Shout for Joy!

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.

Program Notes: Exsultate jubilate, K.165

MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus (b.1756, Salzburg; d.1791, Vienna): Exsultate jubilate, K.165

1. Exsultate, jubilate
2. Recitative: Fulget amica dies

III. Tu virginum corona

1. Alleluja!

Instrumentation: 2 Oboes, 2 Horns, Organ, Strings

Duration: 17 minutes

Mozart was the master of all contemporary musical genres, but opera was his forte, and of course, none since has exceeded his remarkable achievement in the marriage of music and drama. It is easy to forget, today, that Italian opera ruled the roost in eighteenth-century European musical life, and so it was natural for young Wolfgang to begin remarkably early composing them. His father, Leopold, was a consummate stage door father and was assiduous in promoting his young son’s genius. The blandishments—and recognition–of Italian musical culture lay just over the Alps from Salzburg, and the early significant trips to Milan and Rome figured prominently in the lives of father and son. The first trip began in 1769 when Wolfgang was thirteen years of age, was an immense success, and included the première of his first opera seria. That, in turn, led to a commission for a second opera, and it was thus in Milan for that production (during the third trip there, in 1772) that the young Mozart also composed Exsultate jubilate.

The star of the 1772 opera, Lucio Silla, was the accomplished castrato, Venanzio Rauzzini, whose vocal prowess was notable, and it was for him that the showpiece, Exsultate jubilate, was written shortly after Christmas, 1772. It is a brief cantata, consisting of three sections with an intervening recitative.  Intended to be sung at High Mass on a celebratory feast day, the Latin text celebrates and comments upon the Nativity. Given this, the work has always been referred to as a motet.  It is a quintessential bravura affair, and ample evidence of the capabilities of the male sopranos, the castrati, who took the high parts in contemporary opera seria. Today, of course, female sopranos sing this repertoire, there being, understandably, no male volunteers. Notwithstanding its liturgical nature, Exsultate jubilate, like all such contemporary compositions, is in the imposing secular operatic style. It is Mozart’s first great work that still enjoys frequent performance, and a clear harbinger of the beloved operatic arias still to come in his maturity.

–Wm. E. Runyan

©2021 William E. Runyan

Program Notes: Symphony No.41, K.551, C major (Jupiter)

MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus (b.1756, Salzburg; d.1791, Vienna): Symphony No.41, K.551, C major (Jupiter)

1. Allegro vivace
2. Andante cantabile

III. Allegretto

1. Molto allegro

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

Duration: 31 minutes

Mozart’s symphonies are generally conceded to surrender pride of place to his incomparable operas and piano concertos. Nevertheless, they still constitute one of the treasures of symphonic music. Admittedly, he began composition of symphonies when both he and the genre were practically in their respective infancies. He had not yet the models of achievement of the maturity of Joseph Haydn before him, but as Haydn gradually developed the modern symphony, Mozart grew along with the older colleague. They later became close friends in Vienna, and constituted a society of mutual admiration. As with all his works, Mozart’s symphonies were generally written “upon demand,” for a specific purpose or event. But the “wunder” summer of 1788 produced a group of three symphonies that distinguish themselves from all his others. Mozart was in the full bloom of his late genius–he had only three more years left. He was writing the masterpieces that best represent his unique talent. Don Giovanni, after a triumphal première in Prague the previous fall had opened in Vienna in May. On the other hand, his financial position was obviously deteriorating. That summer he moved to a more distant suburb of Vienna where rents were cheaper, and the embarrassing letters to his friends asking for support began. Yet, for unknown reasons he took the time out to write symphonies 39, 40 and 41. A group of symphonic works without equal, and that seemed to be motivated only by interior and personal reasons. They were written in the short space of about two months, amazingly at the same time of the composition of seven other significant works of his maturity.

No.41 in C major, called the “Jupiter,” is the culmination of Mozart’s symphonic composition. The great commentator, Tovey, called the nickname one of the silliest injuries ever inflicted on great works of art, but it serves its purpose, for it alludes to an Oympian mastery of technique that characterizes Mozart’s late works. However, unlike many of those very late works, it bears no darkness, or presentiments of life’s precariousness. Rather, in the context of a sunny, but clearly detached mood–hence the title–Mozart reaches the summit of his symphonic works. It is cast in the usual four movements of the classical period: four movements, with the interior two consisting of a slow movement and a dance-like movement.

While the music of Mozart is famously infused with some of the world’s memorable melodies, what is of great interest in this last, great symphony is the degree to which the composer chooses concise, indeed, incisive motives with which to generate the composition. One might usefully think of the first movement of Beethoven’s famous fifth in this context. And it is just that aspect of Mozart’s melodic style, here, that is the locus of the most well-known and revered movements of this symphony. The last movement is literally a tour de force of that most “austere” of musical textures: counterpoint. The careful listener will discern not just one or two important melodies in the finale, but five! One by one they appear, short and easily identifiable–and then in a most unassuming and musical way Mozart combines them all simultaneously. Theorists call this amazing feat “quintuple invertible counterpoint.” It usually takes a J.S. Bach to pull this off, and then in an earlier and more severe style, Mozart almost throws it off casually–and like all works of great genius, you don’t even have to realize it’s there to enjoy the whole show immensely. It is a Jovian farewell from this most musical of human beings.

–Wm. E. Runyan

© 2015 William E. Runyan

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