by Jarrett Hoffman
“At a time in our country when we could use something that’s truly uplifting — that celebrates an enormous triumph of the human spirit — this concert is just such an experience,” Youngstown Symphony music director Randall Craig Fleischer said during a recent phone call.
On Saturday, March 7 at 8:00 pm in Edward W. Powers Auditorium, Fleischer and the YSO will be joined for the first time by tenor Lawrence Brownlee in “Spiritual Journey: The Road to Peace and Freedom.” The program includes arias, spirituals, and songbook standards, as well as a piece by Fleischer and his wife, comedian Heidi Joyce.
That work, Spiritual Journey, explores the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The orchestra will play arrangements of spirituals, ending with Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Brownlee will read excerpts from the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Randall Craig Fleischer, helped celebrate the centennial of the Butler Institute of American Art with a fittingly exciting and American program in Bacon Great Hall of the North Education Building on Saturday, July 27. The audience filled the converted church space, whose live acoustic was perfect for rousing works by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, as well as TV and film composer Gregory Prechel’s 
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Last Saturday, April 14, the Youngstown Symphony presented “Side by Side,” the fourth and last Classics Series concert under the baton of Randall Craig Fleischer. The evening’s highlight was the performance of movements from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony with teenage Youth Symphony musicians sitting in tandem with regular orchestra members.
