A man was killed an an officer was injured when a car rear ended a squad car, the state added an LGBT section to its tourism site, and other news. more ›

Mahler Month kicks off at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra tonight, and our friends at Gapers Block are hosting their annual holiday party tonight with complimentary cocktails. more ›

The CSO isn’t letting 2011 end without a nod to the great late-Romantic composer, dubbing December “Mahler Month” and filling it with three programs featuring his music. more ›

How great is the academic calendar?^[1] We thought about getting a PhD solely so we could be on that schedule. Unfortunately, carving out a career as a college professor is as daunting as...well, as being an orchestral musician. more ›

A key talking point in the communications surrounding the hiring of Riccardo Muti as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the importance of engaging the community beyond the slender slice of socioeconomic pie that is the traditional classical music audience. We're cynics by nature, so we reacted to Muti's Euro-charming press conference pronouncements like Larry David eyeballing a suspected liar. But much to our pleasant surprise, the Muti-era CSO has been following through on their lofty promises. more ›

During the course of this morning’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra rehearsal, Maestro Muti fainted and was taken to the hospital. He is currently under a physician’s care. At this time, we do not have any further information about his condition. more ›

MusicNOW, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new-music series, has put on its share of good concerts, but none of the programs has piqued our interest quite like this Monday’s concert at the Harris Theater featuring world premieres by intelligent dance music group Mouse on Mars and a piece of music by Argentine composer Martin Matalon set to a Surrealist film masterpiece. more ›

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is giving you an early Christmas present, or maybe a belated something-something for Hanukkah, or a right-on-time Zamenhof Day gift. But whether you hang ornaments, light a menorah, or do whatever it is Esperantists do, you can help yourself to a free download of the recording of the CSO's live performance of the Overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s "La Forza del Destino" from Riccardo Muti's debut concert in Millennium Park. more ›

The Grammy Awards were announced today and there was some discussion as to how we should cover it. Overall, we were sort of "meh" about it, but Mavis Staples did get a well-deserved nod and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra earned two more nominations in its storied history, for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance (for the recording of Verdi's Requiem with the CSO Chrous) and for Best Orchestral Performance (for the recording of works by Stravinsky). more ›

If Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk's debate on Chicago Tonight gets you riled up or you're just frustrated that Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones and Libertarian Mike Labno weren't involved, keep the dial tuned to WTTW and bliss out on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's performance of Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony that will run immediately after. more ›

With concert season in full swing, busy weeks are expected, but even with that in mind this week is a little hectic. Here's the short list of concerts we're trying to get to. more ›

Tribune columnist and classical music novice Barbara Brotman recently checked out the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for only the third time in 30 years. Earlier this week, she put together a list of advice, gleaned from the CSO regulars seated nearby, for other newbies thinking about taking the same plunge into the intimidating other-world of orchestra concerts. We thought thought the idea was a good one, so we decided to appraise the advice she received. The good news is that though the list is a bit discursive, it contains some good tips. Let's take a look... more ›

New Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti, who recently withdrew from his inaugural residency due to an illness previously described as "extreme gastric distress," has been released from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy. According to the CSO's written statement, the diagnosis was extreme exhaustion that "manifested itself in abdominal pain and other physical symptoms." more ›

With new CSO music director Riccardo Muti boarding a plane for Milan this evening to consult with his doctors, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's October plans have been torn asunder. We try to sort out the ramifications below: more ›

Sure, they wear tuxedos to work, but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra still likes to party, and they’re inviting you to a couple throwdowns to kick off the 2010-2011 season. Sunday’s free concert in Millennium Park will mark the official beginning of the reign of new music director Riccardo Muti. The stacked program, featuring Ottorino Respighi’s "Pines of Rome," the Overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s "La Forza del Destino, Franz Liszt’s "Les Preludes," and Peter Tchaikovsky’s "Romeo and Juliet" (a piece you already know), begins at 5:30 p.m., but performances by various area youth ensembles get started at 2:00 p.m. more ›

To say that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is excited about Riccardo Muti, who turns 69 today, taking over as music director this fall is to plunge to the depths of understatement. The CSO has been without a full-time music director since Daniel Barenboim's departure in June 2006, and while the orchestra hasn't been rudderless - eminent musicians Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink have been frequent guests - having a consistent leader will help the ensemble evolve its unique voice. And Muti's virtues go far beyond just filling a void: in Muti, the CSO is getting an established musical presence at a time when other major orchestras are rolling the dice on promising whippersnappers with shorter track records, like the New York Philharmonic's 43-year-old Music Director Alan Gilbert, the Philadelphia Orchestra's 35-year-old Music Director Designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 29-year-old Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. So, there's good reason for the CSO to be excited, or borderline obsessive, even. We won't be so understanding if we happen upon a creepy shrine in some tucked-away corner of Orchestra Hall, but for now there's only this benign, if goofy, video sending Muti birthday well-wishes. more ›

This past weekend Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra wrapped up the Beethoven Festival with performances of the Ninth Symphony, the gargantuan 70-minute-long piece containing the ultra-famous "Ode to Joy." We offered our festival review prior to these concerts because of how different the Ninth is from Beethoven's previous symphonies. As mentioned in that post, the first eight were composed from 1799 and 1812; although Beethoven began preliminary sketches of the Ninth in 1817, and although he'd expressed a desire to set Friedrich Schiller's drinking song "Ode to Joy" to music prior to writing his First Symphony, concentrated work on the his final symphony didn't begin until 1822, a full decade after completion of the Eighth, and it was another two years before the Ninth was finished and premiered. Beethoven's music developed during this gap between the Eighth and Ninth, but even within the context of his Late period, it's an astonishingly advanced work. more ›

With last night's performance of the First and Seventh Symphonies, the end of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Beethoven Festival is in sight. There's still the not-exactly-small matter of the Ninth, as well as a repeat performance of last night's program, but it's now possible to reflect on the whole endeavor. more ›

Last night Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra finished the second of five rounds of concerts of the season-ending Beethoven Festival. This program featured the Second and Third Symphonies, composed within a year of one another when Beethoven, barely into his thirties, was blossoming as a revolutionary artist while realizing that the hearing loss he'd already begun to suffer was becoming steadily and irrevocably worse. more ›

Last night marked the beginning of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Beethoven Festival, a three-week long celebration of Beethoven's music that will end Bernard Haitink's four-year tenure as the orchestra's principal conductor. The festival includes CSO concerts with pre-show chamber music performances and lectures, panel discussions on the next three Saturdays, a chamber music showcase, a piano recital, and a free screening of In Search of Beethoven tomorrow night. more ›

Rush Hour, the free weekly classical music concert series at St. James Cathedral, begins its eleventh summer-long season this evening. We love Rush Hour for its simple formula that appeals to seasoned fans and classical music neophytes alike: short, casual post-work concerts (usually about 30 minutes long), preceded by refreshments, with additional information to consume, if you're interested (a blog, a podcast, online concert notes, and recordings of the concerts available immediately afterward to take home via flash drive). more ›

Sometimes a concert looks great on paper, but, for one reason or another, it doesn't meet expectations. Such was the case with the baffling Chicago Symphony Orchestra dance-heavy concert we recommended last month. With strangely mismatched music and long pauses between pieces, including an unusually lengthy intermission, the show never got any momentum going. And while the Hubbard Street dancers were terrific, the audience was filled with their riffraff fans. (That's right, dancers, we're picking a fight, an altercation that'll probably look a lot like this.) more ›

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the home stretch of its season, has packed May with the types of late Romantic and early modern "greatest hits" that draw the biggest crowds and also play to the orchestra's strengths. We love to be challenged at concerts, to say nothing of the thrill we get by letting people know we enjoy obscure art, but, well, we're pretty excited. more ›

This weekend my parents are visiting from Virginia. These are the people who didn't bat an eye when I told them I wanted to go to college to pursue a career in music - classical music, mind you - and although the performing days are behind me, my love of music has remained. I have them to thank, so I owe them a good cultural time this weekend. They're eager to have one, too, coming from Virginia and all. It's not that the state is some boorish backwater - despite what Virginia's deceptively insane governor and aggressively insane attorney general would lead you to believe - but, hey, it just ain't Chicago, you know? more ›

Yo-Yo Ma is the most famous living classical musician. That can't actually be proven, of course, but outside of fussy opera devotees or a stray Itzhak Perlman groupie, no one will argue it. When he was seven, Ma's talent brought him to the Kennedy White House. He firmly entered the classical world's awareness in his teens, and his many cross-genre collaborations have taken him into other music worlds. He's a United Nations Messenger of Peace and a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Even if you're not a classical music fan, you know about him, if only because you heard his name as a punchline on "Seinfeld," saw his cartoon visage shooting cello bows at Homer Simpson, or watched him (sort of) perform at Obama's inauguration. He's talented, articulate, and, by all accounts, one of the nicest, most genuine famous people you'll ever care to meet. more ›

Leaders of several local arts organizations announced preliminary details of "The Soviet Experience," a fourteen-month-long multidisciplinary festival beginning in October, 2010, and continuing through December, 2011. Eleven different institutions will present works by visual artists, choreographers, composers, and dramatists who lived under the stifling Politburo. more ›

The career of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), which got underway shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, can be seen broadly as cycling between angering the Soviet authorities and getting back in their good graces. The paper trail of the actual intentions behind his various pieces of music is thin and often contains an array of dubious patriotic claims. That was, of course, out of necessity. Being on the wrong side of Stalin often led to the gulag, or worse. more ›

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra released its schedule yesterday of all classical, jazz, and world music concerts happening at Symphony Center during the 2010-2011 season, as well as the general plans for Riccardo Muti's first season as the CSO's tenth music director. more ›

Here are a couple reasons to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this week: more ›

Lots of great, affordable stuff going on this weekend, so let's cut to the chase. more ›