Make sure your holiday season starts with the best holiday event in Evanston!
Special rates for a family package of 2 adult tickets and 3 children’s tickets.
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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.
Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the concert program in depth.
Friday, 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 played a wonderful free concert on May 19 with a finale that included 120 D65 middle school students. Generous donations at the concert and support from local businesses raised nearly $4,500 which will be used by D65 orchestra teachers for instrument rentals and repairs in the coming year.
Retired ESO cellist Ed Bennett died this past March. Ed was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, and began cello there, playing in the school orchestra until his father, an electrical engineer for U.S. Steel, was transferred to Gary, Indiana, when Ed was 15. Ed enrolled in Horace Mann High School in Gary, where he continued playing cello in the high school orchestra and also played with the Gary Symphony. His most memorable concert with the latter was on December 7, 1941; only after the conclusion of the concert were they told about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Vince Flood Receives llinois Council of Orchestras Award
Evanston Symphony Orchestra is proud to announce that Vince Flood won the award for Board President of the Year 2018 from the Illinois Council of Orchestras. Vince has been a strong and effective leader, who has taken this vibrant community orchestra to new heights of performance, while also pioneering initiatives to make it a more inclusive organization that truly serves the whole of its community.
For immediate release March 15, 2017
Community Orchestra of the Year
Evanston Symphony Orchestra
Lawrence Eckerling, Music Director
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was a French composer of the romantic era best known for his piece Symphonie Fantastique. In 1843, Berlioz wrote Roman Carnival Overture, reworked from his 1838 opera Benvenuto Cellini. While the opera was decidedly unpopular, his overture was an immense success and became an independent concert piece. Berlioz said of his compositions “the prevailing characteristics of my music are passionate expression, rhythmic animation, and unexpected turns.”
The Russian Romantic composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), wrote his Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor over a span of four months between 1874 and 1875. He wanted his colleague Nikolai Rubinstein to play the piece for its premiere; however, Rubinstein did not like the piece and refused to play it unless it was heavily edited. Tchaikovsky did not want to make any significant changes to his work, so he reached out to Hans von Bülow instead. The German pianist not only liked the composer’s music, but Tchaikovsky enjoyed von Bülow’s concert performances in Moscow.
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.
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.
