by Kevin McLaughlin
With a glint of polished silver and a showman’s flair, trumpet soloist Brian Neal highlighted the Youngstown Symphony’s Classical Exploration concert on January 29 at Stambaugh Auditorium with a stirring performance of Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat.
As the orchestra continues to search for a permanent conductor to replace the late Randall Craig Fleisher, Alberto Bade, a colleague of Neal’s at Miami Dade College, led the orchestra in a program that also included fine performances of Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Danse Nègre,” and Antonín Dvořák’s always well-received Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”
Todd Wilson returned to Stambaugh Auditorium’s Skinner organ on Sunday afternoon, October 25, to improvise a score to Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 silent film, The Gold Rush. Wilson, who is organist at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral and chair of the organ department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, played a similar role last season in providing musical accompaniment to the Harold Lloyd comedy Speedy. Though The Gold Rush is also a comedy, it focuses on Chaplin’s beloved little tramp character in an unusual context. 
The phenomenal French-Canadian organist Isabelle Demers, who currently teaches at Baylor University, crafted an imaginative program for her recital on the Stambaugh Auditorium organ series in Youngstown on Sunday afternoon, September 20, and delivered it with precision and flair. After flawless, memorized performances of music by Vierne, Prokofiev, Bridge, Reger, J.S. Bach, and Laurin, she saved her best trick for last, ending her concert with a breathtaking performance of a “look, Ma: no hands” extravaganza mostly for pedals alone. 
Once described as a “diminutive dynamo,” French-Canadian organist Isabelle Demers will bring her impressive technical skill and musicianship to bear on a wide-ranging program next Sunday afternoon, September 20 at 4:00 pm, when she performs on the beautifully-restored E.M. Skinner organ in Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown.
Eastman School of Music organ professor David Higgs inaugurated the restored 1926 E.M. Skinner organ in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium on September 18, 2011, when he appeared as soloist in the Poulenc Concerto and in the Saint-Saëns ‘Organ’ Symphony with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. This Sunday, April 12 at 4:00 pm, Higgs will return to Youngstown to play an eclectic recital on what has come to be recognized as one of the most distinguished organ restorations in the country, a project undertaken by the A. Thompson-Allen Company of New Haven, Connecticut.
Last Sunday afternoon’s screening of Harold Lloyd’s silent film comedy Speedy delighted the Stambaugh Auditorium audience in Youngstown and offered improvised organ accompaniment by Todd Wilson. This type of improvisation was common in the 1920’s and even helped the late, noted musicologist Donald Grout pay for his higher education. 
Well-known concert organist Todd Wilson will explore another side of his art this month when he improvises musical scores to two silent film classics at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown and Severance Hall in Cleveland. Speedy, Harold Lloyd’s 1928 Paramount film, which chronicles the attempts of Harold “Speedy” Swift to save the last horse-drawn streetcar in New York (with a cameo appearance by Babe Ruth) will be screened at Stambaugh on Sunday, October 19 at 4:00 pm. Then the 1925 silent version of Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney, will be shown at Severance Hall on Tuesday, October 28 at 7:30 pm. Phantom is part of this season’s Cleveland Orchestra’s Celebrity Series, but Wilson will be the only musician on stage for the occasion.