PATRICIA SYAK | Youngstown Symphony Powers show features music of Ray Charles

Music is in the air during February at the DeYor Performing Arts Center.
On Feb. 5 and 6 at 7:30 p.m., the London smash hit "I Can't Stop Loving You" will rock Powers Auditorium. This show celebrates the music of Ray Charles with such songs as "Hit the Road Jack," "Hallelujah I Just Love Her So," "What'd I Say," "Georgia," "I Can't Stop Loving You," and "Unchain My Heart."
With a 16-piece orchestra on stage to back up dancers and singers, "I Can't Stop Loving You," is different from typical Broadway musicals. None of the performers presume to represent Charles. Like Ray Charles, they cross the boundaries of race, age and musical genres, blues, jazz, soul, country and rock and roll.
Charles was born in Georgia in 1930 to a poor family and had a turbulent life from the onset. When he was 5, he saw his brother drown. By the time he was 7, he was completely blind, and he was an orphan at 15. At the time of his death, he had won 12 Grammy Awards, and his rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia On My Mind" had been adopted as Georgia's state song.
Orchestra performances
On Feb. 10, Peter Nero conducts the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Powers Auditorium. Hailed as the epitome pops conductor/performer, Nero has won countless fans for his work as a conductor, arranger, composer and masterful pianist. A two-time Grammy winner who also won an Emmy, Nero is founder and conductor of the Philly Pops. However, before he won Grammies, he won Tootsie Rolls.
When Nero was 19, he competed in a contest on Paul Whitman's TV Teen Club. He played his arrangement of the theme from "The Brave Bulls" and won. The prize was a year's supply of Tootsie Rolls.
Nero's solid musicianship, innovative programming, dazzling technical style, inspired improvisation and warm informal stage presence will be in evidence when he conducts Symphonic Valentine with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.
The orchestra returns to Powers on Feb. 24 with new music director Randall Craig Fleischer conducting and guest pianist Valentina Lisitsa who will perform Prokofiev's "Third Piano Concerto." The orchestra, under Fleischer, performs Bartok's "Rumanian Folk Dances" and Tchaikovsky's "Fifth Symphony." Tchaikovsky, in correspondence with his mentor and benefactor Nadejda von Meck, declared the "Fifth" "a disaster" following the St. Petersburg premier in 1888. Today, Tchaikovsky's "Fifth Symphony" is a standard bearer among orchestra repertoire and audience favorite.
Born in Kiev, Lisitsa presented her first solo recital at the age of 6. A graduate of the Kiev Conservatory, she has won numerous international prizes and is a frequent guest artist with U.S. and European orchestras. Widely known and respected as a duo-pianist alongside her husband Alexie Kuznetsoff, Lisitsa brings to the concert stage a rare technical mastery and warm demeanor.
Society events
On Feb. 11, the Youngstown Symphony Society will sponsor a 3 p.m. recital by the Cleveland Duo and classical saxophonist James Umble in Ford Family Recital Hall.
The Cleveland Duo, Umble, violinist Stephen Warner and pianist Carolyn Gadiel Warner have completed 12 seasons of performing together in major chamber venues, festival sites, universities and conservatories of music throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico and have been heard over the airwaves of both National Public Radio and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Joining them will be flutist Kathryn Thomas-Umble in a program including commissions by prominent living composers, original works and transcriptions from existing repertoire.
Overture, the Symphony Society owned restaurant in the Eleanor Beecher Flad Pavilion, is open before and after all performances at DeYor. For reservations call (330) 744-9900. For tickets to all events, call the box office at (330) 744-0264.
XPatricia Syak is executive director of the Youngstown Symphony Society.