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 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.
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.
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.
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra has received a generous bequest from the estate of Anne Dow Weinberg. Ms. Weinberg regularly attended our concerts and was a good friend of Rick Greene, one of our longest serving French Horn players. Ms Weinberg is now a member of our KeyNote Society. Membership in the KeyNote Society is a reflection of the highest individual commitment to the future of the Evanston Symphony Orchestra.
American composer William Grant Still (1895-1978) is known as the “Dean of African-American Classical Composers,” having written nearly 200 works including symphonies, ballets, operas, and more. In 1931, his first major orchestral composition, Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American,” was performed by the Rochester Philharmonic conducted by Howard Hanson. Not only was it the first time a complete score by an African American composer was performed by a major orchestra, but it also was one of the most popular symphonies by an American composer at the time.
At first glance, George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel might seem to occupy two very different musical worlds, yet they both shared a passion for jazz.
Aaron Copland, born in Brooklyn on Nov. 14, 1900, was destined to become one of America's most renowned composers. He first learned to play the piano from his older sister; at 16, he studied under the tutelage of Rubin Goldmark in Manhattan, which also allowed his interest in classical music to flourish, attending concerts by the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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!”
