New Management Structure and Music Director for Youngstown Symphony
Ohio’s Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Erik Ochsner. Photo courtesy of Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.
In Wednesday’s (10/1) Vindicator (Warren, Ohio), Andy Gray writes, “After five years of uncertainty, the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra can plot its future. The Henry H. Stambaugh Auditorium Association is taking over ownership of the orchestra, whose roots in the Mahoning Valley extend back nearly 100 years, from the Youngstown Symphony Society. The society is changing its name to the DeYor Performing Arts Center Board and will focus on capital improvements for DeYor, which includes [several venues]. Matt Pagac, chief executive and operating officer of Stambaugh, also announced the hiring of Erik Ochsner as the orchestra’s new conductor and music director, and an extension of the collective bargaining agreement with the orchestra’s musicians…. Ochsner has been a guest conductor of the orchestra nine times since the death of former conductor / music director Randall Craig Fleischer in 2020, and he was a finalist to replace Fleischer … Ochsner said he was impressed by the orchestra’s musicians from the very first time he worked with them in 2022 … Ochsner … is a graduate of Dartmouth College and attended The Pierre Monteux School in Maine. He has conducted orchestras around the world and is founder and music director of SONOS Chamber Orchestra.”