Protocols remain in effect to protect health and safety for all musicians and audience members at all concerts.
Proof of Vaccination and Booster Required • Masks Required • Distancing • Risk Assumption • Exchange Policy
• Children under 6 may attend Holiday Concert if accompanied by a vaccinated adult.
Enhance your concert experience with a sneak preview — Composers come alive and their passions take center stage when ESO Maestro Lawrence Eckerling take you on an insider’s tour of the history and highlights behind the music.
Meet our soloist, Inna Faliks, at Musical Insights. She and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the concert program in depth.
Friday, October 28 at 1:30 pm,
Merion's Crystal Ballroom at
529 Davis St, Evanston.
FREE and open to the public.
Please RSVP to 847-570-7815.
Light refreshments will be served and casual tours of apartments will be available after the program.
Give the gift of music by ordering directly from our website and purchasing a custom gift certificate in any denomination of your choice! Certificates may be redeemed for single ticket or season subscriptions for any of our concerts.
You will receive an electronic gift certificate or we can mail the certificate to you or directly to the recipient.
Are you looking to buy a gift for someone at Amazon? Need to stock up on supplies from Amazon?
Amazon has a special program called Smile, where the company donates a small amount of your purchase to your designated charity. Once you select the ESO as your Smile recipient, just point your browser to smile.amazon.com each time you want to shop at Amazon and the Evanston Symphony will benefit. It won’t cost you a thing!
Thanks, and happy shopping.
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra (ESO) has adopted protocols to protect your health and safety at performances. These policies are in effect as of October 2022 for 2022–2023 ESO subscription series concerts and will be reviewed regularly to follow the latest public health mandates and recommendations.
It is with sad and heavy hearts that we announce that David Ellis, the ESO’s General Manager, passed away on July 26, 2022, following heart complications. Our sympathy and care go out to Marcia, his wife, and their sons, Michael, Matthew, and Peter, for the depth and pain of their loss.
David was our General Manager for 18 years. He knew all of our musicians and all of our patrons, including their seat numbers! His knowledge of classical music was second to none and his love of this music was always appreciated at our Musical Insights lectures.
Seeking a Stage Equipment Mover for 10 small local moves!
WHERE?: Moves are in the Evanston/ Skokie/ Wilmette area
Wednesday, August 24th, 6:30 pm — Wallace Bowl, Gillson Park, Wilmette.
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra is teaming up with the Wilmette Sesquicentennial committee to perform another free outdoor pops concert on the lakefront. Bring your whole family for this hour-long concert featuring show tunes, movie music, a hoe-down and Sousa’s Washington Post. We even have a piece arranged by Percy Faith, once one of Wilmette’s illustrious residents. Baker Demonstration School is partnering with us to provide free children’s activities before and during the concert, including an instrument petting zoo. Come along and enjoy the music on our beautiful lakefront.
With great sadness we announce the passing of our former principal clarinetist, Ralph Wilder. Here is a wonderful recording of the first performance Ralph did with the ESO, Calandrelli's Concerto for Jazz Clarinet and Orchestra. We send our sympathies to his family.
Leonard Bernstein is America’s maestro. He is one of the most important conductors and composers of his time, and the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history." He was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Rivne, in present-day Ukraine. Unlike many famous conductors and musicians, Bernstein did not come from a musical family. He began by teaching himself piano and music theory at age 10, and the rest is history.
When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) began composing Symphony No. 4 in F Minor between 1877 and 1878, he wanted to dedicate the piece to Nadezhda von Meck, a patron of the arts who supported him financially. The two never met in person, but they would write letters to each other discussing Tchaikovsky’s music as their friendship developed over their correspondence. While Tchaikovsky was typically a harsh critic of his own works, he was very proud of Symphony No. 4, as indicated by his letters to von Meck. In fact, Tchaikovsky wrote, “dedicated to my best friend” on the piece.
The middle of the 18th century was a magical time for music in the city of Vienna. By the 1780s, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Josef Haydn, and Christof Gluck had ushered in Vienna’s first golden age of music. When Mozart wrote his 23rd piano concerto there in 1786, the city was bustling and alive with music. Beethoven and Schubert would carry this golden age into the next century.
In 1809, Ludwig van Beethoven received a commission from Joseph Hartel, manager of the Court Theaters in Vienna, to compose the overture and incidental music to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragic play, Egmont. Hartel sought to bring plays by Goethe and Schiller to the theater, and Beethoven was only too eager for the opportunity to set a work by the leading German intellectual of the time and one of the composer’s personal heroes to music.
