2023 Holiday Concert Video
The ESO celebrated the holidays with a wonderful concert with many community partners. Please enjoy this video.
2024-2025 SERIES: Soul & Inspiration
Musical Insights
Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!
January 31st, 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, Christine Lamprea, at Musical Insights. She and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the February concert program in depth.
Friday, January 31st 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
Health & Safety
Masks, vaccinations, and testing are no longer required to attend ESO concerts. However, after discussion with our expert physician consultant and given the recent rise in COVID, flu and RSV infections in the Chicago area, the ESO encourages masking during the concert. As always, we ask that if you are sick, please stay home to prevent the spread of illness. The ESO continues to monitor COVID and will adapt this policy as needed.
The ESO Welcomes New General Manager Michelle Pranger
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra has appointed Michelle Pranger its general manager effective May 1, 2023. Pranger will oversee all operations; work with Music Director Lawrence Eckerling and the Board of Directors on concerts, community programs and outreach; manage ticket sales and subscriber relations; and help manage communications.
Tickets for our concerts that can be 'checked out' at the library
If you have never been to one of our regular concerts and are anxious about the cost, do ask at the Evanston Public Library main branch or Robert Crown branch, as well as at the Skokie Library, for tickets to our concerts that can be 'checked out' at no cost. We hope you enjoy our concerts and come back regularly after that.
Program notes for all ages
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra now offers three different program books at our subscription concerts so all can enjoy the concert to the full. We have KidNotes to help younger audience members learn about the concert and include puzzles and other 'fidget-reducing' activities. We also offer large-print programs for patrons with reduced eyesight, and then our regular program books, all of which contain so much information to help you enjoy the concert.
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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!”
Celebrating Bonds Through Music
English composer Edward Elgar (1847-1954) was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath, near Worcester, England. Elgar’s most popular orchestral compositions include Variations On An Original Theme ("Enigma Variations)," "Pomp and Circumstance," and his cello concerto.
Hollywood Film Composer
Before the Austrian composer and conductor Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) became one of Hollywood’s most influential film composers, he was a child piano prodigy. Growing up in a musical family (his father was a music critic; his brother was a musician), Korngold began composing at age 7. At age 11, he composed his ballet Der Schneemann; at age 12, he composed a piano trio; and at age 14 he wrote the Schauspiel-Ouvertüre, his first orchestral score. By his late teens, Korngold had also written operas and chamber music.
Meet Maya Anjali Buchanan, Violinist Extraordinaire
How lucky can one orchestra be?! Maya Anjali Buchanan, the soloist for our May 14, 2023, concert, was so well received by our audience that she’s coming back to open our 2024-2025 season on November 3 with the Korngold Violin Concerto. Here’s an update of our last interview: