Josh Zona was born and raised in a town not far from Pittsburgh, so it may be no surprise that he is a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Pirates and Penguins. In a year when he celebrated his 9th birthday, 1979, the Steelers and Pirates won the Super Bowl and World Series, and the Penguins made it to the second round of the National Hockey League playoffs. The Penguins have won five NHL titles since 1991.
Yet, he never really aspired to be a professional football, baseball or hockey player. Instead, he got the itch at an early age to think about a musical career. That’s because his late father enjoyed a much-traveled career as a professional jazz drummer, and Josh used to attend some of his father’s performances with such big names as Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway.
“I remember listening to him playing jazz, and dad was on a stage, and people were enjoying it,” he said. “That was a cool thing.”
Now 53, Josh started playing the piano at age 6, being mentored by Marcia Mott for more than 10 years, “but I wasn’t a good piano student,” he confessed, “because I didn’t practice like I should’ve.”
He switched to the French horn when his high school band needed a horn player, and after finishing college at Ohio State University, he studied horn performance in graduate school at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Yet, as he acquired a keen taste for classical music, he began to see his future in orchestra music — as a conductor.
“I took a conducting class (at Ball State), and I talked to one of the graduates in conducting, and she wrote me a letter of recommendation,” he said. That landed him his first gig as an assistant conductor of the Muncie (Indiana) Symphony Orchestra, and he was as at home waving a baton as one of his childhood heroes, Terry Bradshaw, was throwing a football.
Each conductor has his own way of directing an orchestra, and different ones can elicit a unique sound from the same orchestra for the same music.
“There are so many intangibles in what happens between an orchestra and the people who lead it,” he said. “Same music, different energy.”
Fast forward to this week, and Zona, the music director and conductor of the Rapides Symphony Orchestra since 2004, will be waving the baton Saturday night for the program “Hope for Eternity” when the Red River Chorale joins the RSO to perform Mozart’s “Requiem” at the Coughlin Saunders Performing Arts Center (7:30 p.m.)
“This performance was supposed to have happened in March of 2020, but the federal government shut everything down for Covid just before the event,” said Zona, “so we’re finally able to bring it to fruition.”
Dave Scott, a trumpet player for the RSO and a member of the selection committee that recommended Zona be hired in 2004, says the orchestra “was ready with open arms to welcome Josh coming in.” Under Zona’s leadership, Scott said, “we’ve played great concerts around town – in parking lots, by the river, the zoo. It’s been great, and he’s brought in world class artists with a real connection to the community. That, to me, is the pathway for success.”
A father of two college-aged sons, Zona doubles as the music director at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. He has served as a part-time faculty member and artist in residence at LSU-Alexandria, and he has worked with orchestras in Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Mexico.
With his vast experience as a conductor across the globe, it carries some weight when Zona says the Rapides Symphony Orchestra “top to bottom, ranks 1 or 2” among the seven orchestras in Louisiana. Too, as a way of “paying back” his Pennsylvania hometown of New Castle, he founded and has led the Renova Music Festival for several summers in that rural area for college-aged musicians from across America.
Zona says he doesn’t consider his job “work” because he enjoys it so much, and his love for music is contagious.
“Music connects people, especially live performances,” he said. “You don’t clap when you’re listening to music on the radio, but you do if you appreciate a live performance. There’s a transfer of energy between the audience and the performers.”
(Tickets to Mozart’s “Requiem” are available online at rapidessymphony.org and at redriverchorale.com. Tickets will also be sold at the door at the RSO ticket booth: $15 for adults, $5 for students.)