Locavore Symphonia, at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre

Moving into the second installment of its current season, the Santa Barbara Symphony segues from the multi-sensory spectacular of last month’s Carmina Burana season-opening splash to a calmer demeanor this weekend (November 19-20). Maestro Nir Kabaretti leads us into the staple fare of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor — with regular Santa Barbara visitor Alessandro Bax at the piano — and the staple repertoire entries of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Jean Sibelius’ Valse Triste.

This weekend’s most intriguing feature, however, is locavore by nature, on more than one front. The spotlight will be directed on the world premiere of Wisdom of the Sky, Water, Earth, by Cody Westheimer, who grew up in Goleta and played in the Symphony’s Youth Symphony and heard the orchestra play his first orchestral work, aged 17. He then headed to Los Angeles and established a bold career as composer for film, television and such other multimedia projects as nature documentaries, a specialty of his.

Westheimer has moved back to Santa Barbara and, thanks to advances in long-distance work technology, has established the New West studio here with his wife, Julia Marie Newmann. Like many film composers, going back to the birth of sound cinema, Westheimer is eager to pursue more music-based projects and “concert music” ops. For his commission from the Santa Barbara Symphony, the composer sought to incorporate the cultural legacy of this area’s indigenous Chumash people, along with the elements alluded to in this title, with a video component attached.