Youngstown Symphony’s New Leader Is Ready for Season

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra will get a fresh start this season with its new conductor-music director Sergey Bogza at the podium.

The season opening concert on Oct. 5 will give a glimpse of the spirited season to come.

Titled “Rhapsody Royale,” it will spotlight three composers with seemingly little in common: American pop and theatrical composer George Gershwin, Russian composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the British rock band Queen.

“I built the program around the three most iconic rhapsodies of all time – ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ by Gershwin, ‘Rhapsody on a Theme  of Paganini’ by Rachmaninoff, and an orchestral version of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” Bogza says.

The reason has everything to do with Bogza’s vision for the orchestra and its relationship to the local audience.

“Rhapsodies are highly inventive and free flowing in mood, color and structure,” Bogza says. “I wanted to share that spirit of imagination and openness to new possibilities as we start the new chapter of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.”

The guest artist for the concert will be pianist Ilya Yakushev, who splits his time between the United States and Europe. Bogza describes him as an audience favorite.

The “Rhapsody Royale” concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. at Powers Auditorium. Tickets for all YSO concerts are available at ExperienceYourArts.org or by calling the box office at 330 259 9651.

Bogza and the YSO are working on scheduling a relaxed one-hour session before each concert during which he can share his vision and answer questions from the audience.

“Having that relationship with the audience is so important to me,” he says. “In a pleasant and warm environment, one is always surprised by the quality of questions and things people are curious about.”

The YSO has been without a full-time leader since the death of Randall Craig Fleischer in August of 2020.

 After a lengthy search, Bogza, a Russian native, was named the new conductor and music director. Bogza also holds that position with the Panama City (Florida) Symphony, and lives in that city.

He started on July 1 and spent his first month putting together the 2024-25 YSO season.

The remaining five concerts are as follows:

• Nov. 2: “Back to the Future,” a screening of the iconic movie with a live performance of the score, 7:30 p.m., Powers Auditorium.

• Dec. 21: “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” Holiday classics, 7:30 p.m., Powers Auditorium.

• Jan. 19: “Beethoven and Beyond,” classic compositions, 2:30 p.m., Stambaugh Auditorium.

• Feb. 15: “Shakespeare in Love: Romeo and Juliet,” a Valentine’s Day concert with music from performances of Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece, 7:30 p.m., Stambaugh Auditorium.

• March 2: “Symphonic Superheroes,” classical music culled from video games, 2:30 p.m., Stambaugh Auditorium.

A Closer Look

The “Back to the Future” concert continues a recent YSO tradition in which a popular movie is shown on a screen mounted above the orchestra, which plays the score live. Past efforts by guest conductors have included “Ghostbusters” and “Home Alone.”

Bogza says he loves the “Back to the Future” score by Alan Silvestri.

“It’s packed with complex and nuanced orchestration and is scored for a massive orchestra,” he says. “Putting it all together is more complex than one imagines, but it always needs to feel effortless and exciting for the audience.”

For the Christmas concert in December, Bogza has tapped vocalist Scott Coulter, who has performed with the YSO in the past.

“He is a known entity, and the reviews have been simply outstanding,” Bogza says. “Everyone I spoke with wanted him to come back to Youngstown.”

For the “Beethoven and Beyond” concert, Bogza selected some of his favorite music.

“Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ is one of my all-time favorite symphonies, and just like music for [the Alfred Hitchcock film] ’Psycho,’ it broke new ground on many levels,” he says. “For this program, I wanted to offer a wide variety of styles and genres in the first half and feature an iconic staple of symphonic repertoire (‘Eroica’) in the second half.”

The musical suite by Herrmann from “Psycho” and Kabalevsky’s “The Comedian Suite” will bookend the first half of the concert.

Between those two pieces, YSO principal percussionist Andrew Pongracz will perform Milhaud’s “Concerto for Percussion and Small Orchestra,” followed by the YSO in Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Elegía Andina.”

The Valentine’s Day concert in February will feature the two most recognizable symphonic illustrations of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”: Tchaikovsky’s “Fantasy Overture” and musical selections from Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet.” The concert will also feature guest vocalist Avery Boettcher, who will sing selections from operas and operettas.

The final concert of the season might be the most rousing.

Bogza, an avid video game player, filled the program with music from some of his favorite game soundtracks.

His love of video games started in the summer of 1996 when he first played “The Legend of Zelda,” and has since blossomed into an enduring obsession.

“I have tried to complete at least one video game every three to four years,” Bogza says. “Last summer, I was working on God of War: Ragnarök.”

Pictured at top: Sergey Bogza is the new music director-conductor of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.