Symphony season will end with soprano Colton

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, with Randall Craig Fleischer conducting, will host its final concert of the season at 8 p.m. Saturday at Powers Auditorium, 260 W. Federal St., downtown.

Tickets are available at the box office, by phone at 330-744-0264 and online at youngstownsymphony.com.

Soprano Kendra Colton will appear with the orchestra in Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” based on the poem by James Agee.

Colton has performed as a soloist with major orchestras, ensembles and festivals, including the Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and the symphonies of Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Houston.

She has appeared at the festivals of Tanglewood, Banff and Ravinia, the Casals Festival, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Carmel Bach Festival. Her opera credits include Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Early Music Festival, International Handel Festival in Gottingen and the Milwaukee Skylight Opera.

In addition to her singing career, she is on the faculty at Oberlin College.

Also on the program will be Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” suite from his ballet of the same name, and Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.”

For the April concert, the orchestra had previously announced that it will premiere a new composition by Youngstown State University Dana School of Music professor Robert Rollin with Colton as soloist. However, when Rollin was unable to deliver a completed score and orchestrations, the symphony and Rollin agreed to postpone the premiere of the composition “Four Symphonic Lyrics for Soprano and Orchestra on an Ancient Greek Poem by Anacreon” until a later date.