Year-end columns are a chance to look back fondly on the year that was.

They’re also intimidating. No matter how much I try to cram in, there’s something that gets overlooked.

Here are some of the events that stand out in local entertainment for 2025, and hopefully the first column of 2026 won’t be filled with apologies for the things I forgot.

Anniversaries, endings and beginnings

Youngstown Playhouse wrapped up its centennial celebration with a gala in June that featured both current performers and people who hadn’t been on the Playhouse stage in decades.

The W.D. Packard Concert Band celebrated its 70th anniversary in October. Warren Civic Music Association kicked off its 85th season in September.

The combined Cedars (the OG Cedars Lounge downtown and the current Cedars West End on Steel Street) marked 50 years in June. Also celebrating 50 years was Bill Scudier and his band Sideshow, although he did it without its other founding member as guitar player Robert “Rollo” Miller died in March.

Trumbull Town Hall couldn’t make it to 50 years. The lecture series that brought many luminaries to Packard Music Hall since 1978 presented its final program in April with former YSU and Ohio State football coach and current Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel.

Earlier this month, Joseph Pellegrini conducted his last show as leader of the Youngstown Area Community Concert Band, retiring after 35 years.

And the board of the Butler Institute of American Art announced just weeks ago that it will begin an international search for a successor to Executive Director Louis A. Zona, who is in his 44th year there.

Over the years, I’ve had more people than I can count tell me that I have the greatest job in the world. Getting paid to go to concerts and movies and other events is what people are thinking of when they say that, but I’ve always considered one of the greatest perks of this job is that I’ve had Zona as my own personal docent for more than 35 years. Walking with Zona through Butler exhibitions as he explained the work and the importance of the artist has increased my interest and appreciation in art immeasurably. It’s impossible to imagine that institution without him at the helm.

On the hiring front, the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra announced Erik Ochsner as its new conductor and music director, and Youngstown Playhouse made Tyler Stouffer its operations manager.

Big year for JAC

JAC Live and JAC Management Group made news all year long.

The JAC-managed Covelli Centre and Packard Music Hall had busy seasons, and Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre had its biggest crowd ever with Riley Green.

After an unplanned hiatus in 2024, YLIVE returned as a two-day event, with John Mayer on Sept. 26, followed by Tim McGraw (originally scheduled last year) the next night.

Last week JAC LIVE announced that YLIVE would continue as a two-day event, and it’s returning to where it started. Next year’s shows will be July 10 and 11 at Youngstown State University’s Stambaugh Stadium. If everything goes according to plan, the 2026 headliners will be announced in mid-January.

Right after YLIVE, JAC announced it had reached an arrangement with the Youngstown Symphony Society to take over day-to-day operations of Powers Auditorium. JAC had a hand in bringing Bob Dylan and Frankie Valli to the downtown theater this year, and the expectation is there will be more national tour attractions there in 2026.

And its efforts weren’t limited to the Mahoning Valley. JAC Live staged a YLIVE-sized concert at the University of Toledo’s football stadium over Memorial Day weekend, and JAC Management just signed a 7-year agreement to take over operations of 1st Summit Arena at the Cambria County War Memorial in Johnstown, Pa. The venue was used as the home arena of the Charlestown Chiefs in the great 1977 film “Slap Shot.”

Local theater shines

As impressive as the Playhouse’s 100th anniversary gala was, the second half of its 100th anniversary season and the start of its 101st season were positive signs for its present and future.

The set for August Wilson’s “The Gem of the Ocean” was stunning, and there may have been no better performance in 2025 than Brandy Johanntges as an addict in rehab in “People, Places & Things” in the Moyer Room. The 101st season on the mainstage got off to a splashy start — literally — with “Singin’ in the Rain.”

But quality theater could be found throughout the area. Millennial Theatre Company started 2025 with a production of “The Prom” that was far more entertaining than its film adaptation. YSU Theatre’s production of the musical “[title of show]” was a real charmer and perfectly suited for its Spotlight Theater performance space.

“In the Zone with Rod Serling” was a nostalgic treat for anyone who grew up watching “The Twilight Zone,” and Trumbull New Theatre’s “Boeing, Boeing” was an entertaining farce. And there were many shows I missed over the course of the year.

The aughts are back

Some of the biggest local music news involved names more common in 2005 than 2025.

The reunion of Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, a duo that filled local venues and toured nationally, had to be one of the biggest surprises, and it turned out to be one of the biggest successes, drawing an overflow crowd to Penguin City Brewing Company in August.

The owners of Westside Bowl and the former owner of the Nyabinghi announced they were bringing back Emissions from the Monolith next year. That music festival ran from 1999 until 2007 in its original incarnation, and many of its acts went on to greater notoriety.

Infidels got its start in the 1980s, but the Youngstown band that toured internationally released its first album since 2003 in August with “Never Forever.” It was the most played vinyl in the Gray household in 2025, and the band’s album release show with The Jellybricks was the perfect double bill.

And while MUNNYCAT couldn’t be more contemporary, the duo of Khaled Tabbara (Khaledzou) and Katianne Timko-Tabbara (K808) turned part of its album release show in October at Westside Bowl into a reunion of Tabbara’s old band The Zou. In addition to MUNNYCAT songs, the band played a set of Zou favorites and brought back a Halloween tradition with The Zou by performing selections from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Personal favorites

MUNNYCAT also led a mini trend in artists finding unique ways to get their music noticed. Its album “til death we do art” featured a 3D cover and the vinyl itself served as the 3D glasses, half translucent blue and half translucent red.

Anthony LaMarca of The War on Drugs tried something even crazier with his latest solo effort as The Building. While he’s released plenty of physical media over the last decade, his latest album “Weapon” initially was available only as a digital download by scanning a QR code found on a free newspaper he created and left at different venues in the area.

For those who never came across one of the newspapers, “Weapon” now is available for download through his Bandcamp page.

I got to see some of my all-time favorite artists this year — Elvis Costello, who was my third concert ever in 1978; Neil Young, who was every bit as good at age 79 as he was when I last saw him a dozen years ago; and Leavittsburg native Jerry Douglas, who is back on the road with Alison Krauss & Union Station and never fails to impress on the dobro.

But some of the most memorable shows were acts I was seeing for the first time, such as Father John Misty and St. Vincent, who played Stage AE in Pittsburgh about a month apart, and MJ Lenderman at Cleveland’s new Globe Iron.

The year started with the opening at Medici Museum of Art of “Sci-Fi + Hollywood: The Art of John Zabrucky.” It gave the general public the first opportunity to see some of the hundreds of props that the Warren native created for film and television and then donated to the Trumbull County Historical Society as the foundational collection for the Museum of Science Fiction and Fantasy Arts in his hometown.

That led to an event that was my idea and that I got to moderate — a conversation with Zabrucky and Devo founder Gerald V. Casale about their experiences at Kent State on the 55th anniversary of the May 4 shootings by the Ohio National Guard.

Another highlight was getting to interview Little Stevie Van Zandt of the E Street Band, the Disciples of Soul, “The Sopranos,” “Lilyhammer” and the Underground Garage. He was generous with his time for a long phone interview and just as accessible when he arrived in Youngstown, speaking at Stambaugh Auditorium in March as part of the Skeggs Lecture Series and talking earlier in the day to a group of YSU and area high school students.

One of my most enjoyable stories this year turned into one of the saddest. I spent an afternoon in May with Emily Webster Love and Herald and Nancy Fenn listening to stories about writers Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, who spent their summers in Kinsman. The Fenns took care of the property when Brackett and Hamilton were back in southern California, and Webster Love, a former Youngstown Vindicator and Tribune Chronicle reporter and editor, had lived there for the last 20 years and interviewed Brackett in the mid ’70s as a Vindicator reporter.

Brackett co-wrote the screenplay to “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (and many other films and science fiction novels), and the story coincided with the 45th anniversary of its release. Seeing firsthand how much Webster Love enjoyed living in that house and cherished its history made its destruction in a fire last month even more heartbreaking.

I hope 2026 allows the Ticket section to provide a respite from the news that often fills the rest of the newspaper.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.