‘Paradigm Shifts’ The Spokane Symphony Celebrates Its 50th Season With A Work Commissioned From Spokane Native Don Caron

When a symphony celebrates an important anniversary, baking a cake is not enough. For a musical celebration, an orchestra will commission a composer to cook up a new work.

On Friday, the Spokane Symphony celebrates its 50th season with a performance of “Paradigm Shifts,” a work the symphony commissioned from Don Caron.

“What Don has given us,” says Jonathan Martin, the symphony’s executive director, “is a driving, forceful piece of music, a work that always continues to push forward just as we hope to continue to do with our orchestra.”

The symphony’s music director, Fabio Mechetti, was out of town and unavailable for comment earlier this week.

Commissions have always been a part of the American symphony scene, including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” for the Cincinnati Symphony and Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” for the Boston Symphony.

Even smaller orchestras have commissioned works, such as the Walla Walla and Billings, Mont., symphonies. Spokane Symphony commissions in past seasons have included works by Stephen Paulus.

The main deterrent for most orchestras making commissions is money. A work from a well-known composer can cost as much as $1,000 a minute. The Spokane Symphony commission was not that costly, but wasn’t inconsequential either. The symphony declined to cite the exact figure.

Funding for the project came from the Bruce Ferden Memorial Fund for 21st-Century Music, the first commission underwritten by the fund. It was created to honor conductor Bruce Ferden when he left Spokane in 1991 to become general music director of the German city of Aachen.

During his six seasons with the Spokane Symphony, Ferden regularly programmed new works and had been instrumental in commissioning new pieces, such as Paulus’ “Night Speech” which Thomas Hampson premiered with the orchestra in 1989. Earlier commissions included Wendal Jones’ theater piece “Praise!” and works by Michael Colgrass and Russell Peck.

Ferden died in 1993 of complications owing to AIDS.

With money in hand, all that remained was the selection of a composer by Mechetti and the creation of the work. When word got around about the 50th anniversary commission, orchestra members went to Mechetti with suggestions, and Caron’s name was high on their lists.

Caron, 41, grew up in Spokane. His music has been played by such performing groups as Zephyr, the Spokane Falls Brass Band as well as by several soloists in the symphony. His ballets, created in partnership with dancer-choreographer Elizabeth Carlssohn, have been performed by Spokane Ballet and by Theatre Ballet of Spokane.

Many people have heard Caron’s work without even knowing it. In addition to his classical compositions, he has composed music for corporate videos and advertising. Caron’s clients have included Washington Water Power and Hewlett-Packard.

“It was important for Fabio at the outset of this program to focus on local and regional composers,” Martin says. “And in our discussions with Don, we found that he could do something that would work well for our needs.”

Mechetti called Caron in October 1994 to discuss the commission. “He already had recordings and copies of scores of some of my music that orchestra members had given him,” the composer recalls. “It seemed apparent from the interview that he had already made up his mind to have me do it.”

What about meeting those needs? “He only said he wanted something between 10 and 20 minutes,” Caron says. “Obviously it was a celebration-type piece so they didn’t want a funeral march, but they didn’t want a traditional fanfare either. And the difficulty level was an issue. Other than that, he said that he didn’t want to get in the way of the compositional process.”

The difficulty issue is the only requirement Caron feels he may have failed to meet. “They needed something that the orchestra could learn in five rehearsals and perform well with that limited amount of rehearsal time,” he says.

“That may be the thing I screwed up on,” he adds jokingly.

Caron’s commercial music experience served him well for meeting another of a commission’s requirements - meeting deadlines. The pages of music history are crowded with unmet deadlines. Beethoven was years late with his promised Mass for the investiture of Archduke Rudolf as bishop of Olmutz, and American composer Samuel Barber did not complete a commission for conductor Serge Koussevitsky until years after the conductor’s death.

According to Martin, Caron handily met every deadline, even though the composition of the 12-minute work took nearly a year. “It’s hard to say how much time I actually spent on it since it was done in mornings and evenings and weekends,” Caron says.

He titled the work “Paradigm Shifts.”

The phrase has become current in books dealing with everything from popular self-help to corporate management strategies.

“The paradigm is the way you see yourself and your world,” the composer says, “so the concept I came up with was not so much celebrating the landmark of arriving at 50 years, but a piece that reflected the process of getting there, of what the orchestra has to go through to be in existence for that long.”

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Concert info Spokane Symphony will perform a concert of classical music, with guest artist Reiko Watanabe, Friday at 8 p.m. at the Opera House. Tickets Reserved-seat tickets are $27, $22, $17 and $12; available at symphony box office in the skywalk level of the Seafirst Building (624-1200), and at all regional G&B Select-a-Seat outlets, or by calling 325-SEAT or (800) 325-SEAT (credit cards only).