Stargazing

Dear Friends,

It is my honor to welcome you to the 54th season of the Ashland Symphony Orchestra. We look forward to seeing and hearing what our Grammy Award winning Music Director and Conductor, Michael Repper, in his second year, has in store for us. Michael’s enthusiasm, talent, and ability to “think outside the box” in dynamic, innovative, and delightful ways were evident in his inaugural year. He and our outstanding musicians presented an array of both familiar and new musical offerings and we look forward to more of that this year. As always, we strive to unite, educate and enrich our community through the engaging and transformative power of orchestral music experiences. We hope you find it inspiring and refreshing. Happy listening!

Allan Andersen, President
ASO Board of Directors

Dear Ashland Symphony Orchestra Patrons,

It is my great privilege to welcome you to our concerts at the marvelous Robert M. & Janet L. Archer Auditorium. I am incredibly proud to be taking the helm as Ashland’s new Music Director, and to continue to grow this jewel of Ashland County. We are going to make tremendous music together and enjoy a wonderful communal spirit. Our concerts are a place for everyone – come and enjoy, and be sure to introduce yourself! Our musicians and I are incredibly proud to share our work with you, and we hope you enjoy every minute!

Michael Repper
Music Director and Conductor
Ashland Symphony Orchestra

I am excited to be celebrating my 10^th season with the ASO! This “Fabulously (un)familiar” season will bring you works by the old masters: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. But you will also hear the world premiere of Stefan Swanson’s Symphony No.2 “Lipsky”, Iubilo by Brian Nabors, Starburst by Jessie Montgomery, and the artistry of the young cellist Aurelia Faidley-Solars, just to name a few of the unfamiliar musical experiences you will have.

Free tickets for children and students and the ASO Fan Club, for students in 9^th-12^th grade and college students, and the new ASO Fan Club Jr, for students in 4^th-8^th grade, bring young listeners to our concerts.

Be sure to invite your friends, family, and colleagues to come listen to what people are talking about!

Martha Buckner
Executive Director
Ashland Symphony Orchestra

Michael Repper is one of the most sought-after young conductors in the world. With work spanning four continents, Mr. Repper has an international reputation for engaging and exciting audiences of all spectrums, and for promoting new and diverse musical talents. In 2023, he became the youngest American conductor to win a Grammy® Award in Best Orchestral Performance.

Mr. Repper is the Music Director of the Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, Northern Neck Orchestra of Virginia, and the Principal Conductor of Sinfonía por el Perú, the elite youth orchestras and choruses representing one of South America’s most versatile social impact music programs. Recognizing his success at these ensembles, and his growing profile as a guest conductor all over the world, Mr. Repper was awarded a Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

His album with the New York Youth Symphony, which features debut recordings of works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, and Valerie Coleman, achieved widespread critical acclaim, reached #1 on the Billboard Chart, a won a GRAMMY® Award, the first youth orchestra to achieve this milestone.

Mr. Repper has collaborated on large-scale productions of symphonic and theatrical works with the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ravinia Festival, Peabody Institute of Music, and the New School of Music, among others. An avid pianist, he regularly performs as a soloist alongside his orchestras and choruses, and as an orchestral player as well. Most recently, he played in the Chicago Symphony for their performances of Bernstein’s Mass, which was broadcast on PBS Great Performances. ​

​Alongside the standard repertoire, Mr. Repper is especially invested in programming new music and showcasing fresh talent. His ensembles have performed dozens of world premieres and pursued innovative commissions, as well as a variety of Carnegie Hall premieres from established and emerging composers. Mr. Repper was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conducting Fellow for two seasons, and he served as the BSO’s New Music Consultant. A trusted ear, Mr. Repper is asked to assist and cover at orchestras nationwide, including the St. Louis Symphony, and for Naxos recordings with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. His experience with choruses has been recognized with significant positions, including his tenure as the Music Director at the Baltimore Basilica, the first Catholic Cathedral in the United States. Internationally, Mr. Repper has performed with some of the most highly regarded ensembles and in the world’s greatest venues, including the São Paulo Symphony, and at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona.

His discography includes the aforementioned album of music with the New York Youth Symphony, alongside an album with the Grammy-Nominated Metropolis Ensemble and Grammy-Winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus (“Musical America”), and several with the Peabody Institute as an Assistant Conductor. With the New York Youth Symphony during the Coronavirus pandemic, he was one of the first to pioneer the practice of distanced orchestral performance videos, and he made two performance appearances on CNN, the final one with Platinum-Artist Billy Ray Cyrus.

Mr. Repper complements his work with professional orchestras with a firm commitment to education, and travels worldwide to work with ensembles of young musicians. As Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Maryland, he ushered in a slate of innovative educational programming, such as the Reinecke Youth Chamber Music Scholarship and Fellowship Program. He conducts several masterclasses each year for orchestras from all over the United States on behalf of the New York Philharmonic, and conducts side-by-side and educational concerts with major orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.

Mr. Repper’s most influential conducting mentors are Marin Alsop and the late Gustav Meier. He believes that a conductor’s main role is to connect people and to use performance as a vehicle for positive change. He aims to promote a diverse and inclusive future for the arts, and to pay forward the passion for community that his mentors demonstrated to him.

MONTGOMERY, Jessie: Starburst

Instrumentation: Strings

Duration: 3 minutes

Montgomery is a native New Yorker, a graduate of the Juilliard School in violin performance, and holds a master’s degree from New York University in music composition.  Her publications focus on various combinations of strings, and enjoy wide performance popularity with noted ensembles throughout the country.  She is a devoted supporter of educational activities, and youth musical ensembles.   Her musical style is, if anything eclectic, and is obviously a reflection of the enormous variety of musical art in her native New York City.  Mahler once somewhat fatuously remarked something to the effect that a symphony should contain “everything.”   Well, Montgomery dips into a remarkable universe of musical traditions, and reinterprets them in her own voice—just not all in one piece, of course.

Starburst was written in 2012 for the “Sphinx Virtuosi,” the professional touring ensemble of the Sphinx Organization.  The latter supports young African-American string players in the Detroit area; Montgomery is composer-in-residence for the organization. Starburst takes its title from the composer’s feeling that the young members of the “Sphinx Virtuosi” are rather like “new stars in a galaxy.”

A brief, but scintillating, affair, Starburst is a winsome example of much of new music of the twenty-first century.  Montgomery is typical of young contemporary composers unhindered by the siren calls that dominated “academic” music of the second half of the twentieth century:  complexity, dissonance, adherence to “systems,” and a general tendency to value art that is esoteric and recondite.  Rather, the cheerful staccato perpetual motion and constant interplay of a seemingly endless variety of ideas and motives creates a vivacious sparkle that perfectly encapsulates the title of the work.   While not exactly clearly establishing a “key” for the audience, Starburst is a pleasant exploration of familiar scales, chords, arpeggios, and melodic ideas that anyone can enjoy and recognize.  But, of course, adroitly woven together into quite a new composition.  Who should know better than the composer herself how to describe it?

“This brief one-movement work for string orchestra is a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors. Exploding gestures are juxtaposed with gentle fleeting melodies in an attempt to create a multidimensional soundscape. A common definition of a starburst, “the rapid formation of large numbers of new stars in a galaxy at a rate high enough to alter the structure of the galaxy significantly,” lends itself almost literally to the nature of the performing ensemble that premiered the work, the Sphinx Virtuosi, and I wrote the piece with their dynamic in mind.”

—Wm. E. Runyan

©2021 William E. Runyan

TCHAIKOVSKY, Piotr Ilyich: Variations on a Rococo Theme, op.33, TH 57

Instrumentation: 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, Strings, Solo Cello

Duration: 18 minutes

Tonight we have the pleasure of performing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and orchestra. Except we won’t really hear Tchaikovsky at all. If that sparks some confusion, please allow me to clarify.

Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write the “Rococo Variations” (the title most commonly used today) by a colleague, the virtuoso cellist Wilheml Fitzhagen, at the Moscow Conservatory. Out of respect for the great cellist’s abilities and reputation, Tchaikovsky gave the soloist permission to amend or edit the solo part if there were things that the cellist felt needed to be changed. Tchaikovsky may have regretted this, after all, because Fitzhagen changed the piece quite a bit! Reordering some of the variations, rearranging, moving a cadenza, and even getting rid of a variation!

While both Tchaikovsky’s original, and Fitzhagen’s rearrangement, are published, Fitzhagen’s edition became immensely popular and is the version most commonly performed today, and is the one that we will present at the Ashland Symphony. No less fantastic than Tchaikovsky’s original, I like to think of it as great work done by-committee.

A relatively short work for cello and orchestra (approximately 20 minutes), it is sincerely virtuosic for the cellist, and is also a direct homage that Tchaikovsky was paying to Mozart, a composer who was immensely influential in the composer’s life.

-Michael Repper

BEETHOVEN, Ludwig van: Symphony No.4, op.60 B-flat major

Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani, Strings

Duration: 34 minutes

This symphony, along with the first and second symphonies of Beethoven, has not nearly the reputation of the rest of them. It especially stands in great contrast to its immediate predecessor, the monumental third—the “Eroica,” a work that changed forever the significance of the genre. Any great work of art must be judged by its intrinsic qualities, yet it often is illuminating to consider it in the context of the life of the artist. Beethoven finished this symphony in 1806 at a propitious time in his life; he was thirty-six years old, and widely recognized for his genius. Moreover, he had just finished a series of significant compositions that, had he never composed again, alone would have been sufficient to establish his reputation permanently. They include: his opera, Fidelio; the piano sonatas “Pathetique,” “Moonlight,” “Waldstein,” and “Appassionata;” the “Rasumovsky” quartets; the violin concerto; the first four piano concertos; and, of course, the aforementioned “Eroica.” What is more, he had endured some of his typically hopeless infatuations with unobtainable women, and was gradually coming to terms with his deafness—having considered suicide. And then comes the charming, light, fourth symphony, that for all the world seems like a reversion to the style of some ten years earlier when Joseph Haydn was the toast of the world and Beethoven was a journeyman.

The symphony begins with a slow introduction—a Haydnesque touch—that mysteriously wanders through some pretty remote keys: Bb minor and Gb major and minor. It concludes with a wonderful example of a Beethoven crescendo into the triumphal allegro of the movement proper. Note throughout this movement his imaginative use of the wind instruments in thematic statements. The slow movement eschews Beethoven’s wont to manipulate and develop, and simply unwinds a beautiful melody over a throbbing accompaniment. The usual dance-like third movement—a Beethovenian scherzo—entertains with his characteristic manipulation of accents that surprise. Ever the innovator—even in this modest work—he expands the usual form from three parts to five, more or less repeating the last two sections. The last movement is a kind of perpetual motion of continuous sixteenth notes, driving merrily along to a happy ending.

Although this symphony sits in the middle of works with considerable gravitas, Beethoven obviously felt a need to compose a cheerful work of affirmation as relief. It is not light in quality, only in mood, and reveals to us a side of the stormy and enigmatic composer that, while rare, is nonetheless genuine.

–Wm. E. Runyan

© 2015 William E. Runyan

The Ashland Symphony Orchestra thanks

Our ushers and volunteers
Philip McNaull, Technical Director
Seth Morrison, Stage Manager
Bryce Bishop, Assistant Stage Manager
Jen Burford, House Manager
Mark Gorsuch, Volunteers Coordinator

Ashland City Schools for its continued support of the arts

Ashland University for the use of percussion instruments
Roger Price, Professional Voice Actor & Announcer, www.RogerzVoice.com

Please silence all electronic devices.
No flash photography or audio/visual recording permitted.
No food or drink permitted in the Robert M. & Janet L. Archer Auditorium.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Season Sponsors:

Bob and Jan Archer

Samaritan Hospital Foundation

Ohio Arts Council

Soloist Sponsor: Jonathan Solars Fine Violins

Music Sponsors:

Ron and Carolyn Marenchin

Charles River

In 1997, Bob and Jan Archer established the first donor fund through the Ashland County Community Foundation to benefit the Ashland Symphony Orchestra. The ASO then partnered with the ACCF in 1999 and created the “Ashland Symphony Orchestra Fund in Memorium of James E. Thomas”. Since then, three new agency funds and fourteen additional donor advised or designated funds have been established! The Ashland County Community Foundation can assist you in creating a fund to benefit the Ashland Symphony Orchestra now or as part of your estate plan. For more information, call the Foundation at 419-281-4733.

Donations may be made to existing endowments at any time. Contact the Foundation for more information www.ashlandforgood.org.

*To contribute to these funds, please send donation to Ashland Symphony Orchestra, 401 College Ave., Ashland, OH 44805.

The Ashland Symphony Orchestra is thankful for the following funds:

Robert M. & Janet L. Archer Fund est. 1997

Ashland Symphony Orchestra Fund in Memorium of James E. Thomas est. 1999*

ASO Podium Endowment Fund in Honor of Maestro Arie Lipsky est. 2018*

ASO Harold Weller Music Education Endowment Fund est. 2019*
gift from Nick & Edna Weller Charities: Harold & Betsy Weller and Thomas Weller

ASO Rev. John H. Landrum Memorial Endowed Chair for Flute 2 est. 2020*
gift from Marybelle H. Landrum

Ashland Symphony Orchestra est. 2000

Mary M. Case Memorial Fund est. 2005

Ann K. Guthrie Fund est. 2009

Arie Lipsky Honorary Endowment Fund est. 2010

Kopp Family Fund est. 2011

Dr. Alvin W. Garrett Fund est. 2017

William and Marlene Rose Fund est. 2017

J. Robert and Ruth L. Tipton Fund est. 2017

Dr. JoAnn Ford Watson Fund est. 2017

Dr. Beverly Bixler Fund est. 2018

Billy Harris Charitable Fund est. 2018

Lawrence and Catherine Hiner Endowed Chair for Percussion of the ASO Fund est. 2020

John R. Donelson for the benefit of the ASO est. 2021

Elizabeth Pastor Fund for the benefit of the ASO est. 2021

F. Dean and Joan Bartosic Family Fund for the benefit of the ASO est. 2023