Meet our soloist, Jeffrey Biegel, piano, at Musical Insights. He and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the April concert program in depth.
Friday, April 17
at 1:00 pm
Merion’s Crystal Ballroom at
529 Davis St, Evanston.
FREE and open to the public.
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, Jeffrey Biegel, piano, at Musical Insights. He and our Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the April concert program in depth.
Friday, April 17 at 1:00 pm (Note different time!),
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.
We are honored to announce that we have received the 2026 Programming of the Year Award from the Illinois Council of Orchestras. The award covers programming for the 2024–2025 season.
We have always had strong programming, selecting pieces that are interesting for our musicians, appealing to traditional audiences, and embracing and performing new music whenever possible. The programming for the 2024–2025 season was extraordinary.
Jennifer and Peter Schmeiser moved to Evanston from Florida in 2017 for better jobs, better weather, and, as it turns out, a better orchestra! Pete joined the ESO in early 2018 because, as he says, “if you play bassoon (which nobody else does), the best thing to do when you move to a new town is to join a community orchestra or band. Then you have about 80 people you have a good chance to make friends with!” (Pete says he hasn’t made an enemy yet…) Jen came on board during the pandemic when she was recruited to be Assistant Principal Trombone and is currently in her third season as
Dec. 14 performance will welcome those who vocalize, move and have different ways of experiencing music
Born on August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, MA, to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant parents, Leonard Bernstein was a child prodigy who began playing the piano at age 10. Despite his father's initial opposition, he flourished in music, studying at Harvard University and the Curtis Institute of Music, and later became a protégé of conductor Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood.
Most children begin to say simple words at one, simple sentences at two, and are veritable chatterboxes at three. Not so Jeffrey Biegel, who, by age three, had not spoken a single word. Obviously concerned, his parents took him to a doctor, who tried communicating with him, but to no avail. Finally, the doctor said his name very loudly several times. No reaction. The doctor then turned to his parents and said, “Your son is deaf.”
Our April 19th concert host, LaRob K. Rafael, is a prominent national voice for the advancement of classical music by minority composers and for minority audiences.
LaRob grew up in Temple Hills, MD, a small town about 15 miles south of Washington, DC. When asked if his family was musical, he laughed and said, “Everybody in my family could sing and if we had a dog, the dog could sing too!”
Paul Whiteman—a bandleader, composer, orchestral director, and violinist—wanted a piece that combined jazz and classical music for “An Experiment in Modern Music” concert to be premiered on February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Concert Hall in New York City. He commissioned George Gershwin (1898-1937) to compose the piece.
