• Announcing Our 2023–2024 Season

    Feel The Passion

    Subscribe Today*

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    and get the best seats

    *mail or phone orders only; online sales start 9/1.

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    Download Brochure

    Subscribe at Early Bird prices through June 20.

  • LAKESIDE POPS CONCERT

    Free Admission

    Thursday, August 17, 2023
    6:30–7:30 PM
    Wallace Bowl, Gillson Park
    Wilmette

    Sponsored by Optima Verdana

    FREE!

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  • ESO’s
    Share The Stage

    Share the Stage lets you sponsor a chair in the Orchestra. It’s our way of recognizing that the ESO Community is made up of Orchestra Members and Supporters.

     

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2023–2024 SERIES: Feel The Passion

 

 

Download the 2022–2023 Season Brochure!

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Musical Insights

Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!

May 30, 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 take you on an insider’s tour of the history and highlights behind the music.

Meet our soloist, Steven Banks, at Musical Insights. He and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the concert program in depth.

The Merion
Friday, May 30 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

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

Celebrating Wilmette’s 150th birthday with a free outdoor concert

Summer 2021 ESO Pops Concert, Wilmette

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.

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Christopher Duquet donates 75th anniversary baton to Maestro Eckerling

batonCook County ResolutionEvanston Proclamation

To open its 75th season, the Evanston Symphony Orchestra welcomed Mayor Biss and Christopher Duquet, Evanston fine jeweler, and Maestro Eckerling to the stage. Christopher Duquet gave the ESO an exquisite jeweled baton, and Mayor Biss gave a proclamation declaring November 7th , 2021, Evanston Symphony Orchestra day. Cook County Commissioner, Larry Suffredin, also gave a beautifully framed proclamation. The music engraved in the baton is the opening measures of Wagner's Die Meistersinger with which we opened our 75th anniversary concert on November 7th, 2021.

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Evanston Symphony Orchestra Schedules Pops Concert At Wilmette’s Gillson Park At 6 P.M. Sunday, Aug. 29

Evanston, IL — The Evanston Symphony Orchestra will resume live performance with a special Pops Concert at Gillson Park’s Wallace Bowl in Wilmette, Ill., Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021. The event will begin promptly at 6 p.m. and run for an hour. (Rain date for the event is Aug. 30, beginning at 6:30 p.m.). The program is free to the general public. It is sponsored by Byline Bank. This project is partially supported by a grant from the Evanston Arts Council, a city agency supported by the City of Evanston, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

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A Choral Work as Symphony

Felix Mendelssohn was a musical prodigy from a very young age. Mendelssohn’s family helped cultivate his talents beyond music, including lessons in literature and painting. He studied piano, which included some travel to Paris with his sister where he took piano lessons. During his boyhood, he composed 5 operas, 11 symphonies for string orchestra, concerti, and sonatas. 

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17th-Century Events, 20th-Century Music

Linda Robbins Coleman is a native of Des Moines, Iowa. A Drake University graduate, Coleman was Composer-in-Residence for Drake Theatre, scoring 35 plays ranging from the ancient Greeks to the moderns from 1977-1997. An accomplished pianist, Coleman has been performing since the age of 6 and worked professionally as a jazz and classical soloist and collaborative pianist. Coleman is a published poet and writer, and for four decades she served as collaborator, research associate, and editor with Professor William S. E. Coleman.

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Mahler's Monumental First Symphony

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) wrote his ambitious first symphony while he was a conductor of the Leipzig Opera in Germany in 1888. On the piece’s first page, Mahler wrote wie ein naturlaut, which loosely translates to “as if spoken by nature.”

Right from the start, Mahler’s first symphony is new and spellbinding. The opening multi-octave A played by the strings creates an otherworldly feel. If you listen closely, you may recognize some of the first notes played by the winds, which are similar to the introduction music to the famous Gene Rodenberry series Star Trek.

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Traveling Composer

Considered to be one of the major composers of the 20th century, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was also an accomplished pianist and conductor. His musical education began at an early age when his mother­–who was a talented pianist herself–taught him piano and took him to opera performances in Moscow. He continued his music education at the St. Petersburg Conservatory completing composition study in 1909, graduating with performance degrees in piano and conducting in 1914. 

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