The ASO co-comissioned Danielpour's Pastime, a tribute to the African-American baseball greats Henry Aaron, Jackie Robinson, and Josh Gibson, with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Harbison's Concerto for Double Bass was commissioned by the International Society of Bassists in collaboration with several orchestras, each of which will perform it.
Other new-music highlights include a season-opening performance of Jennifer Higdon's Dooryard Bloom, paired with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and a three-week residency by composer Michael Gandolfi, to include performances of his The Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Atlanta and on the February 2007 tour of Florida. Adams himself will lead a performance of his On the Transmigration of Souls, which has been showered with awards since its premiere in 2002.
Among other programs, music director Robert Spano will lead the opening-night concert, a 60th-birthday celebration for pianist Andr_ Watts, and Bach's Passion According to St. John. Principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles will lead four programs, including excerpts from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and an all-British program with music by Britten, Elgar, Peter Maxwell-Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and James Macmillan.
Guest conductors include Roberto Abbado, Nicholas McGegan, and Itzhak Perlman; soloists include pianist Emanuel Ax and Garrick Ohlsson and violinists Midori and Gil Shaham.
The ASO will continue the ambitious recording schedule that has made it a perennial winner at the Grammy Awards. Telarc, the orchestra's longtime partner, will record three CDs next season: one pairing Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Dooryard Bloom, another of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Symphony No. 5, and a third of Runnicle's all-British program. Meanwhile, the label will release ASO recordings made in 2005-06 of Wagner, Strauss, and Sibelius.
Deutsche Grammophon will release two CDs recorded during the orchestra's long-term Golijov project: the world premiere recording of the opera Ainadamar and a disc featuring Oceana, sung by Luciana Souza; Three Songs, sung by Dawn Upshaw; and Last Round.
