New Century Chamber Orchestra Brings Back Canin and Carmen

Today, and continuing over the weekend, the New Century Chamber Orchestra opens its season by welcoming back one of its founders and its first music director, Stuart Canin. The master violinist will play the a small gem and possibly something Bay Area audiences rarely hear: Mendelssohn's D Minor concerto. Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1, which the orchestra first performed under Canin, will also get an airing along with Rodion Schedrin's Carmen Suite, another arrangement of the opera's many hit tunes.

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg will be in her first chair, as ever, so there should be plenty of violinistic fireworks.