Our Directors

The Ariel-Ann Carson Dater Performing Arts Centre and The Ohio Valley Symphony

Lora Snow
Executive Director
and Founder

Lora Lynn Snow.  In February 1987, Lora Lynn Snow conceived of forming a professional orchestra in Gallia County, Ohio, and basing its performances in the Ariel Theatre. She spearheaded the restoration of the historic opera house, which had been abandoned, and was the moving force behind the creation of The Ohio Valley Symphony. She later expanded her efforts to helping establish the After School String Project, a string instruction program, the Ohio Valley Youth Orchestra, the Ariel Dancers, and the Ariel Players, a community theatre troupe—all of whom called the historic Morris & Dorothy Haskins Ariel Theatre in the Ariel-Ann Carson Dater Performing Arts Centre, home. Lora is principal oboist for The Ohio Valley Symphony, a post she also holds with the Huntington (W.Va.) Symphony. She is also a member of The Ohio Valley Symphony Woodwind Quintet and the West Virginia Symphony in Charleston and she performs with the Kingsbury Woodwind Quintet at Marshall University. Lora earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Ohio State University.

Before moving to Gallia County in 1980, she taught woodwinds and was Assistant Director of the Concert Band at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, and she performed with the Arkansas Symphony and at several Little Rock recording studios. She was a founding member of the Little Rock Chamber Orchestra. In Gallia County, she taught music in the Gallia County Local Schools and at the University of Rio Grande. She is an active recitalist, clinician and consultant. She has been published in this country and abroad. In 2005, Snow was awarded the “Arts and Outstanding Leadership Heritage Award” from the Ohio’s Hill Country Heritage Area Association for her twenty years of volunteer work for the Ariel Theatre. In 2021 she was awarded the Ohio Arts Council Governor’s Award for Arts Administration.

Maestro Ray Fowler

Music Director Emeritus Ray Fowler led the orchestra for 28 years before retiring at the close of the 2017-18 season on April 27, 2018.  His expertise and energy, so visible during performances, had helped establish and perpetuate the OVS in the tri-county region. Fowler graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City. While there, he conducted the Oratorio Singers and Orchestra, established the Opera Theatre Middlesex County New Jersey productions. In addition to his position at Ohio University, he has been on the conducting staffs of Peabody Conservatory, Shenandoah Conservatory and Columbia University. In 1984-85, he was assistant conductor of the Akron Symphony. In 1987 Maestro Fowler conducted the North American premiere of Entgegen by Anders Nordentoft, aired on Danish television in Copenhagen.

In 1989 he was resident conductor at the Sewanee Summer Music Center in Tennessee and he served five seasons as Artistic Director of the Bay View Music Festival in Michigan. As an opera conductor, Fowler toured with Eastern Opera Theatre and conducted performances of La Boheme and Don Pasquale with the Erie Philharmonic. He also conducted the New York City Premiere of Ned Rorem’s Three Sisters. In 1983 he served as guest conductor for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and Knoxville Opera Company’s production of Hansel and Gretel.