Pacific Chamber Orchestra’s Winning Scores program presenting this weekend in Livermore began as a workshop for young composers during the COVID-19 pandemic when people couldn’t go into performing halls, but its core concept has endured.
“The idea is to give emerging young composers an opportunity to write for a larger ensemble,” says PCO Music Director Lawrence Kohl. “It’s not too hard for a young composer to get two or three professionals together and write a chamber piece for them, but to write for a top, professional orchestra is really hard to do — it costs a lot of money and there’s a tremendous amount of organizing.”
PCO opens its 2026-27 season Sunday with the sixth Winning Scores program at the Garre Winery in Livermore. The free concert, followed by an optional patron gala dinner, showcases five finalists — Aidan Gold, Benjamin Edelson, Flannery Cunningham, Julian Stuart-Burns and Samuel Long — whose compositions are making their world premieres for the orchestra. As part of an immersive experience, each of the composers are participating in post-performance Q&As with the audience.
“We started allowing people to watch the workshop and the rehearsals, and then by the third year the suggestion came that because the rehearsals are disjointed, it would be nice to hear the pieces all at once,” Kohl recalls. “So then we added the performance at the end of the workshop of all the works together.”
Each year, approximately 30 applicants submit their scores, from which five are chosen as winners whose compositions are then performed. Kohl and two senior composers pour over the scores to select the ones they feel are most appropriate for the program.
Kohl explains that once they are chosen, the finalists go through a multi-step developmental process. As a key first step, Kohl shares the finalists’ compositions with the orchestra members so that any questions the ensemble’s musicians have can be resolved before the workshop rehearsals begin.
“Oftentimes there’s new techniques, new notations, different things they want, and the composers are experimenting, too,” Kohl says. “Sometimes it’ll be like, you want this and it really can’t be done, but if you want this kind of sound, then maybe we can do this. So there’s some back and forth like that even before we get to the rehearsals.”
Kohl adds that the composers sometimes submit scores that don’t quite fit PCO’s instrumentation — notably, PCO doesn’t want them writing music for piano — and in that case they have to redo the work. The pieces also don’t have to be originally composed works and instead can be rearranged pieces as long as they have not been professionally performed.
“If they’ve written something for their school symphony and they rewrite it so it fits a professional chamber orchestra, we’ll consider that,” he says.
This season’s five composers are all in their mid 20s to mid 30s in age, have at least a master’s degree in fine arts or are postdoctoral students and have created pieces for other ensembles.
Gold’s works have been performed by the Juilliard Orchestra, JACK Quartet and Chelsea Symphony. He is a conductor, percussionist and educator whose music examines storytelling, improvisation and connection. He has composed “Taking Care of Your Orchestra,” a musical game piece.
Edelson’s commissions and premieres have been performed by New York University Orchestra, Princeton University Sinfonia, Mostly Modern Brass and So Percussion. A multi-instrumentalist who has composed works spanning contemporary classical, pop and film, Edelson is debuting “e-biking from canal to houston,” which evokes a cycling trip through New York and encounters with pedestrians, traffic and the urban landscape.
Cunningham’s pieces have been performed by ensembles and at music festivals. She debuted her chamber opera “Groundwater” with the Thompson Street Opera in 2025. Her new work “You Sound Like Home” uses Shepard tones, which appear to rise or fall depending on the listener, looking at how individual upbringings influence one’s understanding of music.
Stuart-Burns is a Dutch-Cuban pianist whose works have been performed by groups like the Mivos Quartet, Contemporaneous and members of the Talea ensemble. He has composed “In A Few,” inspired by Afro-Cuban Guaguancó music and his childhood memories and celebrates the cultural legacy of Cubans in this country.
Long has composed works for the Lydian String Quartet, Hypercube, Lamnth and Talea, and has been a participant in the ManiFeste festival in Paris. He’s premiering “Boston: On the Astral Plane,” which looks at new, varied approaches to pitch and intonation.
Kohl feels the Winning Scores program is a journey of self-discovery for its participants.
“It’s music that really speaks from young voices here who are figuring it out, so they are reaching for how to express who they are, what they are, where they came from and what things feel like for them,” he says. “That’s something we can all identify with as we are working our own way through our lives, too.”
Pacific Chamber Orchestra presents “Winning Scores” 3 p.m. Sunday at the Garre Winery Ballroom, 7986 Tesla Rd., Livermore. Tickets are free (optional post-concert gourmet dinner $154.75) at pacificchamberorchestra.org