Martin Majkut, one of five conductors competing for the artistic helm of the Rogue Valley Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the orchestra's second concert series of the season beginning Friday, Nov. 6. The program will feature Mozart's Symphony No. 20 in D, K. 133, Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Fantasia for Soprano Saxophone," Ricardo Lorenz's "Pataruco: Concerto for Venezuelan Maracas and Orchestra" and Beethoven's Symphony No 7 in A Major, Op. 92.

Majkut is the second conductor to audition for the RVSO job this season by conducting a series of three concerts.

"I jumped right into rehearsals," he says. "We had two on Saturday."

Concerts will be at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at the Music Recital Hall of Southern Oregon University in Ashland, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, and at 3 p.m. Sunday at the High School Performing Arts Center, 830 NE Ninth Street, Grants Pass.

The 34-year-old Majkut divides his time between Tucson, Ariz., and his native Bratislava, Slovakia. He has been conductor of the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Sinfonietta and the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra.

The program will begin with the Symphony No. 20 in D, K.133, written in Salzburg in 1772, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was just 16. Known as a rich and ambitious work, the symphony also is noted for extravagant scoring, which features two trumpets in addition to the standard oboes, horns and strings. "It's very lively," Majkut says.

The second piece of the concert is Villa-Lobos' "Fantasia for Soprano Saxophone," featuring guest saxophonist Rhett Bender. The prolific Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos wrote the piece in 1948. It is one of many he composed that fuses elements of South American and European folk, classical and popular music.

"It's quite unique," Majkut says. "He got very little formal education and didn't want more. He thought it would pollute his musical language or something. It worked for him."

Bender, a professor of music at SOU and an active soloist here and elsewhere, will perform the saxophone solo part.

Terry Longshore, chair of the SOU Music Department, will be the guest artist for the third musical work of the program, Ricardo Lorenz's "Pataruco: Concerto for Venezuelan Maracas and Orchestra." Written in 1999, the unusual piece features maracas in a nod to the intricate, multi-rhythmic musical techniques of the street performers of the Venezuelan and Colombian flatlands.

Majkut says that although unusual, it's musically solid and not just a novelty.

The final work on the Symphony's program is Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92. Composed in 1812, it is perhaps the most romantic and happiest of Beethoven's symphonies. While Beethoven left few clues as to its meaning, scholars have established from the composer's letters that he regarded it as one of his best works.

The symphony will present Majkut at 1 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in the SOU Music Recital Hall, in a discussion of his life as a conductor and of the music of the upcoming concert. Parking is available in the large lot west of the music building on Mountain Avenue.

Majkut will give a pre-concert talk an hour before each performance.

The RVSO box office (552-6398) is open from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Music Building of Southern Oregon University. A few $10 economy seats are available in Medford at the Craterian Box Office. Student tickets are $5 at each venue.