Pipe organ to be dedicated at anniversary event

Photo

Nick Mays | SPECIAL TO The Vindicator: Committee members for the dual anniversary event for Stambaugh Auditorium and the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and the dedication of this Skinner pipe organ at the auditorium are, from left, Phil Cannatti, Susan Berny, Jeanne Simeone, Patricia Syak, president and CEO of the Youngstown Symphony Society, and William Conti, president and trustee of Stambaugh.

YOUNGSTOWN

Stambaugh Auditorium and the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra are joining to celebrate their 85th anniversaries and to dedicate the auditorium’s renovated E.M. Skinner pipe organ at 4 p.m. Sept. 18 at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Organist David Higgs will join the orchestra and conductor Randall Craig Fleischer in the Camille Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3, popularly known as the “Organ Symphony,” and the Francis Poulene Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani.

Higgs also will be featured on several organ solos.

Concert tickets are available at the symphony box office at 330-744-0264 or online at youngstownsymphony.com. Underwriting of the concert was provided by the Jane F. Lamb Foundation.

Invitations will be issued for the celebration dinner at Stambaugh after the concert.

Dinner tickets at $60 per person and are sold separately from the concert tickets. For dinner reservations or more information about the event, call the auditorium event hotline at 330-259-0555 or 1-866-516-2269.

David Higgs is chairman of the organ and musical keyboards department at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where he has been organ professor since 1992.

He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Manhattan School of Music and a performance certificate from Eastman.

While in New York City, he served as associate organist at Riverside Church, where he also conducted Riverside Choral Society. Since 1986 he has been a faculty member at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in San Francisco.