June 2025 concert videos
Please enjoy these wonderful videos from our June concert.
Ko-Eun Yi playing Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major.
William Grant Still: Mother and Child.
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2025-2026 SERIES: The POWER of Music
Musical Insights
Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!
October 17, Friday, at 1:30 pm
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.
Meet our soloist, Stephen Williamson, clarinet, at Musical Insights. He and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the October concert program in depth.
Friday, October 17 at 1:30 pm,
Merion's Emerald Lounge 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
Treat a friend or relative to the ESO
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.
Latest news
Meet Ko-Eun Yi!
Ko-Eun Yi was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. While no one in her family is a musician — her father is a consultant for start-up businesses and her mother spends significant time as a volunteer — her parents love music and there was always a lot of it in their home. When Ko-Eun’s brother, who is four years older, began piano lessons, three-year-old Ko-Eun was drawn to the piano, very curious about the “sound box” and amazed by the magic coming out of it. She said that even at that young age she could feel how the sound transformed the atmosphere of the room.
Les Jacobson writes in Evanston Roundtable: "On playing the Shostakovich 5th Symphony"
I’ve written about the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony before. It’s one of the masterworks of the classical repertoire, alongside the great symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Mahler. But it’s also a great deal more. A man’s life depended on this symphony. That man was the composer himself.
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Finding Inspiration In Other Works
American composer William Grant Still (1895-1978) is known as the “Dean of African-American Classical Composers,” having written nearly 200 works including symphonies, ballets, operas, and more. In 1931, his first major orchestral composition, Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American,” was performed by the Rochester Philharmonic conducted by Howard Hanson. Not only was it the first time a complete score by an African American composer was performed by a major orchestra, but it also was one of the most popular symphonies by an American composer at the time.
Mutual Admiration Society
At first glance, George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel might seem to occupy two very different musical worlds, yet they both shared a passion for jazz.
A Trip to the Old West
Aaron Copland, born in Brooklyn on Nov. 14, 1900, was destined to become one of America's most renowned composers. He first learned to play the piano from his older sister; at 16, he studied under the tutelage of Rubin Goldmark in Manhattan, which also allowed his interest in classical music to flourish, attending concerts by the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Jonathan Bailey Holland, Dean and Composer
Jonathan Bailey Holland, current Dean and Professor of Music at Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, was raised in Flint, Michigan, by music-loving parents who worked for the Flint schools. Music was always playing in their home, either on the radio or from his father’s extensive record collection of everything from jazz to classical. Jonathan says that all styles excited him from an early age and he responded to “any kind of music that made you move!”