Press Release: 2007-08 OVS Season

OHIO VALLEY SYMPHONY

2007-08 SEASON

From Baroque to Broadway and from goblins to Christmas cheer, join the Ohio Valley Symphony for the 2007-08 subscription season. The 18th season of southeast Ohio’s only professional orchestra lights the stage of the historic Ariel-Ann Carson Dater Performing Arts Centre in downtown Gallipolis for five programs — all under the direction of music director Ray Fowler — that will stir your emotions and fire your imagination. All concerts take place on Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. in the Morris & Dorothy Haskins Theatre of the Ariel-Ann Carson Dater Performing Arts Centre at 426 Second Avenue in Gallipolis, Ohio.

You’ll hear young and exciting guest artists ranging from Broadway’s Mark McVey to award-winning Canadian-Korean ’cellist Soo Bae and pianist Lori Sims. They’ll bring to life beloved, familiar music by favorite composers from the 17th through the late 20th century.

Mark McVey joins the OVS on Oct. 6 for “Broadway and Beyond,” a season-opening tribute to America’s own music: Broadway. He and the orchestra will perform songs by some of the stage’s greatest composers in works from the Great White Way’s Golden Age and its current heyday.

From Irving Berlin to Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Leonard Bernstein to Richard Rodgers, audiences will leave the Ariel humming such classics as “All the Things You Are,” “Anything Goes,” “Music o the Night,” “One,” “Somethings Coming,” and “The Way We Were.”

Let your Halloween last — at least until Nov. 3, when the OVS offers a night of “Ghostly Hallows,” music that will send more shivers down your spine than a chilly November night. Venture onto Bald Mountain to sneak a peek at a witches’ sabbath in Modest Mussorgsky’s classic tone painting, so real that Walt Disney chose it for the original “Fantasia.” Alfred Hitchcock would smile at his TV theme song, “Funeral March of a Marionette” by Charles Gounod. The program also includes excerpts from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in their spectacular orchestrations by Maurice Ravel.

Then get an early start on happier holidays with “A Christmas Show” on Dec. 1. Brass music from the late 1600s by Giovanni Gabrieli and the “Farandole,” including the “March of the Kings,” by Georges Bizet start the program with a classic touch. Then, the OVS warms you up with a variety of favorite modern holiday carols and songs.

In Spring, it’s not just a young man’s thoughts that turn to romance. Join the OVS and pianist Lori Sims on March 29, 2008, for “The Romantics,” a program of titans of classical music. Triumph meets tragedy in two pillars of symphonic music as Sims solos in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Fowler leads the orchestra through Tchaikovsky’s final masterpiece, the Symphony No. 6, “Pathetique.”

Soo Bae helps the OVS celebrate the end of the season May 3, 2008, performing Robert Schumann’s soulful Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Fowler then brings the year to a sunny, rousing end with Johannes Brahms’ massive Symphony No. 2.

Season tickets are $100 and Senior Citizens are $90. Student tickets are $50 or the entire family can purchase a season ticket for $275. Select balcony tickets with limited leg room are available for $50. Call 740-446-ARTS (2787) for more information.