Dallas Symphony Orchestra music director designate Fabio Luisi will step onto the podium as the orchestra’s fulltime music director orchestra in the fall of 2020. This weekend, however, he reintroduces himself to the orchestra and the audience with a set of two non-subscription concerts at Meyerson Symphony Center, the first of which took place Thursday night.

The program was clearly designed to demonstrate Luisi’s range and personality as a conductor, including a touch of unexpected musical eclecticism. Italian-born Luisi, largely known as a conductor of opera, opened with a quintessentially American work. Mississippi-born William Grant Still created a link from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s to the classical music establishment with a body of work folding a sense of the depth of the African American experience into late romantic orchestral style.