When Kedrick Armstrong steps up to the podium Oct. 18 at the Paramount Theatre as the Oakland Symphony’s ninth music director, he will be aware of but also liberated by the position’s inherent blessings and burdens. In the light of his exuberant enthusiasm, such things as monumental, weighty legacies bestowed by his predecessors—the beloved late Michael Morgan and the orchestra’s first African-American music director, Calvin Simmons, among others—become buoyant platforms from which he springs into his first season. Armstrong will be familiar to audience members who attended Oakland Symphony concerts in 2022 and 2023. A tightly curated list of guest conductors was invited to appear as candidates in the stringent process used to select a new director during the two years after Morgan, in 2021, succumbed to an infection just three months after a successful kidney transplant. Kedrick led three programs that made apparent his interest in community building, his expertise in the highest-quality classical music that extends to multiple genres and, especially, his advocacy and passion for the performance, publication and preservation of the works of underrepresented composers and artists. “The season was planned and announced before I was hired in April. There were things I inherited and things I was able to bring my own signature to,” he says in an interview. “The celebration of Living Jazz’s 40th anniversary was already programmed, but it just so happens that it is deeply entwined with the theme of my first season and my beliefs about music. The cross-genre, collaborative works of Living Jazz in this first concert are surrounded by non-standard pieces I selected.” The performance opens with Julia Perry’s “Short Piece for Orchestra” and closes with Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable.” Bedrocked in the center are jazz-rooted compositions and Living Jazz’s featured artists Allison Miller, John Santos, Meklit Hadero and six guest artists. Perry, a Black, female composer, molded Armstrong’s research while earning a master’s at University of Colorado, Boulder. Largely unknown until recent years, he credits Perry with sparking his energetic commitment to present the work of minority composers. Nielsen, in his fourth symphony, brought to Armstrong’s mind his newly adopted city of residence. “Thus, the concert title, ‘Inaugural Inextinguishable Oakland.’ It is one way I think of this city’s people,” Armstrong says. To tell the stories of other “tenacious humans” in his official debut as the orchestra’s leader, he says, is marvelous. “What is revolutionary in Perry’s work is not what I hear, but what I don’t hear. There is only concert instrumental music. There is no presence of Black sonic experience—spirituals, jazz—or themes we’ve been conditioned to expect when engaging with a Black composer.” He adds, “It is a Black woman reclaiming her narrative and saying her voice matters in classical music. Along with a whole covert of Black composers who were wrestling with influences, she was seeking and finding opportunities for liberation that didn’t tie her to the American oppressive slave narrative.” Listening to Perry’s music caused Armstrong to revisit how he intends to show up in Oakland and nationwide to represent his culture and history as a Black man and musician. Oftentimes, recent conversations begin with his connections to classical music and to the Black narrative.  “There’s joy, freedom, strength and privilege in being the third Black music director in a U.S. orchestra,” Armstrong says. “Oakland has so many cultures, languages and people. I am relying on many people to expand and draw connections to marginalized voices in the Black community, but also to how I might engage with other marginalized voices. I also keep my hand in contemporary music, updating and looking for hip-hop artists and pop musicians who sample classical music in their work and are a bridge to the all-vital younger generations.” Because the majority of existing repertoire by Black classical music composers is largely unpublished and rarely recorded, going beyond simply presenting their work in one-off concerts is of utmost importance. “So many times, it stops there,” Armstrong says. “We got this composer or marginalized community onto the stage. Check mark, we’ve done it. It has to go so much farther.” Armstrong evaluates which voices are relevant, what topics are in the forefront, if the music is accessible to all and which pieces deserve the spotlight. Always, exquisite technical and elevated artistic standards serve as two solid sentinels at the entry gate. And realistically, funding impacts choices. “Where is the money?” he asks. “As we support music that largely hasn’t been published or is behind paywall barriers that small-budget orchestras with great ambition aren’t able to access and monetize through publishing and recording it, what is possible? People can come to the concert hall, but how many people engage with it depends on social media and things outside of the theater.” The daunting task in no way reduces his unflaggingly ambitious programming for the season. Among others, the Nov. 8 program pairs Shawn Okpebholo’s “Zoom” and “Two Black Churches” with Carl Orloff’s magnificent “Carmina Burana.” Two separate poems are the base for works dealing with the 1963 Birmingham church bombing and the Charleston church shooting in 2015. “To contextualize that heaviness, Carmina Burana came up,” Armstrong says. “I’m dealing with the wheel of time and fate and how we, as human beings, get wrapped up in being on top or bottom, and love, jealousy, anger, frustration. There’s humanity that gets lost when the Black pain experience is the only thing put on the stage, and not our love and joy. This concert deals with that in a holistic way.” Looking to 2025, “Forgiveness and Pictures at an Exhibition” on March 28 presents another unique combination: Daniel Bernard Roumain, Gabriel Lena Frank and Mussorgsky. “In all this music, I learn about human connections and the story I want to tell,” Armstrong says. “There are tributes, homage and forgiveness embodied in these works. On a whole, it’s about shared experiences and how they inspire us to live in community.”