With one last Star Wars-themed Pops concert this weekend plus a grand Masterworks finale — "Tales of Hemingway" featuring Northwest Bach Festival impresario and cellist Zuill Bailey on May 10 and 11 — left in its current season, the Spokane Symphony is nevertheless looking ahead to what the next one has in store.
After all, the upcoming season is a nice, round milestone. It marks 80 years since the organization first sprang into existence as the Spokane Philharmonic.
The new season opens in mid-September with the first of the Masterworks series, titled "The Mahlers."
That concert program builds up to Gustav Mahler's ambitious and evocative First Symphony, dubbed "Titan" as a nod to a then-famous novel by the German writer Jean Paul. It's preceded by "Sieben Lieder" ("Seven Songs") by Mahler's wife, Alma, and an intermezzo from Alexander Zemlinsky's opera Es war einmal (Once upon a time).
"If you're going to end with Mahler One, which is quite a hunk of steak, you've got to have more of an appetizer," says the symphony's music director, James Lowe. He describes the three composers' music and their era as "the highest of the High Romantic."
Lowe also identifies the opener as "one of the two 'love triangle' concerts" in the 80th season, the other being February's Masterworks 6, unambiguously titled "Love Triangle." That features works by Clara and Robert Schumann as well as Johannes Brahms, a trio whose complex personal relationship has provided rich fodder for biographers and musicologists alike.
In the Mahlers' case, Alma (née Schindler) was originally engaged to Zemlinsky but broke things off because of his lack of prospects. She instead married Gustav, whose Second Symphony had been a resounding success and who, coincidentally, had conducted the premiere of Es war einmal in 1900.
"One of the first things [Mahler] said to her was, 'There's only enough room for one composer in this relationship.' There's a great irony in the fact that Zemlinsky was teaching her composition, and then she ended up marrying a man who basically said, 'No, you can't compose,'" Lowe explains.
That captures another recurring theme in the 2025-26 season, which is highlighting female composers who were writing original music at a time when it was unconventional.
"We've done a lot of contemporary music by female composers in recent seasons," says Lowe, "but I wanted to dig back a little bit further this year."
That's why you'll find Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel's stirring Overture in C major on the Masterworks 7: "Primavera" program in late March 2026 and Grace Williams' "Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes" in January's Masterworks 5 lineup.
The latter concert, titled "Stolen Melodies" because of the way it traces composers' habit of riffing on earlier themes, sees local author Jess Walter presenting "The Inland Northwesterner's Guide to the Orchestra."
"Jess and I have become good friends, and recently I gave him one too many martinis and asked him to do a new version of Benjamin Britten's 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34.' The original narration is very much what I would call the 1930s BBC way of speaking — rather old-fashioned. Knowing Jess, his version will be tongue-in-cheek, a little bit irreverent and quite beautiful."
The same concert also features the Spokane Symphony Chorale performing J.S. Bach's "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit," BWV 327 ("Before Thy throne I now appear").
That will be just one of many joint chorale and orchestra performances next season. Per tradition, they'll unite for Handel's exultant "Messiah" at St. John's Cathedral in November followed by Beethoven's Ninth on New Year's Eve. But voice and instrument also join forces under the baton of Shira Samuels-Shragg for the "Music of Harry Potter" Pops concert in late October, then again for Giuseppe Verdi's epic Requiem in Masterworks 8.
"James and I have been talking about our bucket-list pieces that we want to do together, and this was on that list. Besides the Mozart Requiem, it's probably one of the most well-known choral-orchestral pieces out there," chorale director Meg Stohlmann says.
"I don't think I've heard a more powerful piece of music in my life. And with Verdi's background in opera, you can really hear sort of that influence, like he's writing for the stage," she continues.
During the performance of Verdi's Requiem, Stohlmann advises concertgoers to keep an ear out for the "Dies irae," an ominous and ancient liturgical motif that crops up throughout the classical repertoire — including in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, which happens to be part of Masterworks 4.
Another part of Masterworks 4's dance-influenced musical program is Paul Creston's Fantasy for Trombone, Op. 42. The SSO's principal trombone, John Church, is the soloist on that roughly 12-minute tour de force.
"This piece rarely gets programmed, and it's probably the pinnacle of trombone solos. A lot of people don't think of the trombone as a solo instrument [in classical music] as, like, a violin or piano. And so I feel like it's an opportunity to definitely show off the trombone and what it's capable of," Church says.
He describes certain passages in the three-movement work as "badass" on account of their speed and complicated rhythms. Other passages have "incredibly lush chords" that he says are reminiscent of Ravel's ballet-like Daphnis et Chloé.
Church is just one of three Spokane Symphony musicians who'll take center stage in the 80th season. For Masterworks 7, Concertmaster Mateusz Wolski steps out in front of the orchestra to solo on the Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21 by French composer Édouard Lalo. And for Masterworks 5, principal violist Nick Carper gets the spotlight on Paul Hindemith's "Trauermusik" ("Music of Mourning").
"The slogan this season is, 'Our symphony, our city,'" Lowe says. "I really want Spokane to feel and understand how lucky we are to have this incredible orchestra. It's easy to forget that these are the highest-caliber musicians — and they're right here on our doorstep."
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi • Sat, May 3 at 7:30 pm and Sun May 4 at 3 pm • $35.50-$129
Masterworks 9: Tales of Hemingway • Sat, May 10 at 7:30 pm and Sun, May 11 at 3 pm • $24-$83 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave.
Find the complete 80th season schedule, season tickets and more information at spokanesymphony.org
