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Welcome to Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra’s 28th season! Entitled “I heard it at the TSO,” this season celebrates the orchestra’s central mission: to produce free concerts for our Tehachapi audience and connect our community to the world through free livestreaming. Each of our four concerts contains “Tehachapi premieres,” eight compositions that will resound live in our Country Oaks Baptist Church concert hall for the first time.
Our season begins on November 1 with a concert entitled “America,” showcasing three north American composers. We welcome Bakersfield Community College’s new Director of Instrumental Studies and virtuoso clarinetist, Dr. Berkeley Price, to perform Deon Price’s Oneness, with a world premiere orchestration for solo clarinet. Dr. Price will also play a cornerstone of clarinet repertoire, Carl Maria von Weber’s dazzling Concertino in E-flat.
The November concert opens with Arturo Marquez’s Danzon No. 2—an orchestral favorite, since appearing in the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle.” Closing the program is Aaron Copland’s rendering of America’s most notorious outlaw, his ballet Billy the Kid.
Two holiday masterworks highlight TSO’s December 4 program “Bach to Messiah:” Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Gloria” from his B-Minor Mass, and George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Joining TSO are the Tehachapi Symphonic Chorus—directed by Sandy Adams— the Antelope Valley Master Chorale, and several vocal soloists.
March 7’s Young Artist program “Youth and Traditions” features two emerging soloists. TSO’s Young Artist Competition winner will be chosen in January 2027. Bakersfield International Music Festival Concerto Competition winner Jayden An performs the soulful opening movement of Max Bruch’s G Minor Violin Concerto. Also on the program, we salute Tehachapi’s native American heritage with Louis Wayne Ballard’s picturesque Scenes From Indian Life.
On May 23, we honor the 200 th anniversary of Beethoven’s 1827 death with a performance of his largest concert work—his monumental Missa Solemnis. Tehachapi Symphonic Chorus and Antelope Valley Master Chorale again join the orchestra. After its Tehachapi performance, our musicians travel to Vienna for TSO’s first European performance. Tehachapi community members are invited to join us for a true once-in-a-lifetime experience, as TSO performs Beethoven’s self-proclaimed greatest composition in his home city in the anniversary year of his passing.
The Orchestra
The orchestra is comprised of 25-35 volunteer musicians that perform alongside professional musicians from Kern and LA counties. Our orchestra size varies with each concerts repetoire.
We provide opportunities for high school students to become orchestra members, offering scholarships to support college expenses for students who play with the orchestra for three or more years.
Volunteer musicians are from Tehachapi, Bakersfield, Ridgecrest, Mojave, and the Antelope Valley. Auditions are required to become part of the orchestra.
If you are interested in joining the Tehachapi Symphony orchestra, please go to our Contact page.
Land Acknowledgement
The Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra acknowledges the original inhabitants of the land we now call Tehachapi. The areas of Greater Tehachapi and Kern County remain home to many indigineous communites. Generations of tribal communites developed deep understandings of the land and continued long-standing relationships with the land, water, air, plants, and animals through ceremony, culture, and stewardship. These communities are not only important as part of our history and contemporary Californians but are important voices in our understandings of this place.
In acknowledging the violent history of the founding of the state of California, its support of state-sponsored genocide, the misrepresentation of indiginous people and their culture, and the erasure of their contributions to our shared history, we at the Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra recognize our responsibility to indigenous communities. We are compelled to uplift these communities and tell their stories through music.