YOUNGSTOWN — After five years of uncertainty, the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra can plot its future.

The Henry H. Stambaugh Auditorium Association is taking over ownership of the orchestra, whose roots in the Mahoning Valley extend back nearly 100 years, from the Youngstown Symphony Society. The society is changing its name to the DeYor Performing Arts Center Board and will focus on capital improvements for DeYor, which includes Edward W. Powers Auditorium, Ford Family Recital Hall and Eleanor Beech Flad Pavilion.

Matt Pagac, chief executive and operating officer of Stambaugh, also announced the hiring of Erik Ochsner as the orchestra’s new conductor and music director, and an extension of the collective bargaining agreement with the orchestra’s musicians.

The title is new for Ochsner, but he’s no stranger to orchestra audiences. He has been a guest conductor of the orchestra nine times since the death of former conductor / music director Randall Craig Fleischer in 2020, and he was a finalist to replace Fleischer before the Youngstown Symphony Society hired Sergei Bogza in 2024. Bogza resigned before conducting a YSO performance.

“Erik has literally bailed us out in a number of situations where the conductor we had was not able to make the concert, and Erik got on a plane from New York and conducted the concert for us,” Pagac said. “He has really been a great team player, and we’re really happy to welcome him to Youngstown.”

Ochsner said he was impressed by the orchestra’s musicians from the very first time he worked with them in 2022, when he conducted the live musical accompaniment for a screening of the movie “Ghostbusters.”

“I was like, ‘These people like to play,'” Ochsner said. “It was a good energy on stage. It was a collegial thing. There was no sort of head butting among the musicians.”

Ochsner, who lives in New York City, is a graduate of Dartmouth College and attended The Pierre Monteux School in Maine. He has conducted orchestras around the world and is founder and music director of SONOS Chamber Orchestra.

Over the summer, anonymous posts on social media criticized the Stambaugh Association and the Youngstown Symphony Society for its failure to negotiate with the orchestra’s musicians before their contract expired.

Pagac said those negotiations could not go forward until the transfer of the orchestra from the symphony society to Stambaugh was completed and a new conductor had been hired.

“We’ve agreed to extend the CBA that expired on Aug. 30 by two years,” Pagac said. “There was a pay raise that we negotiated as part of that extension, but other than that, we’re sticking with the contract that we had.”

Those negotiations and the hiring of Ochsner also delayed a 2025-26 season announcement. The orchestra will play four concerts for its 2025-26 season, all at Stambaugh, but it will resume using both Stambaugh and Powers with the 2026-27 season. The first one will be a holiday-themed performance on Dec. 22. Pagac said they are working with Ochsner to program the other three concerts, and the full season should be announced soon.

“We’ve got another big one that we’re planning, that we can’t mention,” Pagac said. “We’re bringing in an outside artist that has performed at the Cleveland Orchestra, so we’re really excited about that concert.”

As conductor and music director, Ochsner has many responsibilities, but one is most important to the long-term future of the orchestra.

“We need butts in seats,” Ochsner said. “We have to have tickets sold.”

Ochsner said he believes the way to do that is both to program music that audiences already know and love and build up their trust to take a chance on music that might not be as familiar. He wants to research past programs to see how long it’s been since Youngstown audiences had a chance to hear iconic works like Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but he also wants to program modern classical works that will challenge the musicians.

“I’m talking about the musical health of the orchestra and the musical health of the audience,” he said. “That’s one of my jobs and responsibilities.”