Pacific Chorale

A premiere can be a paradox. It can be a first performance of a new work. It can also be a first performance of an old work that has never been heard. Orange County music lovers can hear both kinds this week. Hugh Wolff will lead the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on Friday in the first Southern California performance of Michael Daugherty's "Sunset Strip." The work was premiered in January.

Music Carl St.Clair conducts the Pacific Symphony in Mahler's Symphony No. 8, with eight soloists, the Pacific Chorale, Mountainside Master Chorale, Cal State Fullerton University Singers and Pacific Chorale Children's Chorus. * Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. (714) 755-5799. 8 p.m. Also Saturday at 8 p.m.

John Alexander and the Pacific Chorale tapped several hot choral veins in their canny, generous season closer Sunday evening at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Probably nothing is hotter in the choral world these days than that branch of the American tradition that has blossomed most conspicuously in the music of Morten Lauridsen.

Some of the most exciting and most affecting music-making these days is choral. There is an immediacy and a universality about communities of voices, but also a certain mystery, an aura of intuitive rituals. John Alexander and the Pacific Chorale tapped several hot choral veins in their canny, generous season closer Sunday evening at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

As conductor-in-residence at the Pacific Symphony from 1991 to '97, Frank Ticheli wrote five pieces--short and long--for the Santa Ana-based orchestra. But, for various reasons, he never wrote for its regular choral collaborator--John Alexander's Pacific Chorale. Even when Alexander called Ticheli last May to commission a work, it looked like it might not happen. "Initially, I had to decline it," Ticheli said in a recent interview from his Pasadena home. "He wanted it for [this] May.

The Pacific Chorale will present the world premiere of a piece by music director John Alexander during its five-concert 1999-2000 season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Alexander's chamber work, to be named, will be performed Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. In addition, the world premiere of the orchestrated version of famed pedagogue Lili Boulanger's "Soir sur la Plaine," one of two pieces she wrote to win the Prix du Rome in 1913, will be presented March 12 at 7 p.m.

The homecoming of Metropolitan Opera soprano Deborah Voigt will be among highlights of Pacific Symphony's 1999-2000 season, which opens and closes with major choral works at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Voigt, who grew up in Anaheim Hills and attended Cal State Fullerton, will sing Strauss' Four Last Songs and arias from three Verdi operas Jan. 7-8. She has not sung in Orange County since 1993, when she was Leonora in Verdi's "Il trovatore" for Opera Pacific.

Newport Beach arts philanthropists Mary and Phillip Lyons have given the Pacific Chorale and the Pacific Symphony a total of 18,500 shares of Motorola stock, the organizations announced Wednesday. The chorale received 10,000 shares valued at $607,500. The orchestra received 8,500 shares, valued at about $516,500. Both organizations sold the stock Jan. 4, they announced. The Lyons stipulated that a minimum of $500,000 be placed into each organization's endowment fund.

Teachers from the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro will lead a tide pool walk through Point Fermin Marine Life Refuge. After an introductory slide show at the aquarium, it's off to the beach to observe and identify sea urchins, anemones, hermit crabs and feather-boa kelp. Kids have to be accompanied by an adult, and nonslip shoes and outdoor clothes are recommended. * Tide pool walk, 3 to 4:30 p.m., beginning at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, 3720 Stephen White Drive, San Pedro. $1.