A fundraising concert and reception featuring Music Director Lawrence Eckerling on piano, and Principal Trumpet Don Cagen on trumpet leading a quartet in a concert of jazz favorites to support ESO community outreach programs.
Enhance your concert experience with a sneak preview — Composers come alive and their passions take center stage when ESO Maestro Lawrence Eckerling takes you on an insider’s tour of the history and highlights behind the music.
Irina Muresanu and Larry Eckerling will be playing the first movement from Beethoven's Spring Sonata No. 5 at Musical Insights.
Friday, October 16 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.
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Lawrence Eckerling and Principal Trumpet Don Cagen will front a jazz quartet Friday, Oct. 23 during a fundraiser to benefit the ESO’s community outreach programs. The reception and program of jazz favorites begin at 7 p.m. at AKAR Auditorium@The Harriet Tubman Church, 1715 Hurd St, Evanston. Listen to Larry and Don discuss the music
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra, now in its 80th season is auditioning for a new timpanist to join this award-winning orchestra.
We will hold auditions this summer. Applicants must have considerable experience and submit a resume. This is a non-paid position. All regular members of the ESO play on a voluntary basis.
All musicians in the orchestra are expected to attend all rehearsals, which are regularly on Tuesdays at 7:30. We perform 6 concerts per season.
We are honored to announce that we have received the 2026 Programming of the Year Award from the Illinois Council of Orchestras. The award covers programming for the 2024–2025 season.
We have always had strong programming, selecting pieces that are interesting for our musicians, appealing to traditional audiences, and embracing and performing new music whenever possible. The programming for the 2024–2025 season was extraordinary.
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French and American citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.
Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) was a late Romantic Russian composer, conductor, and music teacher following the “Tchaikovsky era.”
Glazunov’s musical career started early – he began studying piano at age 9 and composing two years later. His earliest compositions caught the attention of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who taught Glazunov privately and later considered him a junior colleague.
Spain has long been the subject and source of artistic creativity, with many drawn to its beauty, rhythms, and heat. In this program, that spirit comes to life through two very different lenses: the outsider’s fascination with Georges Bizet and the insider’s interpretation by Manuel de Falla.
Born on August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, MA, to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant parents, Leonard Bernstein was a child prodigy who began playing the piano at age 10. Despite his father's initial opposition, he flourished in music, studying at Harvard University and the Curtis Institute of Music, and later became a protégé of conductor Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood.
