What comes to mind when you hear the word “piccolo” — a chirping little bird? Or the famous “Spirit of ’76” painting of three 18th-century band members on the march — a man piping away on something like a piccolo, flanked by a boy and a man playing snare drums and an early American flag waving in the background?

Or, perhaps you might picture a passel of children playing with toy whistles?

Less likely to come to mind would be a full symphony orchestra, complete with its legion of stringed instruments, trumpets and other booming brass instruments, reeds and a rousing collection of percussion instruments. Standing near the conductor would be a single person preparing to blow into a pint-sized piccolo.

But it was likely this sort of image that motivated Bay Area composer Martin Rokeach. A professor of music at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Rokeach is also one of the founders of Composers, Inc., a 30-year-old organization that supports composers, and is seeing a growing number of his own works being performed.

Rokeach’s latest, Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra, will get its world premiere Friday night in the Paramount Theatre with Michael Morgan conducting his Oakland Symphony Orchestra. The piccolo soloist will be OSO’s own flutist and piccolo player Amy Likar, to whom Rokeach has dedicated the piece.

Amazed and curious about such an anomaly as a piccolo concerto, I asked Rokeach, “Why the piccolo?” In his return email, he wrote, “For years I have loved the innocent, haunting timbre of the piccolo’s low register. Sounding so much like a boy soprano, the instrument possesses a unique voice that affects and informs the entire direction of my concerto. Almost every concerto has a dynamic between soloist and orchestra not unlike a leader and a sometimes agreeable, sometimes unruly congregation. To my ear, the piccolo-leader is like a brilliant child, both innocent and profound, encouraging, cajoling and inspiring a congregation of less wise adults.”

Rokeach noted that the concerto is composed in the usual three contrasting movements style. The first begins with a declamatory statement he describes as “an urgent proclamation … sometimes anxious, mysterious, quietly intense and powerful.” The second movement, which he subtitled “Still We Hope,” engages the piccolo’s beautiful low register more fully and conveys the human belief and yearning that somehow a better world awaits us around the corner. It does not quite resolve but instead ends with sounds of a solo triangle that segues into a third movement marked “Ecstatic.” He terms the third movement “celebratory, playful and finally, ecstatic,” adding that it is also “punctuated with Jimi Hendrix-like riffs from the piccolo.”

This lively Oakland Symphony program is titled “Beethoven’s Choice,” which has nothing to do with the piccolo concerto, but rather reflects Beethoven’s admiration for the rarely performed Cherubini “Requiem,” featuring the Oakland Symphony and its Chorus, directed by Lynne Morrow. The third piece on the program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. There will be a preconcert talk by John Kendall Bailey at 7 p.m. and a performance in the lobby by the Oakland Youth Chorus beginning at 7:05 p.m.

Details: 8 p.m., Friday, 2025 Broadway, Oakland; $20-$75; 510-444-0802, www.oaklandsymphony.org.

AN UNUSUAL DUO: Guest conductor Leif Bjaland leads the Walnut Creek-based California Symphony in a performance of Richard Strauss’ last finished work, the rarely heard “Duett-Concertino” for clarinet and bassoon. Also on the program are Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and the overture from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Details: 4 p.m., Sunday, Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, $42-$72; 925-943-7469, www.california symphony.org.

Mendelssohn and more: The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble combines the energetic and lyrical D-minor Piano Trio by Felix Mendelssohn, Op. 49, with contemporary works by Craig Walsh, Jeremy Podgursky and Sean Varah.

Details: 7 p.m., Sunday, Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley; 8 p.m., Tuesday, S.F. Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak St., San Francisco; 5:15 p.m., March 24, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, 17 Gauss Way, Berkeley; $15-$35; 415-617-5223, www.leftcoast ensemble.org.

Happy Birthday, Johann: Internationally acclaimed organ recitalist and co-founder of American Bach Soloists, Jonathan Dimmock has created an all-Bach program that celebrates the master’s genius as composer for “the king of instruments,” and will perform it on one of the Bay Area’s most treasured tracker organs. Note: Bach was born March 21, 1685.

Details: 8 p.m., Friday, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’ Farrell St., San Francisco, $25; 415- 621-7900, www.americanbach.org.

Contact Cheryl North at cherylnorth@hotmail.com.