Chicago Holiday Performances Guide 2024: Concerts, Nutcrackers, Jazz, and more

From all corners of the city and beyond, take part in holiday cheer with a wide range of merriment.

Día de los Muertos Events 2024

2024 concerts, festivals, celebrations, workshops, and more to celebrate Día de los Muertos in Chicago.

Klaus Mäkelä: Wunderkind Conductor Career Timeline (so far)

Klaus Mäkelä, CSO music director designate, is just 28 and is one of the world’s most respected conductors. Here’s his career in a timeline.

Open House Chicago 2024: Arts and Music Sites to Explore

22 of the nearly 200 sites that we think art and music lovers won’t want to pass up!

Solti Conducts Del Tredici

This week, Sir Georg Solti conducts Final Alice by David Del Tredici. The broadcast opens with Berlioz’s Overture to Les Francs-juges, continues with Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song, and Weber’s Overture to Oberon.

Hilary Hahn to miss CSO season premiere

The soloist’s injury continues to affect scheduled fall concerts.

6 (+1) Fascinating Premieres You Never Knew Happened in Chicago

For more than a century, artists from all over the world have chosen to give their first performances in the Second City.

Composers’ Early Successes

Most of the music on this program was written by teenagers: Mendelssohn was seventeen years old when he composed his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rachmaninoff completed his First Piano Concerto and Strauss his First Horn Concerto at age eighteen, and nineteen-year-old Shostakovich submitted his First Symphony as a graduation exercise from the Petrograd Conservatory. The Overture to Rienzi …

Live from Ravinia Festival: Chicago Symphony Orchestra Summer Season Opener

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra kicks off its 88th summer season at Ravinia with Chief Conductor Marin Alsop in a festive evening of all-American music.

Contemporary American Composers

We celebrate the CSO’s most recent Grammy Award–winning recording, Contemporary American Composers, released on CSO Resound. The broadcast features Glass’ Eleventh Symphony, plus world premiere recordings by Jessie Montgomery and Max Raimi. The broadcast opens with another legendary Grammy winner: Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra under the baton of Fritz Reiner.

Van Zweden Conducts Mahler 6

The hammer drops on Mahler’s Symphony No. 6! Jaap van Zweden conducts the symphony, which features fateful march rhythms, bittersweet lullabies, and a series of thunderous hammer blows.

Shani & Rana

Lahav Shani makes his CSO debut in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Included in the program is Prokofiev’s Symphony No.1 and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini featuring Beatrice Rana.

Carmina burana

Osmo Vänskä leads the CSO in Orff’s Carmina burana featuring Joélle Harvey, Reginald Mobley and Hugh Russell. Plus a Seiji Ozawa-conducted performance of Britten’s Young Person’s Guide.

De Waart & Haitink

An all-Beethoven program from the CSO’s Archives.

Chicago Music and Arts Events for Summer 2024

Summer arts riches — from open air concerts to music legends passing through our great city.

CSO MusicNOW & Curator-Composers Announced for ’24–25

Two composers with strong Chicago ties…

Muti, Chen & Mozart Gran Partita

This week, Riccardo Muti conducts Mozart’s Serenade No. 10 (Gran Partita), highlighting a dozen members of the orchestra’s wind section. Opening the program is Cimarosa’s Overture to Il matrimonio segreto. In between, Concertmaster Robert Chen joins in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major.

Thielemann Conducts Bruckner

Christian Telemann returns to the CSO podium to conduct Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. The broadcast also includes works by Richard Wagner and Mason Bates.

Muti Conducts Beethoven

Riccardo Muti conducts three of Beethoven’s works, beginning with his Coriolan Overture and followed by his eighth and fifth symphonies. Plus, the CSO Brass performs Barber’s Mutations from Bach, selections from Bach’s The Art of Fugue and Michael Tilson Thomas’s Street Song.

Szeps-Znaider & Carpenter

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider returns to the CSO in Poulenc’s Concerto in G Minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani and Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, featuring Cameron Carpenter. Opening the program is Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Zhang & Trpčeski

Xian Zhang leads the CSO in Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony and Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Primal Message. In between, Simon Trpčeski joins her in Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Opening the program, Sir Georg Solti leads the CSO in Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, Op. 56a from 1997 London recording.

Music and Conversation with Elim Chan

Ahead of her CSO debut, Chan visits WFMT to share musical highlights and a live chat.

With Summer Near, 25th Annual Rush Hour Concerts Announced

The series presents savvy commuters with free, approachable concerts at River North’s Saint James Cathedral.

Hrůša Conducts Má vlast

This week, we hear Jakub Hrůša’s CSO debut concert program, Smetana’s Má vlast. Opening the broadcast is Pierre Boulez conducting Mahler’s Totenfeier from a 1996 Deutsche Grammophon recording.

Conductor Andrew Davis, who headed Lyric Opera of Chicago and orchestras on 3 continents, dies

Davis made his Lyric Opera debut in 1987 and led about 700 performances of 62 operas by 22 composers.

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