Earlier this month, the composer Carlos Rafael Rivera sent along an MP3 of his Concierto de Miami, a trumpet concerto that had its premiere in late October with the great jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as the soloist.

I wasn’t able to attend the concert, so I’m grateful to Rivera for sending me the recording. This is a charming, relatively lightweight concerto, with plenty of attractive melody and color, and its appeal to the Knight Concert Hall audience, which applauded it enthusiastically, is clear.

At the beginning, the concerto is highly reminiscent of the Aaron Copland of El Salon Mexico and Fanfare for the Common Man, and in general Copland is the most important guiding spirit for this work, if not in specific language, at least in the integrated way Rivera has brought ethnic folk styles into the concert hall. Copland tried to create an organic American style out of homespun material, and Rivera has done much the same with the mix of popular styles that he melds with traditional approaches of thematic development.

The work is one 14-minute movement that divides into three parts: fast, slow, fast. The first movement begins with the solo trumpet introducing the gentle Latin-inflected melody that will dominate it. It’s followed by horns and timpani expanding on the theme, and then moves into the first section proper as solo winds, then the trumpet, take turns riffing on the melody and playing off gentle string chords.

The whole thing gets cooking into a full-scale dance, then the music breaks into a brief solo jazz break for the trumpet, after which the music gets quieter and turns mildly darker. And it does this in a purely melodic way, as though it were a bridge back to the opening theme, with a secondary strain in the minor.

For the second section—which Sandoval played on flugelhorn—bells or perhaps a celesta build a pretty background as the soloist plays a sweet song over a film-score pop progression in the strings. This builds to a climactic melodic turn off a high note, releasing the stasis of the harmony and providing a good emotional release.

The next part of the section is to my ears the most interesting couple of minutes of the concerto, as the soloist ruminates on the opening theme alone, then over a piano, then trading off with a solo violin and a solo cello.

This all creates a somewhat apprehensive, moody atmosphere, but the trumpet soon cadences in the major again, and the tone of the upbeat opening movement returns for the final section. This is more or less an extended coda rather than a separate section that does anything new with the original material, but it rises attractively to its end as the soloist climbs the scale to a high, triumphant E-flat.

Sandoval sounded in excellent form on this recording, and the Miami Symphony under Eduardo Marturet turned in a masterful performance. I could see the Concierto de Miami as a good pops piece for orchestras looking for something accessible and a little different for their lighter programs, and I think it also has a future in college music concerts, where you might be more likely to find a talented student who wants to be as accomplished in jazz as he or she is in classical.

It’s good to end the year on this topic, because 2010 was a decent year for premieres in South Florida: In addition to Rivera, there was Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Dancers, Dreamers and Presidents in September, and a week or so ago in West Palm Beach, cellist Carter Brey and pianist Christopher O’Riley (of From the Top fame) debuted Due per Due, a fine new work for cello by Justin Dello Joio.

And about a month from now, the New World Symphony will bring us a new piece by Britain’s Thomas Adès to open its Frank Gehry building. Might as well think of it as momentum, and hope for more seasons of fresh new music, prominently displayed.