Chances are neither the audience nor the Colorado Springs Philharmonic will be familiar with Brazilian-born composer Clarice Assad’s “Baião N’ Blues.”

And that’s why award-winning guest conductor John Devlin helped program the piece for this weekend’s “Brahms 4” concerts at Pikes Peak Center. Also on the program are Dvorák’s Violin Concerto in A Minor with guest violinist Tessa Lark and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4.

“One of the things I care most about is telling the story of great American artists who are alive right now,” Devlin said from home in New York City. “The first piece is by one of the finest composers working in the country today. I love to tell the stories of people who have a different background in culture. Brazilian dance and blues — she fuses those two things in her piece. Audiences will recognize a lot of the music and sounds as being derived from the blues along with style and rhythm from the Brazilian style.”

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Devlin, in his sixth season as music director of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra in Wheeling, W.V., is the latest in the philharmonic’s search for a conductor after the departure of music director, Josep Caballé Domenech, at the end of its 2022-2023 season. While he and philharmonic management selected Assad’s piece and the Brahms symphony, Lark helped choose the Dvorák piece.

They pair beautifully, Devlin believes, as Brahms and Dvorák were close colleagues.

“Brahms was a little older, but when he heard Dvorák for the first time he was inspired,” Devlin said. “He convinced his publishing agent to bring Dvorák onto the publisher’s register. Dvorák was sloppy with how he submitted manuscripts and Brahms would intercept and edit them before they went to print. Brahms’ violin concerto contains music that would have been found in Dvorák’s native musical language. And the final movement has that same type of feeling. Brahms’ symphony is one of the best ever written.”

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Brahms’ trajectory as a composer was unique, Devlin says. He grew up in a challenging environment without much money, and as a young pianist he played in brothels to make ends meet for his family. He was aware of the legacy that had preceded him, as Beethoven was his immediate predecessor, and often felt like he was in the great composer’s shadow.

It took him two decades to finish his symphony, when composers typically wrote a symphony in a year.

“Brahms had a feeling this would be his last symphony,” Devlin said. “He employed a lot of different aspects of styles he had come to assume over the course of his career. It’s an encapsulation of a career — look what I can do, you’re going to love it. It’s a supreme accomplishment. It’s either my favorite or second favorite symphony.”

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As Devlin, a clarinet player, acquaints himself with the orchestra for the first time, he must use several approaches to help bring the music to life.

“What a conductor does is very strange,” he said. “We’re responsible for the sound of the orchestra and the only person on stage who doesn’t make a single sound to contribute to that musical picture. We develop the ability over the years to, within the first few minutes of working with a group, to identify how the group is as both a collective and individually, and how it wants you to conduct to contribute to that collaboration.”