Evanston Symphony Orchestra

It wouldn’t be the holiday season without the sound of Christmas carols in the air. This year’s program will include traditional works like Ding Dong! Merrily on High and We Three Kings, as well as new spins on old favorites, with gospel versions of the Hallelujah Chorus and Silent Night. The latter was originally made famous by The Temptations, and this version for full orchestra and gospel choir was arranged by the Evanston Symphony’s Music Director, Lawrence Eckerling.

Founded in 1997, the Evanston Dance Ensemble’s mission is to deepen the exposure to and appreciation of dance for highly talented and committed young performers and diverse audiences in the greater Chicago area. We’re excited to have them back to celebrate the holidays with us. This year, you’ll enjoy new choreography from Bea Rashid and Christine Ernst during the Scene in the Pine Forest and Waltz of the Snowflakes from The Nutcracker.

Premieres are not necessarily auspicious events. That certainly seemed to be the case for the debut of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D Minor — the composer’s only concerto.

As the son of a publisher and a well-read, studious fellow himself, the young Robert Schumann was interested in being a writer. When he realized his true passion was music, he instead became the only one of four brothers to quit the family publishing business, building a successful career as a composer, pianist, and music critic. Even so, he never forgot his literary roots, and showed a particular zeal for setting written works to music.

Like the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth are a set of “untwins,” contrasting works created basically side-by-side. Beethoven completed Seventh Symphony in 1812 and premiered it and his Wellington’s Victory, or The Battle of Vitoria, in December 1813 at a fund-raiser for soldiers wounded at the battle of Hanau. In between, the program featured marches by other composers where the orchestra was accompanied by a mechanical trumpet-playing machine, created by Johann Malzel, who also invented the metronome.