Violinist Joshua Brown will perform on a nearly 400-year-old violin Saturday when the Folsom Lake Symphony opens its 23rd season at the Harris Center for the Arts.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10. Brown will solo in Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor before the full orchestra, under Maestro Peter Jaffe, takes on Hector Berlioz's five-movement "Symphonie fantastique."

The evening pairs two pillars of Romantic-era orchestral music. Berlioz's work follows a lovesick artist through obsession, hallucination, a march to the scaffold and a witches' sabbath, according to a preview published by Village Life.

"Berlioz takes the audience on an extraordinary psychological journey, and the orchestra becomes the voice of the artist's imagination," Jaffe said in a symphony news release.

Brown rose to prominence after winning second prize and both audience awards at the 2024 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. In 2025 he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the CAG Louis and Susan Meisel Prize. He has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, among others.

The violin he plays is a Nicolò Amati dating to roughly 1635–40. Brown is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where he also earned his bachelor's and master's degrees, according to the symphony's season page.

The Oct. 10 concert is the first of five main-stage performances this season. The next, "Sounds of the Season," is set for Saturday, Dec. 12, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 13, at 2 p.m., featuring bass-baritone Jesús Vicente Murillo and the Northern California Youth Chorus. The season closes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.

The symphony also offers free community events, including a Young Artists Recital on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2027, at Harris Center Stage 3 and an outdoor Twilight Delight concert on Saturday, May 15, 2027, at the Zittel Family Amphitheater in the Folsom Historic District.

Individual tickets are on sale at folsomlakesymphony.com, by phone at 916-608-6888 or in person at the Harris Center ticket office, open Tuesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. Season subscriptions offering up to 20% off individual ticket prices are available by phone or in person only.