Gathering Note
Notes from the concert hall
Category: Chicago, IL
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Elim Chan is set to be the San Francisco Symphony’s next music director starting in 2027. It’s a smart choice for the orchestra roiled by the pandemic, artistic shuffles and institutional belt tightening.
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For their final program of the 2025–26 season, the Rembrandt Chamber Musicians—drawn from the Lyric Opera Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—offered a thoughtful look at how geographic displacement can refine a composer’s identity. The concert, performed May 17, was delivered with the poise of musicians who thoroughly understand the mechanics of ensemble playing. Dvořák’s…
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My colleague Louis Harris at Third Coast Review has written a lengthy profile of Chicago composer Stacy Garrop, whose music he loves. Garrop is one of many excellent contemporary composers who call Chicago home. Interestingly, when she listens to music, it’s not usually classical. “One of my approaches to that is I do listen to…
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Joyce DiDonato sings Neruda Songs this weekend with the CSO.
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The Chicago Sinfonietta announced that it is entering what leaders are calling a “strategic renewal period.” Founded by Paul Freeman to elevate minority artists and expand representation in classical music, the orchestra was guided by his vision until his retirement in 2011, when Mei-Ann Chen succeeded him. The pandemic dealt the organization a heavy blow,…
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The house lights at the Harris Theater rarely dimmed on an occasion as self-assured as “Icons and Innovators.” This program, held on May 2nd, was ostensibly a tribute to Joan Harris, the philanthropist whose fingerprints are all over the Chicago cultural map and the Juilliard School. It was a night of high ceremony, featuring video…
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The Chicago Symphony’s concerts this weekend are dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on April 22nd at his home in San Francisco. He was 81. Like so many others, I became unmoored by the news. Not because I knew him personally, but because so many of the concerts I remember most vividly from the…
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Opera in the 21st century is caught between two impulses: the push to say something new, and the pull to rely on what already works. New operas get commissioned and staged. Old standbys get revived, reimagined, and sometimes over-explained. Neither approach is wrong, but both carry risk. This spring, two productions running concurrently at Lyric…
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The Chicago Symphony is often described as a product of the great German and Viennese tradition. That reputation has been earned. But Thursday’s concert suggested the CSO’s story is more complex and interesting than that tight refrain. The program opened with Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn and closed with Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Sandwiched…
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Some classical music works arrive on the concert stage like shy guests at a crowded party. They need a persuasive host to draw listeners in and reveal their charm, lest the room move on to flashier attractions. Not every work carries the inevitable triumph of a Beethoven symphony, for example. His ‘Eroica’ can survive a…