Come Play with the ESO
We are a community orchestra which performs five concerts each season. Our players volunteer their time to play with us.
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Evanston Symphony Orchestra | Evanston Illinois’ Community Orchestra playing classical music concerts at Pick Staiger Hall
2026–2027 Season: The Love of Music
Musical Insights
Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!
October 16, 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.
Friday, October 16 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
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.
Lawrence Eckerling discusses programming
Evanston Symphony Board member Robin Ashton asked ESO Maestro and Music Director Lawrence Eckerling about how he programmed this year’s subscription series line-up.
Ashton: Maestro, how do you go about programming a season. Do you start with a theme or what?
Stand Up for Haydn
John Corigliano’s Promenade Overture is a modern take on a classical masterpiece.
The composer admitted as much in his program notes from the 1981 work. He commented that Franz Joseph Haydn’s Farewell Symphony caught him “off guard.” During the final movement of this symphony, the players exit until only a pair of violins remains. Intrigued by the notion of reversing the process — orchestra members entering at the beginning of a work while playing — Corigliano wrote an overture that does just that.
Brahms: Dramatic Romantic
In 1853, at the age of 20, a young Johannes Brahms nervously presented himself to Robert and Clara Schumann. He was the leading composer of the day, and she was a prominent piano soloist and composer in her own right. This fateful meeting would lead to Brahms’ public introduction, and to a lifelong relationship, both musical and personal, with the couple. While Brahms owed the launch of his career to this great composer, he struggled under the weight of Schumann’s description of him as “a chosen one,” and in the shadow of Beethoven’s revolutionary Symphony No.