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Dear Friends,

The Ashland Symphony Orchestra warmly welcomes you to our 55th season! Our Grammy Award-winning Music Director and Conductor, Michael Repper, with his unwavering enthusiasm, creativity, and passion, is embarking on his third year leading the orchestra. Michael continues to curate a diverse repertoire that blends both traditional and innovative selections, expanding the boundaries of ASO’s musical exploration. Guided by the exceptional talents of our ensemble of musicians, whom we wholeheartedly applaud for their outstanding contributions, we eagerly anticipate another year filled with high quality performances. Together, our musicians, conductor, board of directors, and Executive Director work in a collaborative spirit to deliver symphonic experiences that unite, educate, and enrich our community through the transformative power of orchestral music. Please join us on the journey. We hope you find it inspiring and refreshing. We sincerely thank you for your support.
Happy Listening!

Allan Andersen, President
ASO Board of Directors

Dear Ashland Symphony Orchestra Patrons,

I’m finding it hard to believe that this is already the start of my third season as Music Director of the Ashland Symphony. Ashland is one of the most special places anywhere in the world. Nowhere else that I have traveled exhibits the same level of community spirit and harmony, two of the most important ingredients for sustaining orchestral music. The symphony truly lives up to its moniker of being a jewel of Ashland County — indeed it is a jewel of the world!

An Ashland Symphony Orchestra Fan Club member named this season “Invigorated!” I couldn’t agree more. Each concert packs an excitement that you will feel viscerally, and the orchestra will continue to cement its reputation for energetic performances and versatile programming. We look forward to performing music from across the spectrum, new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, in an accessible and inviting way. Please, don’t forget to come early to the pre-concert talks, where we have the opportunity to connect deeper about the music!

See you at Archer, everyone! It’s going to be a great year —

Michael Repper
Music Director and Conductor
Ashland Symphony Orchestra

Here’s to another decade (I hope!) with the ASO. As the season title suggests, I am invigorated and looking forward to the exciting and unexpected works programmed by Michael Repper. This year will combine new pieces with old favorites and showcase music composed by women and people of color as well as the old masters; and we will share the stage with the magnificent violinist Grace Park and the Columbus duo Honey and Blue.

When I asked the Fan Club to help with titles for the season and the concerts, Ashland High School student Eva Early got to work. She came up with “Invigorated” and titled 4 of the 6 concerts. We are fortunate to have so many young listeners attend our concerts and support the ASO with their enthusiasm and volunteerism. For more information about the Fan Club, visit https://www.ashlandsymphony.org/fan-club/.

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

Conductor Michael Repper’s work spans six continents. In 2023, he became the youngest North American conductor to win a Grammy® Award in Best Orchestral Performance. He has an international reputation for engaging and exciting audiences of all spectrums, and for promoting new and diverse musical talents.

Repper is currently the Music Director of the Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, and the Northern Neck Orchestra of Virginia.  He recently concluded tenures as Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, and as Principal Conductor of Sinfonía por el Perú, the elite youth orchestras and choruses of one of South America’s most versatile social impact music programs. Repper was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conducting Fellow for two seasons, and he served as the BSO’s New Music Consultant. Recognizing his success at these ensembles, and his growing profile as a guest conductor all over the world, Repper was awarded a Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

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, and won a Grammy® Award, marking the first time a youth orchestra achieved this milestone.

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.

​Alongside the standard repertoire, 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.

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, Repper has performed with highly regarded ensembles and in the world’s greatest venues, including the São Paulo Symphony, and at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, Carnegie Hall, and others.

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.

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 has conducted several masterclasses 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, the Colorado Symphony, and the Sarasota Orchestra.
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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.

BRAHMS, Johannes: Tragische Ouvertüre, op.81 (Tragic Overture)

Instrumentation: flutes, piccolo, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, trumpets, tuba, timpani, strings

Duration: 13 minutes

In 1879 the University of Breslau in Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland), awarded Brahms with an honorary doctorate, and he returned the favor by writing his beloved Academic Festival Overture, a delightful potpourri of traditional songs known to all at German universities.  He evidently felt the need to balance this work with a darker, more intense one.  So, in the same year that he wrote the first (1880), he turned out the Tragic Overture—the two more or less comprising bookends of the only overtures that he wrote.   After a first performance in Vienna to a mixed reaction, the Tragic Overture was played with its companion, the Academic Festival Overture, at the latter’s première in Breslau.  The motivation for composing the former was evidently internal for there is no evidence of any other stimulation.  The composer is well known for having said, “One laughs, while the other cries.”  Brahms, of course, is the standard bearer for conservative composers of the nineteenth century who gave little credence to the need for writing music that “tells stories.”  His four monumental symphonies are eloquent testimony of that artistic position, staking out the high ground for “pure” music that needs no other rationale than itself.  So, with that in mind, it is not at all surprising that there really is nothing further than the title, itself, of this overture to go on for “explanations.”  It simply is a rather dark, stormy work that explores sober emotions within an architectural framework similar to those of our friends Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

The overture opens with two heavy, dramatic hammer strokes, followed by several contrasting ideas in quick succession, all the possibilities of which Brahms will explore—typically and thoroughly.   The mood of this work is clear and emphatic from the outset.  Eventually, we all expect a more cheerful second theme, and of course, we get it in the form of a genial, broad, Brahmsian tune in the violin section.  It’s only a short respite, for the composer soon returns to the stormy materials that opened the overture and works with them in an appropriately dramatic fashion.  The official development of these ideas is heralded by the return of the heavy strokes that opened our work.  But rather than jumping into an exploration of all these ideas in the same emotional vein as that of the beginning, Brahms surprises us with a peaceful little march based upon the dotted rhythm from the beginning, starting in the woodwinds and gradually taken up by the strings.   Needless to say, though, it’s not a happy procession, but then again, it’s not necessarily funereal, either.  Throughout, Brahms takes the opportunity to show us his skills in counterpoint as the tune intertwines.

Soon it’s time to wrap things up with the recapitulation, where one usually expects a clear return to the opening ideas.  But a masterpiece is often—maybe usually—judged, not by how it satisfies architectonic expectations, but by how it creatively varies and redefines them—and this is now the case.  He literally “sneaks” into the recap with some especially gratifying writing; but, where’s all those stormy ideas from the beginning?  Well, the trombones and horns play a warm, luminous, slow variant of the opening idea, but it’s certainly not in the same nature, and really only functions as a transition directly to the second idea.  And there’s not much “tragic” about it, as the violins soar out in optimistic warmth.  It can’t last, and it doesn’t.  The jagged dramatic rhythms return, and the two opening hammer strokes announce the drive to the end—interrupted by a moment of tranquility in the woodwinds, who take one last shot at some of the main ideas.  But, it’s only a moment of reflection before a short, powerful evocation of the opening concludes it all, and reminds us of the nature of this short drama.

–Wm. E. Runyan

© 2015 William E. Runyan

BRAHMS, Johannes: Akademische Festouvertüre, op.80 (Academic Festival Overture)

Instrumentation: flutes, piccolo, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets, trombones, trumpets, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings

Duration: 10 minutes

By the late 1870s Brahms’ position as a preeminent composer was well recognized.  He was almost universally admired for his first two symphonies, his two serenades, and the “Haydn” variations.    So, in 1879 the University of Breslau in Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland), in the best tradition of universities everywhere, brought honor to the distinguished composer—and distinction to itself, of course—by awarding him an honorary doctorate.  Typically, Brahms modestly sent a letter of thanks to the university and called it a day.  But he was urged to respond in a more substantial fashion, and so composed his Academic Festival Overture, one of his only two works in that genre.  The title in English is a bit misleading, for there was no actual “academic festival.”  It’s only a poor translation from the German—the reality being an “overture in festive style.”  Brahms, while a genial and warm man, rarely let down his dignity—and let’s face it—is not known for his fondness for humor in music.  His popular image of a portly man with a generous beard, an omnipresence cigar, and a serious mien is not without some truth.  But in this instance, Brahms responded with one of his happier and more accessible compositions.  Rather than a concert overture worked out with original themes, perhaps in the manner of, say, a first movement of one of his imposing symphonies, he chose to surprise everyone with a lighthearted mélange of traditional student drinking songs.

While most of the tunes are unknown to contemporary American audiences, the swirling, magisterial last section is based upon the universally familiar Gaudeamus igitur (a cliché in the soundtrack of every Hollywood movie set on a college campus in the 30s and 40s.)  Some folks today may also recognize bits of the famous Rákóczi March (familiar these days from Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust).  But to their delight, the German university audience at the time would have recognized all the songs that Brahms quoted or alluded to.   But, Brahms, being Brahms, would never have countenanced a simple medley of tunes hooked together willy-nilly.  Rather, the form is as tight, clear, and developmental as you could ask of this skilled structuralist of musical logic.   It takes a master to serve up something ostensibly light, but which takes its place among the most revered of concert masterpieces.  It may be somewhat of a medley, but it all sounds irrepressibly Brahms.

–Wm. E. Runyan

© 2015 William E. Runyan

BRAHMS, Johannes: Symphony No.4, op. 98, E Minor

Instrumentation: flutes, piccolo, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets, trombones, timpani, percussion, strings

Duration: 36 minutes

“This is a chosen one.”  Robert Schumann so characterized Johannes Brahms in his famous article that introduced the young Brahms to the public.  Little did he know!  Brahms went on to become the last great successor of the artistic mantle of musical Classicism that led from Joseph Haydn, through Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.  That’s taking the rather narrow view, of course, for there were others that followed who revered the classical attributes of restraint, balance, clarity of form, elegance, and general equipoise that characterized the collective features that came to be known as classical style.   And they stand in clear contrast to the sweeping trends and excesses of musical Romanticism that came to dominate European music until the cataclysm of World War I.

Simply put, the composers of the nineteenth century after Beethoven tended to divide themselves into two groups.  The progressives were true “Romantics,” and were greatly influenced by the extra-musical ideas that were the subjects of contemporary literature, poetry, and painting, among others.  They devised new genres, such as the tone poems of Smetana and Liszt, the music dramas of Wagner, and the characteristic piano pieces of Chopin.  Much of this music, to use a phrase still common among seekers of meaning in music, was about “something”–meaning something familiar to human experience. Liszt and Wagner, et al, while respecting the music of the past, saw no future in continuing that tradition.

Others, Brahms most significantly, still adhered strongly to the style of Beethoven that focused on the purely musical.   He and other conservatively minded musicians held that the traditional forms of sonata, concerto, and symphony had not nearly exhausted their viability, and that music should continue to speak in an integrated language that referred to itself, alone, and certainly not to extra-musical ideas.  So, he and his ilk continued to write “pure,” or “abstract” music, like sonatas and symphonies (a so-called symphony is just a sonata for orchestra). Today, most of those who compose, perform, and listen to art music see no contradiction at all in valuing both broad aesthetic viewpoints—so we enjoy the best of both worlds. The example of Beethoven’s music loomed overwhelming for Brahms, and he waited for decades to write his first symphony, completing it in 1876, when he was forty-three years old.  It has long since taken its place at the center of the orchestra’s repertoire.

Well, it didn’t take Brahms nearly so long to write his second symphony as it did the first, and the mood of that work is a strong contrast to that of the mighty seriousness of the first. This sunny work followed shortly in 1877, but then a hiatus occurred while Brahms devoted himself to other masterpieces, including the Academic Festival Overture and the monumental second piano concerto.  He returned to the symphonic genre and finished the third symphony in 1883.  It is the shortest of the four symphonies, and in many respects the most straightforward in musical and psychological content.  Finally, in 1885, the epic and beloved fourth symphony appeared.

This is a work in which astounding technical proficiency, intellectual seriousness of purpose, and general musical craftsmanship are woven together in a seamless exploration of tragedy.    But certainly not the dark, abject, personal tragedy found, say in the works of someone like Tchaikovsky.  His was, rather, that of a deep, reflective rumination over the fate of all mankind as might be undertaken by a great philosopher or poet.  Brahms was a wise, highly educated man, who took pleasure in the quotidian ordinary beauties of human existence, but who nevertheless understood the need to reflect upon the greater picture of our lives.  And his music eloquently mirrors those considerations.

The main theme of this last, great symphony begins right off with an impressive “drooping” idea, whose breathless quality is engendered by the rests after each two-note pair.  This inimitable idea informs almost every bar of the movement and teaches us that Brahms is not a “classicist” simply because he used the forms of folks like Beethoven and Mozart, but because of his astounding skill—like them—to develop great things from simple ideas:  think of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth.  A fanfare-like figure (of great importance throughout much of the movement) takes us to the second theme, a broad and expansive one heard in the violoncellos and horns.  Soon, it is transformed into a thumping affair that to this writer has always sounded like a powerful Brahmsian tango, if nothing else—you’ll hear it!  The movement relentlessly proceeds, a masterpiece of musical skill that uses almost every technique in the book and is ample evidence of Brahms’ deep study and understanding of the different musical styles of the past:  Josquin, Palestrina, Bach—the whole lot.  No composer before him literally knew so much about the musical styles of the past and how to integrate them into a new contemporary language.

The second movement opens with a powerful statement by the unison horns, the general sound of which suggests some ancient procession or ritual, and in fact, the harmony that Brahms employs offers some vague suggestion of an ancient Church mode—yet again evidence of his deep awareness of the usefulness of the past.  Clarinets, accompanied by pizzicato strings, take up the theme, as the solemn procession plods on.  Gorgeous string scoring leads to the second idea, which the composer typically presents to us in an ingenious variety of guises, but always without empty “padding.”  The main theme ends it as it began, leaving us wondering exactly what world we have visited.

A vigorous scherzo follows—right in the tradition of Beethoven.  It’s a driven fury of a movement, fulfilling the traditional requirement at this point of a “dance-like” movement.  However, it’s not in the traditional three-beat time, but in a hammering two-beat affair, in which the composer makes rare use of the triangle; it’s so prominent—and startling, one might say, for a composer with Brahms’ conservative reputation—that some pundits once considered it “abused” in this romping movement.

The last movement is unique—literally.   Nothing more aptly illustrates Brahms’ skill at infusing new—dare I say, “romantic”—life into an old technique than this, the last movement of his last symphony.  It was, and still is, most unusual to craft a symphonic movement around the Baroque device of passacaglia (Brahms called it a chaconne).  The technique simply takes a bass line (or sequence of harmonies) and repeats it multiple times, each with a new variation crafted above, around, or under it.   Bach, Purcell and other composers of the seventeen and eighteen hundreds used the trick commonly, but certainly not the “modern” composers of the 1880s.  Here, Brahms takes an eight-measure melody—one note to a bar, slightly altered—that seems to have its origin in a Bach cantata.  It’s heard boldly pronounced right from the beginning and thereafter ensue thirty-four magical variations and a coda that have no real parallel in symphonic music.   Using the same musical imagination so thoroughly put to work earlier in his Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Brahms crafts every kind of musical garb for the simple theme.  There are light moments, dark ones; dancing rhythms and solemn chorales; and colorful orchestration of almost every type that highlights every instrument in the orchestra.  It’s a virtuoso demonstration of why Brahms stands in the highest ranks of composers—beauty, profundity, and technique wedded together seamlessly.

Today, it is astounding to reflect that many of Brahms’ contemporaries—respected men, all—roundly condemned him for a lack of imagination, and just about any other virtue of great musical composition.  Today, we understand him, and revere his music as having no superiors in those qualities.  The world is a better place for his efforts; his critics were wrong.   His Viennese public knew better—in one of his very last public appearances before his death, the audience gave him a roaring ovation after every movement of his last symphony.

–Wm. E. Runyan

© 2015 William E. Runyan

The Ashland Symphony Orchestra thanks

Our ushers and volunteers

Philip McNaull, Technical Director
Aidan Campbell, Assistant Technical Director
Seth Morrison, Stage Manager
Bryce Bishop, Assistant Stage Manager
Jen Burford, House Manager

Ashland City Schools for its continued support of the arts

Roger Price, Professional Voice Actor & Announcer, www.RogerzVoice.com

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Thank you for your cooperation.

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

Julia A. Wright Fund for the benefit of the ASO Fund est. 2024