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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
  • 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.

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.

Spanish Seduction

It’s easy to draw parallels between Emmanuel Chabrier’s Espana and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, pieces that the Evanston Symphony Orchestra will perform on February 4 at 2:30 p.m. Both were written about the same time in the 1880s and draw on the music and culture of Spain. But there is another similarity: Neither composer was actually Spanish.

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Shall We Dance?

Huapango remains the most famous work of José Pablo Moncayo, the Guadalajara native and a pupil of Aaron Copland. While visiting Alvarado in Veracruz, Moncayo was inspired by the folk music he heard. The melodies and rhythms proved difficult for him to capture, as the musicians never performed the folk dance the same way twice. He still managed to complete the composition, which was met with great acclaim; it served as the foundation of a new movement of Mexican nationalism in music, and is considered by some as the unofficial second national anthem of Mexico.

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Royal Inspiration

Joaquin Rodrigo, blind since the age of 3 due to diphtheria, moved to Paris at 26 to study with Paul Dukas in 1927. After marrying Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi in 1933, Rodrigo returned to Paris to study at the Conservatory and the Sorbonne. He came back to Spain only after the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.

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Sing Hallelujah!

Three times is clearly a charm. The Evanston Symphony Orchestra welcomes for the third year in a row to its Holiday Concert the popular Evanston Symphony Holiday Gospel Choir led by Rev Ken Cherry. The choir will once again sing a gospel version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus at the Dec. 10 concert at 3 p.m. at Evanston Township High School. The ESO in 2015 commissioned the orchestration of this piece, with funding from the Evanston Arts Council, so this performance and piece are uniquely and specially Evanstonian!

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