Bruce Gordon is a soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman. Consequently, when a steady stream of superlatives rolls off his tongue — in the service of saying he’s more excited about the Columbia Civic Orchestra’s upcoming concerts than he’s been in his entire 15-year station with the group — it’s worth finding out why.

For the orchestra’s manager and a member of its French horn section, joy springs from the one-two programming punch CCO is poised to deliver. Starting with Saturday’s set of “Modern Excursions,” Gordon said the cumulative creative effect of this season’s final two gigs will potentially be greater and more electrifying than any pairing he can remember.

A CCO-guided jaunt through works from the past 100 years, the concert begins with an incredibly recent offering — Alex Blanton’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Commissioned for the CCO by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, the MU graduate’s piece “alternates between languid, slow sections and driving, fast passages” in “schizophrenic” fashion, a CCO news release said.

German master Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber” follows; based on themes from 19th-century predecessor Carl Maria Von Weber, Hindemith’s piece “has the distinction of being as loved by musicians that play it as by audiences,” Gordon said. The evening concludes with MU faculty member Natalia Bolshakova at the piano for Prokofiev’s “Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major.”

“This is the kind of piece where audiences generally stand up and shout,” Gordon said. “Unconventional” harmonies resolve in the “glowing” finale of a piece that’s “so exciting … beautiful … strange in its own way,” he said.

CCO’s final performance of the season — slated for April 23 — includes a work whose magnitude is unparalleled. In tandem with the MU Choral Union and with Paul Crabb on the conductor’s podium, the orchestra will present Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” Gordon said he unequivocally believes the masterwork, written between 1724 and 1749, to be the single most important piece of sacred music ever composed. NPR’s Ted Libbey seemed to agree when he wrote last year, “The Mass in B minor is as lofty in design, scope and expression as anything written by the hand of man.”

Pulling off the piece Gordon called “a pillar of light” will require a collaboration between hundreds of musicians and the procurement of at least one very rare instrument — Bach’s score calls for two oboes d’amore, which Gordon described as something of an ancient hybrid of the oboe and English horn. The piece also employs three piccolo trumpets, also atypical. “It’s a tremendous undertaking — the scope of this has not been attempted in the volunteer musical segment in this town ever, as far as I can tell,” he said.

“Modern Excursions” begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, 203 S. Ninth St. For more information on this program and the rest of the CCO season, visit cco.missouri.org or call 442-1042.

Find this article in the Sunday paper or on the Columbia Daily Tribune Website

Find more information on any of the programs referenced in the audio by visiting the New Music Initiative section of the University of Missouri: School of Music website.

To learn more about Jeanne Sinquefield and her passion for making Missouri a mecca for new music composition, read her full bio on the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation website.