Auburn Symphony Orchestra
Wesley Schulz, conductor
Timothy McAllister, saxophone
Viet Cuong, composer

Program

Jennifer Higdon - blue cathedral
Viet Cuong - Saxophone Concerto (co-commission)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade, op. 35

About the Program

Some stories are whispered. Some are sung. Some are powerful enough to save a life.

Symphonic Stories opens with Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral, a luminous journey through memory, loss, and quiet transformation. Written after the death of her brother, the work gives special voice to the flute and clarinet, the instruments connected to Higdon and her brother, as if two lives are calling to one another across a vast, sacred space. The Los Angeles Philharmonic describes the piece as a journey through a symbolic cathedral and upward into the heavens.

Auburn Symphony then marks its 30th anniversary with the premiere of a new saxophone concerto by Viet Cuong, performed by Timothy McAllister, one of today’s most celebrated classical saxophonists. Cuong, currently Composer-in-Residence with Pacific Symphony, has become one of the most inventive voices in American music.

The afternoon closes with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a dazzling tale of wit, courage, and survival. In One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade uses story not as escape, but as strategy. Night after night, she keeps herself alive with intelligence, imagination, and the power of what happens next.