MIchael Gordon. Photo by Peter Serling

Here’s something unusual for this weekend at the New World Symphony: Three world premieres.

In an ambitious move, the orchestral academy’s director, Michael Tilson Thomas, is leading his charges in pieces by Miami Beach’s own Michael Gordon, New Voices commission recipient Ted Hearne, and orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin of three songs written by University of Miami alumnus Bruce Hornsby for his 2011 musical SCKBSTD.

Bruce Hornsby.

Hornsby, of course, is best known for the ubiquity of the pop songs he wrote in the late 1980s, in particular “That’s Just the Way It Is,” “Every Little Kiss” and “Mandolin Rain.” SCKBSTD, a license-plate abbreviation for “sick bastard,” was a short-lived musical that premiered in Norfolk, Va., and ran for a couple weeks; it concerns the havoc a mysterious stranger wreaks on a small town. Hornsby will join MTT and the orchestra for the Coughlin orchestrations.

Gordon, who founded the legendary contemporary music festival Bang on a Can in New York City, has written a tribute to Miami Beach for the city’s 100th birthday, a piece called El Sol Caliente, with a film to accompany it by Bill Morrison. It’s the third of Gordon’s “city symphonies,” the other two being Gotham (for New York) and Dystopia (for Los Angeles).

(Here’s a performance of Gotham; you can see the film in the background above the players.)

Ted Hearne.

Hearne, a native of Chicago who studied at the Manhattan and Yale music schools, now teaches at the University of Southern California. In one of those collaborations that would have been unheard-of 50 years ago but is normal as breathing these days, Hearne also is known for his work with singer Erykah Badu.

Much of Hearne’s work is politically engaged, such as this segment from his Katrina Ballads, a 2008 piece commemorating Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in 2005. It, too, includes a video by Bill Morrison.

You can see Hearne himself on YouTube singing “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” from this same cycle — a reference to President George W. Bush’s infamous comment at the scene about his hapless FEMA director, Michael Brown.

It’s brave and admirable of Thomas to present a concert of new music in this setting; while new music is the norm for ensembles such as symphonic bands and even pop bands, it represents the exception rather than the rule for classical music. The New World’s all-John Cage concerts of a couple years ago were extraordinary in the dedication the academy showed to this body of work, and to have a prominent conductor such as Thomas regularly championing new pieces is all to the good for Miami Beach and South Florida in general.

After all, you never know where the next great composer is going to come from, and concertgoers who venture over to the New World Center on Friday, January 30th and Saturday, January 31st will surely be there in the spirit of discovery.

Tickets for the concerts, both of which begin at 7:30 p.m., range from $20-$45 on Friday night, and $50-$60 on Saturday night. Call 305-673-3331 or visit www.nws.edu for more information.