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.
Meet our soloist, Steven Banks, at Musical Insights. He and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the concert program in depth.
Friday, May 31 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.
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra played a wonderful free concert on May 19 with a finale that included 120 D65 middle school students. Generous donations at the concert and support from local businesses raised nearly $4,500 which will be used by D65 orchestra teachers for instrument rentals and repairs in the coming year.
Aram Khachaturian is an Armenian national treasure. He was born to an Armenian family in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1903 and is considered a leading composer of the Soviet Union. According to music historian Harlow Robinson, "his proletariat origins, non-Russian ethnic origins, and Soviet training [made him] a powerful symbol within the Soviet musical establishment.”
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), the Russian composer known for his many symphonies, chamber works, and concerti studied piano and composition at a young age. He achieved more success as a composer, and therefore his public piano performances were often of his own pieces.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer of the mid-romantic era. He was born in Hamburg but spent much of his life in Vienna. At a young age, he learned to play the violin and the basics of the cello. At age 7, he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel said Brahms “could be such a good player, but he will not stop his never-ending composing.” Brahms did in fact become a virtuoso pianist, but his compositions are what people know him best for today.
Symphony No. 41 in C Major was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756-1791) longest symphony and the last one he composed. It made a powerful and lasting impression and was tellingly nicknamed “Jupiter"—it conveys an allure, exuberance, and grand scale reminiscent of the most powerful Roman deity, Jupiter.
