Riccardo Muti has appointed Jessie Montgomery as the Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery will succeed the CSO’s current composer-in-residence, Missy Mazzoli, in July of this year.

The CSO’s music director made a remote return to the Windy City on Wednesday to lead an online masterclass with fellows from Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative.

The Ravinia Festival today announced its plans to reopen in July for a 2021 summer music season comprised of classical, popular, and chamber music. The 2020 season was canceled because of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

It’s been a strange, difficult year for the music world, which is all the more reason to celebrate musical excellence.

On a sunny March day, flutist Emma Gerstein, horn player Alexander Love, and pianist Winston Choi shared an upbeat recital featuring music you might not have heard before.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra today announced the cancellation of all 2020-21 season programs from April 1 to June 13, 2021, extending cancellations that had been announced previously.

Today, WFMT and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announce the launch of an exciting new broadcast and streaming series.

In a statement, CSOA president Jeff Alexander expressed, “As we look ahead and make plans for ensemble concerts for the fall, we are also eager for the day when Maestro Muti and the full orchestra can come together again to share music with local, national and international audiences.”

We’re not sure the next time we’ll be able to catch an in-person performance, but luckily, many of Chicago’s hallowed artistic venues are just a click away.

Featured in the eleven new programs is a wide array of music conducted by Muti, including selections by Bruckner, Berlioz, and Verdi. Additional programs are dedicated to performances conducted by Fritz Reiner, Pierre Boulez, and Bernard Haitink.

Riccardo Muti has sent a resounding message that live classical music has returned the Italian stage after the coronavirus lockdown.

As the city, state, and country celebrate Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US, Chicago arts and music organizations are giving performances and leading discussions centering Black artists. Here are four music-related streams we think you should tune in to.

In the hour leading up to the premiere of the Ravinia Festival recording of Bernstein‘s MASS on PBS‘s Great Performances, we invite you to join us for this free panel.

The joint series, which is curated by CSO music director Riccardo Muti, launched in April in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CSO’s season was set to continue through June 27 and include a two-week residency with music director Riccardo Muti. Per the statement, the CSO is working to reschedule canceled programs in future seasons.

The summer season was to feature more than 120 events, including concerts featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which takes its summer residency at the venerable, Chicago-area music festival.

This Sunday, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will host a Facebook premiere for a video recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 from its archives, in part because it is “widely recognized as one of music’s most powerful and inspiring works.”

Today, WFMT and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announce the launch of an exciting new broadcast and streaming series: From the CSO’s Archives: Maestro’s Choice—For All Music Lovers in These Difficult Times.

The 35-minute program features an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, stitched together from more than 60 separate remote recordings of Civic musicians.

On Saturday, March 7, four young artists competed for a dream opportunity: to perform with the CSO. With her performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, violinist Isabella Brown won the competition.

Rather than depicting nobility or mythology, ‘verismo’ opera tells stories of everyday people, and ‘Cavalleria rusticana’ by Pietro Mascagni is a premiere example of the genre.

The CSO’s 130th season begins on September 17 with a free concert for Chicago at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

The 2010s were a tumultuous decade, replete with astounding artistic highlights, superlative new voices, and watershed moments of reckoning. WFMT hosts and staff reflect on what the past decade brought for classical music, and what the new decade may have in store.

Chicago Symphony Chorus members and pianist Sharon Peterson visited WFMT to spread some cheer and share this short and sweet rendition of a Christmas classic.

While building a successful career as a musician, (and amassing a mighty social media following), rising violinist Ray Chen has had to stay sharp. And while visiting Chicago for a series of performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chen showed WFMT audiences that being stage-ready is as easy as 1,2,3!