The Canton Symphony, Ohio’s hidden gem, shines in Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony

United States Vaughan Williams, Boyle – ‘Voyage on the High Seas’: Dashon Burton (bass-baritone), Bonnie Frauenthal (soprano), Canton Symphony Chorus (director: Doug Beery), Mount Union Concert Choir (director; Beth Polen), Canton Symphony Orchestra / Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz (conductor). Umstattd Hall at Zimmermann Symphony Center, Canton, 26.4.2025. (MSJ)

Ina Boyle – A Sea Poem
Vaughan Williams – Symphony No.1: A Sea Symphony

In his final concert as music director of Ohio’s hidden gem, the Canton Symphony, Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz demonstrated that he has maintained the shine on the ensemble which longtime director Gerhardt Zimmermann built, and has brought a valuable encounter with key repertory long neglected by this region’s major ensembles. He did that here in a personal engagement with a work he described from the podium as his all-time favorite piece of music, and it showed.

The Canton Symphony’s more famous neighbors up the interstate in Cleveland appear to be unaware that English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, and this concert was an exciting chance to hear the first of the series. The Sea Symphony sets nautical-themed poetry from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in a spirit ranging from childlike wonder at the spectacle of sailing and steaming ships moving in and out of a seaside harbor, all the way to a cosmic extrapolation of voyaging to unknown regions in the final movement. The work is epic in scale and requires a full orchestra, large chorus and two soloists, but Jenkins Jaroszewicz had a firm grasp of it and inspired total dedication from the assembled forces.

The orchestra numbered about a hundred players and sounded in fine form. Founded in 1938 in the industrial city of Canton, the orchestra progressed slowly under a number of music directors until the arrival of Gerhardt Zimmermann in 1980. Zimmermann was an outstanding conductor who preferred to operate beneath the radar, concentrating on music instead of pursuing fame and notoriety. In a tenure of more than forty years, Zimmermann polished the Canton Symphony in a manner analogous to what Maurice Abravanel did in a similar span with the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City. While the Akron/Canton municipal region rivals Cleveland in size, it was only with Zimmermann’s work that the orchestra was able to stand in comparison to the legendary Cleveland ensemble. The Cleveland Orchestra remains one of the more interesting programmers in the classical music world, but they could still learn a trick or two from Canton.

This program was the culmination of a season of firsts, in which the orchestra featured first symphonies by numerous composers. In the case of the Vaughan Williams, it also served as the first performance of the work in Canton, and possibly northeast Ohio. The piece certainly hasn’t been featured in Cleveland since I have been attending concerts there, nor has any other Vaughan Williams symphony, making this a rare chance to hear it. Jenkins Jaroszewicz launched the work with alacrity and made a strong impact. The sound of the combined Canton Symphony Chorus and the Mount Union Concert Choir was polished and energetic, though one wished that the shape of Umstattd Hall projected their mass (one hundred thirty voices) with a little more immediacy.

The orchestra has an unusual arrangement – probably a financially helpful one – of sharing their concert hall with a large local high school. The orchestra’s administrative home, Zimmermann Symphony Center, is immediately adjacent to Canton McKinley High School, and it is set up so that doors open directly into the school for concerts. This requires audiences to walk through the singularly uninspiring school hallways to reach the Zimmermann, which is a multi-purpose venue. For music, the sound is clear and balanced, if lacking in atmospheric reverberation. For the chorus, arrayed along the rear of the stage, I suspect the shape of the ceiling’s acoustic baffles meant that only part of their sound was projected. In the Vaughan Williams, the sound was polished but less full than would have been ideal. Theaters with that sort of setup – acoustic baffles trying to block off a large fly space for curtains and backdrops – are always tough on choruses through no fault of their own. Despite that sort of acoustic, the singers did heroic work making their presence felt.

The orchestra and soloists spilled out onto a forestage covering the first few rows of seats. Dashon Burton was nothing short of commanding in the low-voice solos of the work. His rich voice was lofted with inspiration, purpose and a real sense of telling a savored story. He had no trouble sailing out over the orchestral sound. If he has not yet been featured in a recording of the piece, he needs to be engaged immediately. Soprano Bonnie Frauenthal sang with bright charm, though the projected surtitles did show she tended to substitute words in the text in the early pages of the piece. As the performance progressed, she settled in accurately.

The first movement, ‘A Song for All Seas, All Ships’, was exultant, generating a frisson of excitement in the well-filled hall, and the slow ‘On the Beach at Night Alone’ was spellbinding, The Scherzo (‘The Waves’) gave ample chances for the players to show their precision in Vaughan Williams’s stormy writing. The finale, ‘The Explorers’, broadened into probing grandeur. It is often said that symphonic organizations hesitate to program Vaughan Williams because the majority of his symphonies end softly. That, of course, is the case with A Sea Symphony, but it did nothing to preclude a standing, cheering ovation from this audience. An endless stream of Jenkins Jaroszewicz’s admirers brought so many bouquets that he couldn’t hold them all and began stacking them on the podium. In the end, the pile grew so large that even the podium couldn’t hold them. His contribution to this orchestra’s ongoing progress was clearly appreciated.

For the shortened first half, reflecting the size of the Vaughan Williams piece, Jenkins Jaroszewicz programmed an even rarer composition, A Sea Poem by Ina Boyle, the long-overlooked Irish composer. Boyle was one of Vaughan Williams’s students, but she chose to concentrate on her family rather than relentless careerism, even though she wrote music her whole life (1889-1967). This left her sidelined, with few of her pieces performed or published. The encounter with A Sea Poem tantalizingly suggests that her music would be worth further exploration. While the piece is functionally a theme and variations, it is also shaped in a way that makes it feel like a short (twenty-minute) symphony. That Boyle’s language was conservative in her own day matters little to us now in our highly eclectic era. Boyle’s grip was secure, building the piece out of a questioning phrase in the strings, answered by a woodwind gesture that might have been derived from the call of some sea bird. Ripples of both elements ran through the work, building to a climax and then ebbing in the closing pages. The piece was well worth hearing, and it made an ideal program-mate to the Vaughan Williams.

A gem like the Canton Symphony has an interesting position in the arts of northeastern Ohio. While they will always have to do a certain amount of bread-and-butter programming to serve their dedicated audience, their long history of innovative programming under Zimmerman and Jenkins Jaroszewicz gives them the opportunity to draw attention to works overlooked by other orchestras. It will be interesting to see how they sail into the unknown regions of the future as they search for a new music director. The 2025/2026 season will be announced shortly, with guest conductors, including the esteemed Joann Falletta, leading the ensemble to its next phase. May the gem continue to shine!

Mark Sebastian Jordan

Featured Image: Dashon Burton (left), Bonnie Frauenthal (seated) and Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz (right) © Kelly Klein Photography/CSO