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Evanston Symphony Orchestra

Lawrence Eckerling, Music Director

allthatjazz

Performance & Reception

Friday, October 23 at 7:00 pm

ESO & All That Jazz

Featuring Lawrence Eckerling & Don Cagen

Tickets on sale now ($50)

A fundraising concert and reception featuring Music Director Lawrence Eckerling on piano, and Principal Trumpet Don Cagen on trumpet leading a quartet in a concert of jazz favorites to support ESO community outreach programs.

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AKAR AUDITORIUM @The Church
2715 Hurd Ave. Evanston, IL
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October 18, 2026

Celebrating Beethoven’s Brilliance

February 14, 2027

Great Romantics

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April 4, 2027

Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony

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May 23, 2027

A Mass for Peace

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Musical Insights

Free Pre-Concert Preview Series!

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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. Get a chance to see and hear our guest soloist for each concert!

Merion’s Crystal Ballroom

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.

Orchestra News

June 2025 concert videos

Please enjoy these wonderful videos from our June concert. 

Ko-Eun Yi playing Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major.

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Ko-Eun Yi
Meet Ko-Eun Yi!

Ko-Eun Yi was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. While no one in her family is a musician — her father is a consultant for start-up businesses and her mother spends significant time as a ­volunteer — her parents love music and there was always a lot of it in their home.

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Les Jacobson writes in Evanston Roundtable: "On playing the Shostakovich 5th Symphony"

I’ve written about the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony before. It’s one of the masterworks of the classical repertoire, alongside the great symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Mahler. But it’s also a great deal more. A man’s life depended on this symphony. That man was the composer himself.

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Musical Notes

Dvořák's Joyous Symphony No. 8

Czech composer Antonin Dvořák was born in 1841 in Nelahozeves (near Prague) in the Austrian Empire. The oldest of 14 children, Antonin’s upbringing in Nelahozeves nurtured his strong Bohemian heritage, which so strongly influenced his music.

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Vibrant Saxophone Melodies

The first saxophone was invented around 1840 in Brussels by Adolphe Sax, whose family was a maker of woodwind instruments. The metal-bodied, single-reed instrument was developed through the rest of the 19th century, primarily in French-speaking regions.

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One-Hit Wonder

French composer Paul Dukas (1865-1935) is best known for a single orchestral work, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Based on a 1797 poem by Wolfgang von Goethe, the piece was written in 1897 and premiered later that same year in Paris with Dukas himself conducting the performance.

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