Love Notes

Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 7 pm

Arbogast Performing Arts Center – 500 S. Dorset Rd, Troy OH, 45373

Reserved Seating – Accessible seating available

Follow the link below to purchase tickets online.

APAC Box Office: 937-418-8392
Box Office Hours: Tues-Fri 12pm-4pm
60 Minutes Before Performance

Conductor Awadagin Pratt and the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra present “Love Notes” at the Arbogast Performing Arts Center. This musical journey captures the theme of love in its many forms, through the eyes of Tchaikovsky, among the pages of the Great American songbook, across time to the era of Gershwin, over to Opera's most well-known romantic arias, and straight into the power love ballads from Broadway and Cinema. Tommy Gearhart and Victoria Okafor capture the essence of love with their unique vocal styles. Read their biographies below.

Featured on the first half of the program are Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture,” “Our Love is Here to Stay,” “It Had to Be You,” “My Funny Valentine,” and Tony Bennett’s signature love letter, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” along with other hits. The evening continues with the saucy “Habanera” from Bizet’s iconic opera Carmen, “Quando m'en vo” from Puccini’s beloved La Bohème, and the well-known and well-loved "O mio babbino caro," another one of Puccini’s beautiful treasures. Ronnie and Cindy Mullins will dazzle with an intoxicating tango, set to John Williams passionate score, and pianist David Wion will enchant with the haunting variation from Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” featured in the classic movie Somewhere in Time. The night concludes with a visit to the stage and screen, with love songs from West Side Story and Les Misérables, and the timeless ballad “My Heart Will Go On” from the cinematic blockbuster Titanic. A final nod back to Tony Bennet and his personal favorite, “Fly Me to the Moon,” plus the epic hit “Never Enough” rounds out this memorable Love Note from us to you.

Tommy Gearhart

Tommy Gearhart is a powerhouse jazz vocalist whose deep, soulful voice effortlessly blends sensitivity and strength. With an uncanny ability to bring new life to the Great American Songbook and timeless jazz standards, Tommy has cultivated a sound that is both uniquely his own and deeply rooted in family legacy. “The music is in my blood,” he says, and it’s clear in every note he sings. His grandmother and her sisters graced the airwaves as the Thomas Sisters, while his grandfather was a celebrated crooner, performing with legendary big bands in the Midwest and playing ragtime piano. Music wasn’t just a passion for Tommy—it was his inheritance.

With a baritone voice as rich as velvet, Tommy’s sound is steeped in the tradition of jazz’s greatest voices—Frank Sinatra’s swing, Tony Bennett’s emotional depth, and the sheer artistry of Jon Hendricks and Mark Murphy. Hendricks, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and a Toledo native, became Tommy’s mentor, shaping his vocal technique and pushing him to embrace his true potential as a jazz balladeer. Tommy’s style draws on the artistry of instrumentalists he admires, blending musicality and storytelling with ease.

Joining Tommy is his drummer, Chase Ellison, a force to be reckoned with in the world of jazz, a masterful drummer, visionary music director, and revered educator. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Chase’s journey into the heart of jazz took him to the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts with an emphasis on performance and literature in Jazz Studies & Contemporary Media. Before Eastman, he laid the foundation of his musical expertise at the University of New Mexico, earning his Bachelor’s in Music Education. But it was in the jazz capital of Detroit where Chase truly began to carve out his own voice, absorbing the city’s rich musical legacy and immersing himself in its storied tradition of world-class jazz.

Victoria Okafor

Praised for her silvery-voiced soprano… (Seen and Heard International), Victoria Okafor is steadily making a name for herself in the world of classical music. She has sung with companies such as Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Birmingham and Opera Columbus. Ms. Okafor has appeared with Cincinnati Opera as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro followed by the role of Alesha in the new opera Blind Injustice. The role of Alesha was created by Ms. Okafor during the opera’s original workshop at Cincinnati Opera. She has also originated the roles of Wilhelmina in Gregory Spears’s Castor and Patience, Nyomi in William Menefield’s Fierce, and Laura in Kevin Puts’s The Hours which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera.

Ms. Okafor also appeared in the concert version of The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of world renown conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The premier of Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s new opera Castor and Patience, with Ms. Okafor in the role of Wilhelmina, received rave reviews and media coverage from the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Washington Post. A native to the DC/Maryland area, Ms. Okafor holds degrees from Shenandoah Conservatory and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with a BM in voice performance, an MM in voice performance and an AD in opera performance.