08/28/2026
Our repertoire runs from Bach to John Williams, so when a major new orchestral work premieres in our own backyard, we pay attention.
On Saturday, September 26, David Benoit premieres Resonance and Renewal, a new cello concerto, at Soka Performing Arts Center conducting a 40-piece orchestra with Cécilia Tsan as soloist.
Benoit is about as local as it gets. Bakersfield-born, trained at El Camino College, an Emmy winner for his work carrying on the Peanuts musical legacy, and for two decades the music director of the Asia America Symphony Association, where he founded a youth orchestra of his own. He knows exactly what rooms like ours are for.
He wrote this concerto out of a decade with chronic kidney disease and the transplant that followed. That's the part we want our students to sit with: a composer took the hardest years of his life and turned them into a score for a live orchestra. That is what this art form is capable of.
Go if you can. I know it might be a bit of a drive. Details and tickets:
An evening with David Benoit featuring the World Premiere of “Resonance and Renewal” , a cello concerto with soloist Cecilia Tsan
