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Evanston Symphony Orchestra | Evanston Illinois’ Community Orchestra playing classical music concerts at Pick Staiger Hall

  • Our Next Concert
    Imperial London

    Sunday, March 18, 2018, 2:30 p.m.

    Haydn

    Vaughan Williams

    Grainger

    Walton

    Purcell

    Britten

    with Henry Fogel, narrator

    Henry Fogel

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  • ESO is named
    2017 Community Orchestra of the Year

    Illinois Council of Orchestras award announced!

    A panel of judges selected the ESO as best in Illinois

  • 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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2025-2026 SERIES: The POWER of Music

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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 Crystal Ballroom at
529 Davis St, Evanston.
FREE and open to the public.
Please RSVP to 847-570-7815.

The Merion
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.

Whimsical Woodwind

√While little is known about Antonio Vivaldi’s inspiration or his method of composition for the Piccolo Concerto, it is clear that the popular Italian composer was incredibly prolific; he penned upwards of 500 concertos, and more than two-thirds of them were written for solo instruments. Originally intended for the “flautino,” a high-pitched baroque recorder equivalent to today’s piccolo, the piece exhibits several characteristics of the baroque concerto that Vivaldi made standard during the era.

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Not a Traditional Folk Melody

Jean Sibelius composed Finlandia for orchestra in 1899, and it became an overnight sensation. The piece was a political protest supporting the freedom of the Finnish press which was increasingly being controlled by the Russian Empire. Finlandia is a tone poem, an orchestral composition inspired by what the title of the piece refers to. (In Finlandia’s case, nationalism.) The piece premiered in the composer’s native Finland and was performed under various names to avoid this censorship.

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A Centennial Celebration

Candide is based on the 1758 novella by Voltaire, which satirized the fashionable philosophies of the day, particularly the tortures inflicted by the Catholic Church on supposed heretics during the Inquisition. Noting parallels to the controversial activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which sought to root out Communism in the United States, playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Bernstein in 1953 that they adapt the novella for the musical theater.

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Celebrating the Bernstein Centennial with Chichester Psalms

Although Bernstein is probably best known for West Side Story, the composer, conductor, and pianist composed many pieces of music throughout his life including Chichester Psalms, an orchestral work with choir and boy treble. The ESO will be joined by the North Shore Choral Society and William Lewis, boy solo, to perform this Bernstein masterpiece.

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