Dana Symphony Orchestra to open season with Spanish music Musica Espana!

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Dana Symphony Orchestra will begin its 2015-16 season with a concert featuring Spanish music at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Stambaugh Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave.

Tickets for the show, titled “Musica Espana!,” are $6 ($5 for senior citizens and students from other schools; and free for those under 12 or with a valid YSU ID) and will be sold at the Stambaugh box office, online at stambaughauditorium.com and by phone at 330-259-0555.

Under the baton of Stephen L. Gage, the 56-member orchestra at Youngstown State University will open with Bizet’s Suite No. 1 from the opera “Carmen,” followed by Tchaikovsky’s virtuosic work for solo cello and orchestra, Rococo Variations.

The soloist is Dana School of Music faculty member Jeffrey Singler.

The second half of the program will open with Arturo Marquez’s invigorating Danzon No. 2, which was made popular in the United States by Los Angeles Philharmonic Conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Rimsky-Korsakov’s epic work “Capriccio Espagnol” will close the concert.

Singler is a professional cellist and educator based in Cleveland. He is a Boardman native and a graduate of Youngstown State University, where he was a Cochran University Scholar.

Singler studied cello with Michael Gelfand for 10 years.

He performs regularly with the Walden Players, Obsidian Quartet, Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Erie Philharmonic Orchestra, and as principal cello of the Ohio Valley Symphony. He also has performed with the Blossom Festival Orchestra, Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, Akron Symphony, Canton Symphony, Warren Philharmonic, and Youngstown Symphony, where he has filled in as principal or assistant principal.

An active recitalist and chamber musician, Singler’s guest-artist recitals have included First Night Canfield, The Bratenahl Chamber Music Series, and the YSU Fine and Performing Arts Series.

He has collaborated in chamber music performance with many renowned musicians, including Annie Fullard of the Cavani Quartet, John Root of the Juilliard School of Music, and Elizabeth DeMio of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Singler holds a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and has taken part in the Aspen Music Festival and the Bowdoin Music Festival.