This month’s concerts of Camerata Pacifica will be at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Friday in Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West.

Composer Richard Rodney Bennett couldn’t get Debussy’s “Syrinx” out of his head.

The music includes Claude Debussy’s Syrinx, for Solo Flute*, Richard Rodney Bennett’s After Syrinx I, for Oboe and Piano, Iannis Xenakis’ Dmaathen, for Oboe and Percussion, Bennett’s After Syrinx II, for Solo Marimba, Toru Takemitsu’s Towards the Sea, for Alto Flute and Marimba*, Bennett’s Tango After Syrinx* and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G-Minor for Piano and Strings, Opus 57*.

(The full program will be performed at 7:30 p.m.; only the pieces marked with an asterisk will be played at 1 p.m.)

Participating musicians will be Adrian Spence on flute, Nicholas Daniel on oboe, Catherine Leonard on violin, Ara Gregorian on violin, Richard Yongjae O’Neill on viola, Ani Aznavoorian on cello, Ji Hye Jung on percussion and Adam Neiman on piano.

The concert falls pretty easily into halves. The first half is an exploration of the various ways that wind and percussion instruments can combine with each other; the second half is the Shostakovich Quintet, which is by far the best known work of the program, and the most written about.

Apart from side trips to Greece (Xenakis) and Japan (the great master Takemitsu), the first part of the program is a kind of dialogue between Debussy’s Syrinx, for Solo Flute and the modern British composer, Bennett. Here is what his publisher, Ivor Novello, has to say about the Bennett pieces:

“Richard Rodney Bennett has said that the late works of Debussy have always been of special importance to him, and in the last few years he has written a series of works based on Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute, of which this is the first, commissioned by the Seaton Music Society for Malcolm Messiter. The other works in the series are After Syrinx II for Solo Marimba, Sonato After Syrinx for Flute, Viola and Harp (the same combination as in one of Debussy’s last three Sonatos), the Tango After Syrinx for Solo Piano and Dreamdancing, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta for Bennett’s 50th birthday.”

For tickets and other concert information, call Camerata Pacifica at 805.884.8410 or click here.

— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk or @NoozhawkNews.