Symphony adds concerts for upcoming season

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra will kick off its 2011-12 season at Stambaugh Auditorium, where it will inaugurate the hall’s newly renovated pipe organ.

It also will increase the number of concerts it presents from eight to 10.

Six Masterworks and four Pops concerts are on the schedule, an increase of one in each genre over the current season. Season-ticket packages are available for all 10 shows, or for just the Masterworks or Pops series. Flex passes also are being offered for any three concerts. Call the box office at 330-744-0264.

Highlights of the Masterworks series will include works by the masters — Beethoven and Brahms — as well as rising young stars Nobuyuki Tsujii and Zuill Bailey. Legendary guitarist Angel Romero and an evening of opera’s greatest arias also are part of the series.

The YSO and Music Director Randall Craig Fleischer will begin the Masterworks series Sept. 18 at Stambaugh. Guest artist David Higgs will perform the organ concertos of Mozart and Paulenc and will join with the orchestra for Saint-Saens’ Third Symphony.

The orchestra will return to its home at Powers Auditorium on Oct. 22, accompanied by Tsujii, the Van Cliburn Piano Competition gold medalist who was born blind, performing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Beethoven’s Fifth will complete the program.

Romero will join the YSO on Nov. 5 to play Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 and the “Appalachian Spring” Suite by Copland will complete the program.

Glenn Schaft of the Dana School of Music, and Jordan Wirth of the YSO, two of the area’s top percussionists, will be featured in the Feb. 4 concert, which will also include Brahms Second Symphony.

On March 24, 2012, the orchestra will perform Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, and cellist Zuill Bailey will join the musicians in the Elgar Cello Concerto.

Opera’s greatest arias, with Met soprano Sarah Jane McMahon and New York Opera tenor Kip Wilborn, will concude the Masterworks season April 21, 2012,

The Pops season will kick off Oct. 1 with Rock Fusion, a program that will mix rock and symphonic arrangements by Fleischer, with a dash of special effects. Joining the YSO will be vocalist Rob Evan.

Broadway vocalist Carpathia Jenkins will accompany the orchestra Dec. 10 for the annual Holiday Pops event with the Darren Thomas Gospel Ensemble.

On Feb. 11, 2012, Symphonic Valentine will take a swing down memory lane with the Frank Sinatra songbook and a big-band tribute concert featuring vocalist Sal Viviano.

The Pops Series will conclude April 28, 2012, with the Three Broadway Divas, who will sing a blend of Broadway favorites.