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2016-17 Season of the Evanston Symphony Orchestra | Evanston Illinois’ Community Orchestra playing classical music concerts at Pick Staiger Hall
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.
Adrian Munive, ESO Principal Clarinet, will be featured at Musical Insights.
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
Celebration Of Life: Ed Bennett
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.
ESO’s Vince Flood named 2018 Board President of the Year
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.
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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:
Meeting Oppression With Music
Jessie Montgomery, composer, violinist, and educator, was born December 8, 1981, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to artistic parents. Her mother, award-winning playwright Robbie McCauley, wrote traditional and experimental plays addressing race throughout the 1970s and into the 2010s before her death in 2021. Her father, Edward Montgomery, ran a studio for myriad artistic styles and practiced with her every day.
Dvořák's Joyous Symphony No. 8
Czech composer Antonin Dvořák was born in 1841 in Nelahozeves (near Prague) in the Austrian Empire. The oldest of 14 children, Antonin’s upbringing in Nelahozeves nurtured his strong Bohemian heritage, which so strongly influenced his music. Dvořák took organ, piano, and violin lessons and at the young age of 14, composed the Forget-Me-Not Polka in C in 1855.