Symphony to welcome youth orchestra

Staff report

Youngstown

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra will welcome the Youngstown Symphony Youth Orchestra to the Powers Auditorium stage for a side-by-side performance Saturday.

The Youth Orchestra, under the direction of Stephen Gage and assistant director Richard Smrek, is comprised of area students age 13 through 18 who audition each year.

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Randall Craig Fleischer, will perform Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Cellist Zuill Bailey will join in with the performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto in the first half of the program.

Bailey is widely considered one of the premiere cellists in the world, performing frequently with leading American orchestras and conductors. His travels include a celebrated performance with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, which is in its 50th anniversary tour of Russia.

Bailey is a member of the celebrated Perlman-Schmidt-Bailey Trio, featuring pianist Novah Perlman and violinist Giora Schmidt. He performs regularly with longtime duo partner pianist Auvadaggin Pratt, as well as pianist Simone Dinnerstein.

In his performance with the YSO, Bailey will play on a 1693 Matteo Gofriller Cello, formerly owned by Mischa Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet.

Fleischer will return to the stage after the intermission to conduct the combined Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and Youth Orchestra in Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia,” the first and fourth movements of the “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1” and the final movement from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.