Organic sounds

But Muffitt and his legions are sounding mighty chords innext year’s season, which was announced today.

For the first time in Muffitt’s six-year tenure as musicdirector, the orchestra will unleash a tower of sound from Austrianarch-Romantic Anton Bruckner (4^th Symphony, Nov. 5) and a full blastof genius from Russian Igor Stravinsky (“Petrouchka,” May 10).

For a grace note amid the tumult, a pops concert Oct. 21will give East Lansing jazz vocalist Sunny Wilkinson a long-awaited chance toromp through the American songbook with Muffitt and a full symphony orchestra.

The subscription series is just about as meaty as they come.Call it a crescendo, or a twist of the ratchet, but Muffitt is pushing theenvelope again.

“Every season is an opportunity for growth for everyone —for the audience the orchestra, for myself, ” he said.

Fresh music from living composers, Muffitt said, will be apart of that growth. The season will open Sept. 16 with tintinnabulations fewpeople in Lansing have heard: “Blue Cathedral,” a delicate tone poem bybrilliant American composer and Pulitzer Prize laureate Jennifer Higdon. OnFeb. 24, another above-ground composer, American neo-dazzler Bruce Broughton,weighs in with something completely different — a tuba concerto, with LansingSymphony tuba man Phil Sinder soloing.

“When was the last time you heard a tuba concerto?” Muffittsaid.

When Muffitt and Sinder conspired to uncork Broughton’scolorful, bumptious brass blowout on unsuspecting locals, they passed up theusual place for tubas and orchestras to meet, a (relatively) famous concerto byRalph Vaughan Williams.

“We wanted to go in a different direction,” Muffitt said.“Let’s see how composers today are thinking about this instrument.”

What tops a tuba? Every night in the six-concert MasterWorksseries has a huge, pull-out-the-stops centerpiece, beginning, appropriately,with the “Organ Symphony” of Camille Saint-Saens (Sept. 16). After that, itonly gets bigger, with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony (Nov. 5), with its vast,cathedral-like spaces and blinding beams of brass.

“I think the Lansing Symphony is ready to grab ahold of thispiece and sink our teeth into it,” he said. “You can’t program Bruckner withjust any orchestra and just any brass section, and we clearly have the rightpeople in the right places.”

The juggernauts roll on with the original Big Statement,Beethoven’s Eroica symphony (Jan. 7), Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor (Feb.24) and the mightiest of all piano concertos, Brahms’ Second, with French starPhillipe Bianconi soloing (March 10).

Even the season’s “lesser” stuff, like Aaron Copland’sAppalachian Spring (Feb. 24), Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (Sept. 16) andStrauss’s Death and Transfiguration (March 10), are substantial enough toanchor most subscription concerts.

When putting the season together, Muffitt said, he didn’thave an over-arching theme in mind. He was too busy with the symphonyconductor’s eternal conundrum: how to shove the square peg of freshness intothe well-worn circle of familiarity.

“We want to make each night special and unique, even forpeople who have been going to concerts their whole lives,” Muffitt said.

Looking back, Muffitt realized that two threads run throughthe year. For one thing, Saint-Saens, Bruckner and Franck were all organists.

“I can hear the organist’s temperament in their music,”Muffitt said.

Besides the “Organ” Symphony, Saint-Saens is alsorepresented next season in the Cello Concerto No. 1, with Okemos native FelixWang soloing (Jan. 7).

Muffitt also sees a strong French influence running throughthe season. Four concerts have French curves on the menu (Saint-Saens, Franck,Debussy and Ravel). Give Beethoven, with his heart-on-sleeve passion for theFrench Revolution, an honorary tricolor.

Muffitt wove all these themes together, and then some, withthe season closer May 10.

Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” and Stravinsky’s“Petrouchka” make a nice fairy-tale pair, but the affinity is even moreorganic. In fact, it’s pure math, with a French composer, Ravel, as thenumerator, the Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff (“Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”)as the denominator, and the ultimate cosmopolitan, Stravinsky, on the otherside of the equal sign.

“The equation that led to Stravinsky’s style was theblending of French and Russian music,” Muffitt explained.

It felt right to mix French and Russian music that way.”

Thundering away with Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner is nicework if you can get it, but Muffitt’s baritone voice acquires a fond pianissimowhen he talks about the pops concert with Sunny Wilkinson.

“Here’s an extraordinary talent, and we wanted to featureher here on her home turf,” Muffitt said. “She’s the real deal in the world ofjazz singers.”

Muffit relishes the chance to import an international starlike French pianist Phillipe Bianconi (the Brahms guy), but he really loves theidea of giving Wilkinson’s sunny muse an orchestral field of clover, right inher own backyard.

“How exciting to say we can create something like this righthere, at home,” he said.