YOUNGSTOWN Symphony Season will include classics, new works

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The 2015-16 season of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra will salute the familiar works of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and spotlight melodies from Disney films.

There also will be country-music classics and Broadway show tunes, unusual works by Bloch and Prokofiev, and the photography of Ansel Adams of the American landscape.

Randall Craig Fleischer is the conductor and music director of the YSO.

As usual, all performances in the upcoming season — the YSO’s 89th — will be in Powers Auditorium, downtown. Go to youngstownsymphony.com for information.

Concerts are divided into two series: Classic and Pops.

The Classic series will begin Oct. 3 with featured artist Vadym Kholodenko, reigning Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold medalist.

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1986 and the first musician in his family, Kholodenko will perform Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto for left hand. Completing the all-Russian program will be Tchaikovsky’s March Slave and Sixth Symphony.

The Classic series continues March 12, 2016, with the Overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute, Beethoven’s Third Symphony and the new composition by jazz father-and-son team Dave and Chris Brubeck, titled “Ansel Adams: America.”

The program is a multi-media performance presenting 101 powerful photographs by Adams, accompanied by the Brubeck score.

Completing the Classic Series on April 9, 2016, is Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev in the Bloch Schelomo and Bernstein’s Three Mediations from his Mass. Other orchestra selections will be Copland’s “The Tender Land Suite” and the Asagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

Country comes to the city when the orchestra opens its Pops Series on Nov. 7 with “Country Legends,” a musical tribute to the great names in country music, created by Fleischer.

On Dec. 12, the orchestra welcomes Broadway vocalists Elizabeth Southard and Gary Mauer from “Phantom of the Opera” and “Showboat,” and Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel in a program of holiday and Broadway favorites including “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” and “The Toy Symphony,” with community celebrities.

Disney in Concert’s “Tales as Old as Time” concludes the Pops Series on Feb. 6, 2016, with film clips and songs from Disney’s “Tangled,” “Hercules,” “The Princess and the Frog,” “Frozen,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

In addition to performances in Powers Auditorium, the orchestra and Fleischer will appear at Pops at the Ballpark at Eastwood Field on Sept. 19. The program will feature patriotic music with tenor Doug LaBrecque, and a military color guard in a salute to the U.S. Armed Forces, with fireworks.

The orchestra also will continue the Stained Glass Concert Series at community houses of worship.

Scheduled are concerts at North-Mar Church in Warren at 3 p.m. Oct. 4; St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown, 3 p.m. Dec. 13; and Zion Lutheran Church in Cornersburg, 3 p.m. April 10, 2016.