in the United States.
Shelley says the work borders on an experimental sound installation.
“Every instrument is spread out across many octaves playing what are called ‘microtones.’”
As “Inscription II” proceeds, Shelley explains, the highest of the microtones slowly drift down while the lowest tones drift up as, in a massive wash of tones, the orchestra ends up coalescing from diversity towards uniformity.
Shelley anticipates prefacing this piece by telling the audience not about what it “means,” but how ideas can be shared through complex music.
The program’s second piece, Gershwin’s “Piano Concerto in F,” featuring guest pianist Conrad Tao, is one of the quintessential American composer’s glories, tapping jazz and blues roots that land as vitally American on today’s ears as when written a century ago.
Shelley’s fondness for the composer is evident.
“Gershwin is a unique voice from that period and across the years. The rhythmic incision, it’s toe-tapping. Harmonically, it is entirely uplifting the whole time, and, of course, he had a gift for melody second to none.”
The program’s third piece, “American Mosaic,” is aimed as a multimedia showstopper.
Co-commissioned by the Pacific Symphony, the 32-minute instrumental piece combines music, panoramic visual imagery and a live narration of quotations from America’s past. The commission pre-dates Shelley’s time with the symphony, but it organically found a place when he set up this concert’s program.
“(Composer) Peter Boyer has this incredible accessible musical language,” says Shelley. “It’s very filmic, very American and… celebratory about things that have been great.”
Experiencing Boyer’s score, visual artist Joe Sohm captured imagery in a variety of forms from still photography to drone footage to employing a Go Pro.
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Joe Sohm’s photo of a Memorial Day event at Los Angeles National Cemetery is among the images of American life included in the multimedia work “American Mosaic.” (Photo by Joe Sohm)
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Joe Sohm’s photo of a Memorial Day event at Los Angeles National Cemetery is among the images of American life included in the multimedia work “American Mosaic.” (Photo by Joe Sohm)
Visually, the closest analogous experience might be footage in Disney’s Soarin’ experiences. “American Mosaic,” however, is six times longer and is delivered via a live orchestral performance.
Building beyond this concert, the “America @ 250” theme will continue in programming during the 2026-27 season. Another Gershwin classic, “An American in Paris,” as well as music from Aaron Copland and John Williams, are scheduled.
Perhaps most notably, the annual opera program will divert from the Pacific Symphony’s traditional Verdi and Puccini Italian operatic warhorses. Instead, Shelley will conduct semi-staged performances of John Adams’ modernist “Nixon in China.”
Acknowledging the proximity of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library as a close — 20-mile — drive to the concert hall, Shelley indicates this is a natural fit for “America @ 250.”
“Adams, turning 80 next year, is one of the great living American composers. (The opera) has very immediate musical language plus the actual vernacular is in modern English … I think audiences new to the work will find it immediately accessible.”
Shelley also notes a major theme in 1987 when “Nixon In China” debuted: “Relationship of the power dynamics between the U.S. and China is again in place now.”
“This week’s performances will act as a jumping-off board for what’s to come, knitting together with a memorable season starting this fall.”
Pacific Symphony: ‘America @ 250’
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, May 28-Saturday, May 30
Where: Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Tickets: $36-$252
Information: 714-755-5799; pacificsymphony.org