Juan Pablo Contreras and Brett Mitchell [photo credit: Pasadena Symphony and POPS]
Juan Pablo Contreras’ Symphony No. 1, “MyGreat Dream,” anchors a program that pairs the composer’s immigrant narrative with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” composed during the Czech master’s own years living in New York in the 1890s. The title of Contreras’ work is a deliberate wordplay: it reads “my great dream” but sounds like “migrate dream,” according to a Pasadena Symphony statement. Music Director Brett Mitchell conducts both performances, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
“It took me a year to compose this work, and its 2026 premiere is especially meaningful because it coincides with a personal milestone: I’ve now lived half of my life in Mexico and half in the United States,” Contreras said in a statement released by the Pasadena Symphony.
The symphony is divided into four movements — American Dream, Heavy Heart, Mexican Pride, and Two Homelands — and fuses jazz, heavy metal, and bolero into a bicultural orchestral journey, according to the Sinfónica de Minería, one of the work’s co-commissioners. Contreras composed the symphony over the course of a year. It received its world premiere in May 2025 in Fresno, and has since been performed by orchestras in Mexico. The Pasadena Symphony co-commissioned the work alongside the Fresno Youth Orchestra, the Fresno Symphony, the Minería Symphony, the Victoria Bach Festival, and Contreras’ own Orquesta Latino Mexicana, according to the Minería Symphony.
“Symphony No. 1 ‘MyGreat Dream’ is about my journey to pursue ‘my great dream’ of becoming an orchestral composer,” Contreras said in the statement. “It’s a tribute to my two homelands, and it’s dedicated to all who pursue the migrant dream.”
Contreras was born in Guadalajara in 1987 and immigrated to the United States at 19 to study composition at the California Institute of the Arts, according to the Vilcek Foundation, which awarded him its Prize for Creative Promise in Music in 2023. He holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California and teaches at USC’s Thornton School of Music. His most performed orchestral piece, Mariachitlán, has received 120 performances worldwide, including by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, according to the Pasadena Symphony.
The concert opens with Leonard Bernstein’s Three Dance Variations from the 1944 ballet Fancy Free, a jazz-inflected score about three sailors on liberty in wartime New York. Mitchell, in his second season as the Pasadena Symphony’s music director, has built the orchestra’s 2025-26 season around the theme of American music in anticipation of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“As we close in on America’s 250th birthday next summer, I’m excited to celebrate the best of American orchestral music, past and present, all season long,” Mitchell said when the season was announced, as reported by San Francisco Classical Voice.
Mitchell became the sixth music director in the Pasadena Symphony’s 98-year history when he began a five-year term in April 2024, according to the orchestra. The Pasadena Symphony, founded in 1928, is composed of musicians with extensive credits in film, television, and recording, according to the orchestra’s statement.
A free pre-concert discussion, Insights, begins one hour before each performance and features KUSC host Brian Lauritzen, Mitchell, and Contreras.
Concerts take place at Ambassador Auditorium, 131 South St. John Ave., Pasadena. Tickets start at $55, according to the Pasadena Symphony; subscriptions start at $120. Tickets may be purchased at www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org or by calling (626) 793-7172. Valet parking is available on St. John Avenue for $30. General parking may be pre-purchased for $15 or paid onsite for $20, cash only.
Dvořák composed his “New World” Symphony in 1893 while serving as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. More than 130 years later, Contreras’ symphony travels a parallel path — the work of an immigrant composing in a new country, drawing on the sounds of an old one.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to have a symphony commissioned and premiered by the Pasadena Symphony at a time when orchestras so often champion the classics,” Contreras said.
