comments by phillip huscher | gerard mcburney
jessie montgomery
Born December 8, 1981; New York City
Hymn for Everyone
In June 2021, shortly after Jessie Montgomery was named the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new Mead Composer-inResidence, the Orchestra played her music for the rst time: Strum, music for strings that is rooted in American folk tradition and governed by the spirit of dance. Her three-year appointment began July 1. Picked by Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti, she has been commissioned to write three new works for the Orchestra— one for each of her three seasons in the post. Hymn for Everyone was the rst; the second, Trans gure to Grace, receives its premiere in May. Like her immediate predecessors as resident composers in Chicago, Montgomery guides the Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, curating its programs of new works and writing music for the series as well. It was the MusicNOW series, under Missy Mazzoli’s direction at the time, which introduced her string quartet, Break Away, to Chicago audiences in 2019. Montgomery is a native of the Lower East Side of New York City. The arts were part of her daily family life. She remembers practicing violin in one room, while her father, Edward Montgomery, was busy composing in another, and her mother, Robbie McCauley—a performance artist, director, and writer—was rehearsing in yet another space.
Growing up as an artist in that world, Montgomery says she was always in a “state of wonder.” She was also accustomed to having many di erent cultures in her friend group. She started violin lessons at the Third Street Music School Settlement, and now hold degrees from the Juilliard School (in violin)
composed
2021
instrumentation
two flutes with piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons with contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (chimes, almglocken, tam-tam, bass drum), strings
approximate
performance time
12 minutes
Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through the Helen Zell Commissioning Program
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 3
above: Jessie Montgomery, photo by Todd Rosenberg
and New York University (a master’s in composition for lm and multimedia), and is completing her doctorate from Princeton University. Since 1999, she has been closely involved with Sphinx, a Detroit-based nonpro t organization that supports young Black and Latino string players. In recent years, she has made time to continue appearing with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. She is still an active performer, and last summer she played in her own score for the premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s dance piece, I was waiting for the echo of a better day.
Montgomery has devoted her career to working with young artists and musicians with diverse backgrounds and ideas, and she is known for immersing herself in the activities of the new-music community, all of which she continues in Chicago. Montgomery is also keenly aware that she is working in the hometown of Florence Price— she calls her “the godmother of Black music”—whose music the Chicago Symphony introduced on a history-making evening in 1933, when then–Music Director Frederick Stock premiered her Symphony no. 1.
Montgomery’s plate is full and overowing; she is booked with commissions well into the future. As the New York Times reported in a pro le of Montgomery in September 2021, it is estimated that her orchestral scores were performed nearly 400 times in the previous year. In 2020, she was named to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works commissioning program, one of three Black
composers picked in what was widely seen as a welcome reboot of one of America’s most tradition-bound institutions. The online magazine Musical America named Montgomery 2023 Composer of the Year in October. The signi cance of her emergence in today’s cultural climate—especially heightened in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement— and the responsibilities it carries, are not lost on Montgomery: “We have to take into account that we’re carrying a history inside of our beings and in the work that we do,” she said recently.
One can learn a lot about Montgomery by considering her music—the reasons she composes, the sensibilities she advocates. In Banner, Montgomery’s signature tribute to the 200th anniversary of The Star-Spangled Banner from 2014, she addresses the question: “What does an anthem for the twenty- rst century sound like in today’s multicultural environment?” In Montgomery’s hands, it is an exploration of the divides that slice through American culture: “For most Americans the song represents a paradigm of liberty and solidarity against erce odds, and for others it implies a contradiction between the ideals of freedom and the realities of injustice and oppression.” Her whole catalog is animated by that kind of attention to the world around her. In a sense, it echoes what her mother, a pioneering artist whose work often dealt with issues of race, once said: “Find a way
4 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON COMMENTS
to house the contradictions rather than resolve them.”
Montgomery makes art that is rmly set in the present, which would not be notable today in theater or ction, for example, but stands out in the world of classical music, which has for so long lived largely in the European past. Coincident Dances, the score the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played in October 2021, is a kind of snapshot of musical life today: a fusion of di erent musics—English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, techno—it captures what Montgomery describes as “the multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood.”
But Montgomery’s music suggests that she not only possesses the rare gift of writing music that re ects the complexity of our world, but one that will lead us forward. By already forging her own distinct voice in a crowded musical scene—a voice that melds and marries many di erent in uences—she is well positioned to help guide the music of our multifaceted future. “I’ve always been interested in trying to nd the intersection between di erent types of music,” she has said. “I imagine that music is a meeting place at which all people can converse about their unique di erences and common stories.”
Hymn for Everyone, the piece for the Chicago Symphony that Montgomery began during the pandemic, snapped into focus after the death of her mother last May. When Montgomery discovered that her mother had written a “Poem for Everyone,” the piece not only had a subtext as a musical tribute to her mother, but a title as well.
Jessie Montgomery on Hymn for Everyone
Hymn for Everyone is based on a hymn that I wrote during the spring of 2021 that was a re ection on personal and collective challenges happening at the time. Up until that point, I had resisted composing “response pieces” to the pandemic and sociopolitical upheaval, and had been experiencing an intense writer’s block. But one day, after a long hike, this hymn just came to me—a rare occurrence. The melody traverses through di erent orchestral “choirs,” and is accompanied by the rest of the ensemble. It is a kind of meditation for orchestra, exploring various washes of color and timbre through each repetition of the melody.
—Phillip Huscher
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 5 COMMENTS
COMMENTS
dmitri shostakovich
Born September 25, 1906; Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died August 9, 1975; Moscow, Russia
Symphony No. 11, Op. 103 (The Year 1905)
One might have naively thought that when Stalin died in March 1953, Shostakovich would have found himself released from the crushing creative, personal, and political pressures of the dictator’s last years. To some extent, this was the case, although nobody in the Soviet Union at the time imagined Stalinism would come to an end just because Stalin himself wasn’t there. Certainly, Shostakovich’s immediate creative response to Stalin’s death was striking enough: the Tenth Symphony, a work of tremendous musical dynamism and vivid human scope. At the same time during these early post-Stalinist years, the composer was also adding substantially to his reputation by releasing a number of powerful and already written works, like the First Violin Concerto and the Fourth String Quartet, which he had previously held back for fear of the consequences. Taken together, these old and new pieces gave every reason to suppose that Shostakovich would now experience a liberation of his genius.
And yet, after the initial explosion of the Tenth, there actually followed one of his bleakest periods. Although a few important pieces date from this time, Shostakovich spent a great part of his energies composing tub-thumping lm music, music for unpretentious practical use, and “o cial” music of one kind or another, including popular songs to sentimental words of the “Communist Youth” variety. His admirers were confused and disappointed, and he himself complained of frustration and depression.
composed
1956–August 4, 1957
first performance
October 30, 1957, Moscow instrumentation three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and english horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, tam-tam, xylophone, bells, celesta, two harps, strings
approximate performance time 62 minutes
above: Dmitri Shostakovich, photo by Roger Rössing (1929–2006) and Renate Rössing (1929–2005), 1950. Deutsche Fotothek
6 ONE HUNDRED
SEASON
FOURTH
One major cause of his inertia at this period was the death of his wife Nina Varzar in December 1954. A distinguished scientist and an immensely strong character, Nina had been the rock on which his life had been built for many years. Their marriage had not been easy and was “open.” But without her, Shostakovich seemed, as several friends later remembered, rudderless, lonely, and confused.
It was during this time that the composer began to acquire an unenviable reputation as an unadventurous conservative, a hack, an o cial Soviet bard. In the West, his music was written o by commentators as more or less irrelevant as the avant-garde discovered brave new worlds of sound and post-war popular music began to overwhelm the classical traditions. In his own country, the young and rebellious musical generation that came to maturity in those Khrushchev years looked harshly and askance at this dinosaur from another age (he was only fty). Half-forgotten were the wonders and experiments of his early years, and even the vast and tragic ironies of his middle-period symphonies seemed less important than they once had.
Then, in the summer of 1957, while staying in his favorite dacha (country cottage) in Komarovo on the north Baltic coast just west of Leningrad, Shostakovich produced his Eleventh Symphony.
The auguries were not good. At rst hearing, this symphony con rmed the worst fears of the composer’s detractors, and, at the same time, found
worryingly warm favor with Soviet ocials, who declared it one of the composer’s most satisfactory and splendidly Soviet pieces. To most listeners—those who liked it and those who hated it—the Eleventh seemed the very embodiment of the doctrine of Socialist Realism.
What made it such a perfect example of that state-sponsored aesthetic? First, the fact that it was explicitly written for the fortieth-anniversary celebrations of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and that it purported to memorialize another sacred date in Soviet history: the 1905 Revolution. Then, there was the all too neat way it ful lled so many of the musical ideals of Socialist Realism: it was heavily pictorial and programmatic; it often sounded like lm music (a very good thing for Socialist Realists); most of the thematic material was not the composer’s own but drawn from nineteenth-century revolutionary songs that most people in the audience would already know and love (this was another very important quali cation for Socialist Realist music); and, nally, its harmonic and orchestral language was deeply and obviously indebted to nineteenth-century Russian nationalist music (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and the rest).
One particular listener at the time of the rst performance understood all of this in a completely di erent way. She was no special friend of Shostakovich’s and no musician, but she was one of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poets—Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966). Zoya Tomashevskaya, the daughter of a
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 7 COMMENTS
famous literary critic, remembered the occasion well:
At the premiere of the Eleventh Symphony, there was a lot of discontented muttering. The music-loving connoisseurs alleged that the symphony was devoid of interest. All around one heard such remarks as: “He has sold himself down the river. Nothing but quotations and revolutionary songs.”
Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova kept her silence. For some reason, my father couldn’t attend the concert. When we came home afterwards, he asked us, “Well, how was it?” And Anna Andreyevna answered, “Those songs were like white birds ying against a terrible black sky.”
Akhmatova had evidently been deeply moved. To another friend she commented:
His revolutionary songs sometimes spring up close by, sometimes oat by far away in the sky . . . they are up like lightning . . . That’s the way it was in 1905. I remember.
Akhmatova had put her nger on one of the three keys to this symphony— the extraordinary and vivid choice of nineteenth-century songs that provide most of the melodies. The other two keys are the way the symphony develops ideas from one of Shostakovich’s own compositions, the sixth of his Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets,
op. 88, a work for unaccompanied chorus written in 1951. And, nally, there is the way almost the entire symphony seems clearly modeled on a crucial work of music from Russia’s past, one of Shostakovich’s personal favorites— Mussorgsky’s mighty historical opera about a revolution, Boris Godunov. Echoes of the crowd scenes from Boris—from coronation to revolution— abound in all four movements and there are also speci c references to details of Mussorgsky’s piece, including the famous two chords of the Coronation Bells. All three of these keys to the mystery bring us to the intriguing realization that this is one of the most purely “Russian” of all Shostakovich’s symphonies. There is hardly a hint of Mahler, who was so important as a model from the First Symphony to the Tenth.
The nineteenth-century revolutionary songs that so excited Akhmatova are little known to American listeners. But to Russians of the early twentieth century, these lyrics and tunes were part of their cultural inheritance, rather like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the United States.
The rst movement opens with Mussorgskian scene-setting music, establishing the place—Palace Square in the middle of Saint Petersburg—and the time—the hour before dawn on the fateful day of January 9, 1905, at the moment when the Russian Revolution of that year began. We hear the frozen stillness of the river Neva in the darkness, the distant sounds of military bugles calling “Reveille” in the barracks, and the equally distant chanting of the
8 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON COMMENTS
Russian Orthodox prayer for the dead, the Kontakion.
Then, like an echo from one of the prison cells in the Peter-Paul Fortress immediately opposite the Winter Palace, we catch the rst of those songs Akhmatova recognized—“Listen!” This was a popular ballad with nineteenth-century political prisoners and it often was sung in Stalin’s Gulags, too. It tells a convict’s story of hearing a fellow prisoner being led out to early-morning execution. Shostakovich introduces it on the gentle sound of two utes (like two trumpets playing in the distance), just after an eerie passage of softly beating drums:
Like the deed of a traitor, like the conscience of a tyrant, The autumn night is black. But blacker than night looms out of the mist
A gloomy vision of the prison. All around, the lazy stepping of the guards
In the quiet of the night. But—there it is!—
Like the tolling of a bell, lingeringly, longingly, the echoing call: “Listen!”
A little further on in the rst movement, after a reprise of “Listen!” in the bassoon, violins, and violas, Shostakovich introduces a second melody, gloomy and hymnlike, rst in the cellos and basses, then in the ute and clarinet. This is “The Arrested Man,” a song from 1850:
The night is dark. Seize the moment!
But the walls of the prison are strong,
And the gates are locked
With two iron padlocks.
Along the corridor there faintly ickers
The watchman’s candle, And the jingling of the spurs
Of the sentry, who longs to live.
There follows a grief- lled exchange of words between two equally oppressed individuals, a despairing prisoner and the sentry who cannot help him.
The second movement mostly plays not with tunes from early songs, but instead with melodies taken from the second key ingredient of the Eleventh Symphony, Shostakovich’s own unaccompanied choral setting of Arkady Kotz’s poem written in the aftermath of the catastrophe it describes, the Bloody Sunday massacre that took place in front of the Winter Palace on January 9, 1905:
Bare your heads! Bare your heads!
On this bitter day the shadow of a long night trembled over the earth.
In musical language vividly reminiscent of the choral scenes from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, the unarmed protestors, carrying portraits of Tsar Nicholas II, process to his palace to ask for his help:
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 9 COMMENTS
Hey you, father Tsar! Look around you.
We have nothing to live on, your servants give us no help.
After a climax in which the orchestra repeats over and over again the phrase “Bare your heads,” Shostakovich returns for a moment to the opening of the symphony, to the prayer for the dead and, again, the sound of the old song “Listen!”
The third movement—Eternal Memory (the Russian name for the ancient chant we call the Kontakion, which we already heard at the beginning of the symphony)—is a funeral march or processional. It starts with the revolutionary funeral song “You fell as a victim”:
You fell as a victim in the fateful struggle
Of sel ess love for the people. You gave everything that you could for them,
For their lives, their honor and their freedom.
Sometimes you were tormented in dank prisons . . .
Your merciless sentence
Had already been decided for you by the executioner-judges
And your chains rattled as you walked.
This lovely old tune is soon answered by a stern, revolutionary marching song. Here, Shostakovich combines several di erent sources into a single musical utterance. The most prominent
melodies here come from two songs. The rst begins:
Bravely, comrades, step forward! Your spirit has been strengthened in the struggle.
Let us lean our bodies forwards On the road to the kingdom of freedom.
We all come from the people, We are the children of working families.
Brotherly union and freedom— This is the slogan that takes us into battle.
The second song at this point is called “Hail, free word of liberty!”
The nale of the Eleventh begins with a ery revolutionary march:
Rage, you tyrants, and mock at us, Threaten us with prison and with chains.
We are stronger than you in spirit, Though you trampled on our bodies.
Shame! Shame! Shame on you, you tyrants!
This is followed, in an extended marching sequence for the strings of the orchestra alone, by one of the most famous and catchy of all revolutionary anthems, the so-called Warsaw Song:
Malevolent whirlwinds blow around us,
Dark forces press down on us with hate.
10 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON
COMMENTS
We have engaged in the fateful struggle with our enemies, The fate that awaits us is still unknown.
But with pride and courage we will raise
The battle standard of the workers’ cause, The standard of the great struggle of all peoples For a better world, for holy freedom! To the bloody battle, Holy and true, March, march onwards, You working people!
The violence unleashed in this nal movement is astonishing, overpowering with its sense of uncontrollable rage. The symphony ends with a last return to Shostakovich’s own 1951 chorus and its opening words, repeated over and over again and at deafening volume by the whole orchestra: “Bare your heads! Bare your heads!”
And that brings us back to the meaning of this symphony and to Akhmatova’s brilliant description of the songs in it as like “white birds ying against a terrible black sky.” This piece may indeed be “about” the 1905 Revolution, that bloody upheaval whose eventual failure led directly to the 1917 Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union. Then again, when Shostakovich wrote it, his country was only just emerging from the nightmare of the Stalinist Terror and the mass executions and imprisonments by means of which the Bolsheviks continued the old tyranny of the Romanov emperors in new and vastly destructive
forms. And in the year in which it was composed, the USSR invaded Hungary and bloodily repressed the uprising there, an event which caused many Western communists to tear up their party cards and made many more in the Soviet intelligentsia, to which Shostakovich belonged, despair at the workings of their own country.
Shostakovich himself never “explained” this music, beyond leaving its pictorial titles to tell a clear story of 1905 almost in the manner of a children’s cartoon book. But when we hear and listen—“Listen!”—to its not so hidden words (and almost every bar suggests words), then we quickly see that what the composer is talking about has many more layers of meaning than we rst suspected. This is a symphony not about one event, but many events, and about how any one of us approaches those events in the darkness of our conscience.
—Gerard McBurney
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Gerard McBurney is a British composer and writer, working in theater, radio, television, and the concert hall. He has a long-standing interest in the music of Shostakovich and has reconstructed, reinvented, and reorchestrated a number of lost works by this composer, including his orchestration of the Prologue to Shostakovich’s lost opera, Orango, which was premiered in 2011 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen and subsequently recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. Between 2006 and 2016, he was Artistic Programming Advisor at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Creative Director of Beyond the Score®.
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 11 COMMENTS
Lidiya Yankovskaya Conductor
Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is a ercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. Since her appointment as Elizabeth Morse and Genius Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater in 2017, Yankovskaya has led the Chicago premieres of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, Rachmaninov’s Aleko, Joby Talbot’s Everest, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, and Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus, as well as the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride. Her daring performances before and amid the pandemic earned recognition from the Chicago Tribune, which named her 2020 Chicagoan of the Year.
In the 2022–23 season, Yankovskaya makes debuts with the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Sacramento Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, and Richmond Symphony. She also debuts at Santa Fe Opera in a new production of Dvořák’s Rusalka, at Staatsoper Hamburg with Eugene Onegin, and at English National Opera in a newly staged production of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. She leads the long-awaited world premieres of Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera and The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing at Chicago Opera Theater.
Yankovskaya is an alumna of the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors and the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, and a proud two-time recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards. Yankovskaya is also the founder and artistic director of the Refugee Orchestra Project.
12 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON profiles
PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG
Civic Orchestra of Chicago
Founded in 1919 by Frederick Stock, second music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), the Civic Orchestra of Chicago prepares emerging professional musicians for lives in music. Civic members participate in rigorous orchestral training, September through June each season, with the Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur, musicians of the CSO, and some of today’s most luminary conductors including the CSO’s Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti.
The importance of the Civic Orchestra’s role in Greater Chicago is underscored by its commitment to present concerts of the highest quality at no charge to the public. In addition to the critically acclaimed live concerts at Symphony Center, Civic Orchestra performances can be heard locally on WFMT (98.7 FM).
Civic musicians also expand their creative, professional, and artistic boundaries and reach diverse audiences through educational performances at Chicago Public Schools and a series of chamber concerts at various locations throughout the city, including Chicago Park District eld houses and the National Museum of Mexican Art.
To further expand its musician training, the Civic Orchestra launched the Civic Fellowship program in the
2013–14 season. Each year ten to fteen Civic members are designated as Civic Fellows and participate in intensive leadership training that is designed to build and diversify their creative and professional skills.
From 2010 to 2019, Yo-Yo Ma was a leading mentor to Civic musicians and sta in his role as CSO Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant, and the programs and initiatives he established are integral to the Civic Orchestra curriculum today. Civic Orchestra musicians develop as exceptional orchestral players and engaged artists, cultivating their ability to succeed in the rapidly evolving world of music in the twenty- rst century.
The Civic Orchestra’s long history of presenting full orchestra performances free to the public includes annual concerts at the South Shore Cultural Center (in partnership with the South Shore Advisory Council) as well as numerous Chicago Public Schools. The Civic Orchestra is a signature program of the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which o ers a wide range of education and community programs that engage more than 200,000 people of diverse ages, incomes, and backgrounds each year, in Chicago and around the world.
For more on the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and its Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur, please visit cso.org/civic.
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 13 PROFILES
Civic Orchestra of Chicago
Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor
The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair
violins
Jesus Linarez
Matthew Weinberg
Subin Shin
Marian Antonette Mayuga*
Dylan Marshall Feldpausch*
Sungjoo Kang
Annie Pham
Diego Diaz+
Shin Lan
Crystal Qi
Luke Lentini+
Hee Woo Seo
Hee Yeon Kim*
Edward Sanford
Robbie Herbst
Olga Kossovich
Kristian Brusubardis
Janani Sivakumar
Ran Huo
Kina Ono
Kimberly Bill
Valentina Guillen Menesello
Nelson Mendoza Hernandez*
Liya Ma
Hsuan Chen
Grace Walker
Emily Nardo
Laura Schafer
Owen Ruff+
Carlos Chacon
violas
Amanda Kellman
Pedro Mendez
Aditi Prakash
Derrick Ware
Megan Yeung
August DuBeau
Carlos Lozano Sanchez
Santiago Del Castillo Aréchiga
Teddy Schenkman*
Ching Ting Chan
Larissa Mapua
Michael Ayala
cellos
Miles Link
Cameron Slaugh
Jaime An
Annamarie Wellems
Charlotte Ullman
Lidanys Graterol
Abby Monroe
Francisco Malespin*
Hana Takemoto
Eva María Barbado Gutiérrez+
basses
Jake Platt
Olivia Reyes
Ben Foerster
Caleb Edwards
Victor Stahoviak
Nate Beaver
Hannah Novak
Bennett Norris
flutes
Aalia Hanif
Katarina Ignatovich
Eric Leise
oboes
Andrew Port*
James Jihyun Kim
Kyung Yeon Hong
clarinets
Irina Chang
Antonio Garrasi
Laurie Blanchet+
bassoons
Liam Jackson
Seo Young (Michelle) Min
Edin Agamenoni+
horns
Jacob Medina
Michael Stevens
Nelson Yovera Perez
Ryan Williamson
Sylvia Denecke
trumpets
Michael Leavens
Ismael Cañizares Ortega
Joshua Harris
trombones
Felix Regalado
Hugo Saavedra Arciniegas*
bass trombone
Alexander Mullins
tuba
Nick Collins
timpani
David Miller
percussion
Thaddeus Chung
Charley Gillette
Jordan Berini
Dylan Brule
George Tantchev
harp
Natalie Man
Ksenia Sushkevich
celesta
Wenlin Cheng
librarian
Anna Thompson
* Civic Orchestra Fellow + Civic Orchestra Alumni
14 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON PROFILES
honor roll of donors
Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Negaunee Music Institute connects individuals and communities to the extraordinary musical resources of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The following donors are gratefully acknowledged for making a gift in support of these educational and engagement programs. To make a gift or learn more, please contact Kevin Gupana, Associate Director of Giving, Educational and Engagement Programs, 312-294-3156.
$150,000 AND ABOVE
The Julian Family Foundation
The Negaunee Foundation
$100,000–$149,999
Anonymous
Allstate Insurance Company
The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation
$75,000–$99,999
John Hart and Carol Prins
Megan and Steve Shebik
$50,000–$74,999
Anonymous
Robert and Joanne Crown Income Charitable Fund
Lloyd A. Fry Foundation
Judy and Scott McCue
Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal†
Polk Bros. Foundation
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation
Shure Charitable Trust
Michael and Linda Simon
Mr. Irving Stenn, Jr.
$35,000–$49,999
Kinder Morgan
Bowman C. Lingle Trust
National Endowment for the Arts
† Deceased
$25,000–$34,999
Anonymous
Abbott Fund
Crain-Maling Foundation
Leslie Fund, Inc.
The James and Madeleine McMullan Family Foundation
Dr. & Mrs. Eugene and Jean Stark
Lisa and Paul Wiggin
$20,000–$24,999
Anonymous
Mary Winton Green
Richard P. and Susan Kiphart Family
PNC
Charles and M. R. Shapiro Foundation
The George L. Shields Foundation, Inc.
$15,000–$19,999
Carey and Brett August
Robert and Isabelle Bass Foundation, Inc.
The Buchanan Family Foundation
Bruce and Martha Clinton for The Clinton Family Fund
Sue and Jim Colletti
Ellen and Paul Gignilliat
Illinois Arts Council Agency
The League of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association
Mr. Philip Lumpkin
The Maval Foundation
Sandra and Earl Rusnak, Jr.
Ms. Liisa M. Thomas and Mr. Stephen L. Pratt
Dr. Marylou Witz
$11,500–$14,999
Nancy A. Abshire
Mr. † & Mrs. David A. Donovan
Mrs. Carol Evans, in memory of Henry Evans
Jim and Ginger Meyer
Margo and Michael Oberman
Ksenia A. and Peter Turula
Theodore and Elisabeth Wachs
$7,500–$11,499
Anonymous
Robert H. Baum and MaryBeth Kretz
John D. and Leslie Henner Burns
Mr. Lawrence Corry
Mr. & Mrs.† Allan Drebin
Nancy and Bernard Dunkel
Ms. Nancy Felton-Elkins and Larry Elkins
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph B. Glossberg
Chet Gougis and Shelley Ochab
Halasyamani and Davis Family
Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett
Mr. Glen Madeja and Ms. Janet Steidl
Ling Z. and Michael C. Markovitz
Drs. Robert and Marsha Mrtek
Ms. Susan Norvich
Ms. Emilysue Pinnell
D. Elizabeth Price
COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired)
Robert E.† and Cynthia M.† Sargent
TAWANI Foundation
$4,500–$7,499
Anonymous
Joseph Bartush
Ms. Marion A. Cameron-Gray
Ann and Richard Carr
Harry F. and Elaine Chaddick Foundation
Constance M. Filling and Robert D. Hevey Jr.
Italian Village Restaurants
Mr. & Mrs. Stan Jakopin
Dr. June Koizumi
Dr. Lynda Lane
The Osprey Foundation
Benjamin J. Rosenthal Foundation
Dr. Scholl Foundation
Jessie Shih and Johnson Ho
Dr. Nanajan Yakoub
$3,500–$4,499
Arts Midwest GIG Fund
Charles H. and Bertha L. Boothroyd Foundation
Mr. & Ms. Keith Clayton
Italics indicate individual or family involvement as part of the Trustees or Governing Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Gifts listed as of January 2023
16 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON
Dr. Edward A. Cole and Dr. Christine A. Rydel
Mr. & Mrs. Dwight Decker
Dr. Ronald L. Hullinger
Ms. Ethelle Katz
Dr. Leo and Catherine Miserendino
$2,500–$3,499
Ms. Sandra Bass
Mr. Douglas Bragan
Patricia A. Clickener
Mr. Clinton J. Ecker and Ms. Jacqui Cheng
Ms. Paula Elliott
Brooks and Wanza Grantier
William B. Hinchliff
Mrs. Gabrielle Long
Mr. Zarin Mehta
Mrs. Frank Morrissey
David† and Dolores Nelson
Mr. David Sandfort
David and Judith L. Sensibar
Margaret and Alan Silberman
Mr. Larry Simpson
Dr. & Mrs. R. Solaro
Ms. Mary Walsh
Mr. Kenneth Witkowski
$1,500–$2,499
Dora J. and R. John Aalbregtse
Richard J. Abram and Paul Chandler
Mr. Edward Amrein, Jr. and Mrs. Sara Jones-Amrein
Ms. Marlene Bach
Mr. Carroll Barnes
Mr. & Mrs. William E. Bible
Cassandra L. Book
Mr. James Borkman
Adam Bossov
Ms. Danolda Brennan
Mr. Lee M. Brown and Ms. Pixie Newman
Bradley Cohn
Elk Grove Graphics
Charles and Carol Emmons
Dr. & Mrs. Sanford Finkel, in honor of the Civic horn section
Mr. Conrad Fischer
Mrs. Roslyn K. Flegel
David and Janet Fox
Camillo and Arlene Ghiron
† Deceased
Amber Halvorson
James and Megan Hinchsliff
Clifford Hollander and Sharon Flynn Hollander
Michael and Leigh Huston
Cantor Aviva Katzman and Dr. Morris Mauer
Bob and Marian Kurz
Dona Le Blanc
Dr. Herbert and Francine Lippitz
Ms. Molly Martin
Mr. Aaron Mills
Mr. & Mrs. Dennis Moffat
Edward and Gayla Nieminen
Dianne M. and Robert J. Patterson, Jr.
Mr. & Mrs. Jeffery Piper
Erik and Nelleke Roffelsen
Ms. Cecelia Samans
Mr. David Samson
Jane A. Shapiro
Ms. Denise Stauder
Mr. & Mrs. Salme Steinberg
Walter and Caroline Sueske Charitable Trust
Mr. Peter Vale
Abby and Glen Weisberg
M.L. Winburn
$1,000–$1,499
Anonymous (5)
Ms. Margaret Amato
David and Suzanne Arch
Jon W. and Diane Balke
Mr. & Mrs. John Barnes
Howard and Donna Bass
Marjorie Benton
Ann Blickensderfer
Mr. Thomas Bookey
Mr. Donald Bouseman
Ms. Jeanne Busch
Darren Cahr
Robert and Darden Carr
Drs. Virginia and Stephen Carr
Mr. Rowland Chang
Lisa Chessare
Mr. Ricardo Cifuentes
Mr. & Mrs. Bill Cottle
Constance Cwiok
Mr. Adam Davis
Mr. & Mrs. Barnaby Dinges
Tom Draski
DS&P Insurance Services, Inc.
Mr. & Mrs. Robert Dulski
Judith E. Feldman
Ms. Lola Flamm
Arthur L. Frank, M.D.
Mr. Robert Frisch
Peter Gallanis
Eunice and Perry Goldberg
Enid Goubeaux
Mr. & Mrs. John Hales
Dr. Robert A. Harris
Dr. & Mrs. Jerome Hoeksema
Mr. Matt James
Mr. Randolph T. Kohler
Mr. Steven Kukalis
Ms. Foo Choo Lee
Dr. & Mrs. Stuart Levin
Diane and William F. Lloyd
Mr. † & Mrs. Gerald F. Loftus
Sharon L. Manuel
Mr. & Mrs. William McNally
Mr. Robert Middleton
Stephen W. and Kathleen J. Miller
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Morales
Mrs. Mary Louise Morrison
Catherine Mouly and LeRoy T. Carlson, Jr.
Mr. George Murphy
Mr. Bruce Oltman
Ms. Joan Pantsios
Mr. & Mrs. Gerald L. Pauling II
Kirsten Bedway and Simon Peebler
Ms. Dona Perry
Quinlan & Fabish
Susan Rabe
Dr. Hilda Richards
Dr. Edward Riley
Mary K. Ring
Christina Romero and Rama Kumanduri
Mr. Nicholas Russell†
Ms. Mary Sauer
Mr. & Mrs. Steve Schuette
Gerald and Barbara Schultz
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Scorza
Stephen A. and Marilyn Scott
Mr. & Mrs. James Shapiro
Richard Sikes
Dr. Sabine Sobek
Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Stepansky
Sharon Swanson
Italics indicate individual or family involvement as part of the Trustees or Governing Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Gifts listed as of January 2023
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 17
HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
Ms. Joanne Tarazi
Ms. Joanne C. Tremulis
Mr. & Ms. Terrence Walsh
Mr. & Mrs. Joel Weisman
Ms. Zita Wheeler
In memory of Ira G. Woll
William Zeng
Irene Ziaya and Paul Chaitkin
ENDOWED FUNDS
Anonymous (3)
Cyrus H. Adams Memorial Youth Concert Fund
Dr. & Mrs. Bernard H. Adelson Fund
Marjorie Blum-Kovler Youth Concert Fund
CNA
The Davee Foundation
Frank Family Fund
Kelli Gardner Youth Education Endowment Fund
Mary Winton Green
William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fund for Community Engagement
Richard A. Heise
Peter Paul Herbert Endowment Fund
Julian Family Foundation Fund
The Kapnick Family
Lester B. Knight Charitable Trust
The Malott Family School Concerts Fund
The Eloise W. Martin Endowed Fund in support of the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Negaunee Foundation
Nancy Ranney and Family and Friends
Shebik Community Engagement Programs Fund
Toyota Endowed Fund
The Wallace Foundation
Zell Family Foundation
CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO SCHOLARSHIPS
Members of the Civic Orchestra receive an annual stipend to help offset some of their living expenses during their training in Civic. The following donors have generously underwritten a Civic musician(s) for the 2022–23 season.
Eleven Civic members participate in the Civic Fellowship program, a rigorous artistic and professional development curriculum that supplements their membership in the full orchestra. Major funding for this program is generously provided by The Julian Family Foundation
Nancy A. Abshire
Amanda Kellman, viola
Dr. & Mrs. Bernard H. Adelson Fund
Megan Yeung, viola
Mr. Lawrence Belles and The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation+
Michael Stevens, horn
Sue and Jim Colletti
Hee Yeon Kim,** violin
Lawrence Corry
Jonah Kartman, violin
Robert and Joanne Crown
Income Charitable Fund
Irina Chang, clarinet
Kunjing Dai, viola
Antoni Garrasi, clarinet
James Jihyun Kim, oboe
David Miller, timpani
Bennett Norris, bass
Mr. † & Mrs. David A. Donovan
Jacob Medina, horn
† Deceased ** Civic Orchestra Fellow + Partial Sponsor
Mr. & Mrs. † Allan Drebin and The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation
Benjamin Foerster, bass
Mr. & Mrs. Paul C. Gignilliat
Larissa Mapua, viola
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph B. Glossberg
Michael Leavens, trumpet
Richard and Alice Godfrey
Robbie Herbst, violin
Chet Gougis and Shelley Ochab
Liam Jackson, bassoon
Mary Winton Green
Victor Stahoviak, bass
Jane Redmond Haliday Chair
Hana Takemoto, cello
The Julian Family Foundation
Nelson Mendoza,** violin
Ryan Williamson, horn
Lester B. Knight Charitable Trust
Jaime An, cello
Isaac Hopkins, trumpet
Miles Link, cello
Jake Platt, bass
Crystal Qi, violin
League of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association
Lindsey Sharpe,** cello
Leslie Fund Inc.
Aalia Hanif, flute
Francisco Malespin,** cello
Phillip G. Lumpkin
Dylan Feldpausch,** violin
Mr. Glen Madeja and Ms. Janet Steidl
Abigail Monroe, cello
Italics indicate individual or family involvement as part of the Trustees or Governing Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Gifts listed as of January 2023
18 ONE HUNDRED FOURTH SEASON
HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
Judy and Scott McCue
Andrew Port,** oboe
Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal †
Emily Nardo, violin
Dr. Leo and Catherine Miserendino
Olivia Reyes, bass
Ms. Susan Norvich
Nick Collins, tuba
Benjamin Poirot, tuba
Michael and Margo Oberman
Kyung Yeon Hong, oboe
Sandra and Earl J. Rusnak, Jr.
Sylvia Denecke, horn
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation
Alexander Mullins, bass trombone
Hugo Saavedra,** trombone
The George L. Shields Foundation Inc.
Stephanie Block, viola
Laura Schafer, violin
Haley Slaugh, cello
The David W. and Lucille G. Stotter Chair
Grace Walker, violin
Ruth Miner Swislow
Charitable Fund
Kimberly Bill, violin
Lois and James Vrhel
Endowment Fund
Caleb Edwards, bass
Dr. Marylou Witz
Marian Mayuga,** violin
Anonymous
Diane Yang,** violin
Anonymous
Kina Ono, violin
† Deceased ** Civic Orchestra Fellow + Partial Sponsor
Italics indicate individual or family involvement as part of the Trustees or Governing Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Gifts listed as of January 2023
CSO.ORG/INSTITUTE 19
