Program Book - Civic Centennial Celebration

SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2020

PR ES E NT ED BY THE N E GAUN EE M US I C IN STITUTE , T H E L EAG U E, A N D THE WOM E N ’S BOA R D OF T H E C H ICAG O SYM P HON Y ORC HESTR A ASSOCIATION

THE CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY THE ELIZABETH F. CHENEY FOUNDATION.

C I V I C C E N T E N N I A L C E L E B R AT I O N Elisabeth and William Adams, Penny and John Van Horn Co-chairs

a note from riccardo muti I congratulate the Civic Orchestra of Chicago on its centennial and commend all who are part of its legacy—past, present, and future.

Providing a strong future for music has remained at the core of this ensemble of young artists. They are the hope for the preservation of our culture and represent its highest ideals.

That the word “civic” is part of this orchestra’s name is symbolic.

It indicates that the musician is both a reflection of his or her society and one who can serve and lead within the community.

Music has the ability to bring people together: people who do not speak the same language and otherwise would not understand each other in terms of culture, ethnicity, or religion. Music is our greatest tool. In this orchestra, musicians are instilled with the fundamental civic principles of a participatory, respectful society.

All contribute to the total harmony.

I have experienced the sincere passion for music and community that the members of the Civic Orchestra have in our many rehearsals and performances together throughout the city of Chicago. Their legacy is an inspiration to us all and a hope for the future. To all the alumni and current Civic musicians here tonight and in orchestras around the world, Bravi e altri cento di questi anni!

Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director, Chicago Symphony Orchestra

In honor of the Civic Orchestra’s centennial, Riccardo Muti conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Civic Orchestra of Chicago in a special side-by-side performance on the stage of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to open the 2018–19 season on September 20, 2018.

Photos by Todd Rosenberg

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a note from ken-david masur Dear Friends, What a gift it is to come together this evening to celebrate the legacy and vision of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. I am thrilled to join the family of this storied orchestra during such a special milestone in the ensemble’s history.

Since my first days spent with the Civic Orchestra in May of its 2016–17 season, I have been incredibly inspired by the musicians’ passion and dedication to making extraordinary music and to sharing that music with people here, at Symphony Center, and across the great city of Chicago.

Civic alumni have greeted me warmly on my travels to other orchestras, festivals, and communities around the globe, and their wonderful spirit is a testament to the impact and importance of their Civic Orchestra experience.

Civic members come to the program at a critical time in their development, at the beginning of flourishing careers in the arts, with a fierce devotion to their craft. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association community—including Maestro Riccardo Muti and musicians of the CSO; the remarkable donors, audiences, creative partners such as Yo-Yo Ma, and staff—nurtures these musicians in a way that is unique and special in this country. Moreover, the countless creative approaches these young artists pursue to share music beyond conventional stages and expectations is incredibly uplifting. Through our continued collective support, guidance, and advocacy, we will continue to help the members of Civic to fulfill their dreams as they make meaningful and lasting contributions to the world of music, their society, and future generations.

This evening’s concert is a celebration of the past as well as the bright future that lies ahead. Together, our love and support of the Civic will ensure that the orchestra and its members thrive for years to come.

Welcome, enjoy the performance, and happy birthday, Civic!

Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor, Civic Orchestra of Chicago

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Photo by Adam DeTour

a note from yo-yo ma I began working with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association as the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant in 2010, and for nine years had the honor of getting to know the organization and the city not just as a guest but from the inside.

It has been a privilege to work with the CSOA and its Negaunee Music Institute and to benefit from the wisdom of Joyce and Judson Green, the knowledge of the administrators, and the vision of Maestro Riccardo Muti.

Wherever I go, I ask myself why am I here? What’s the need? And what is the work that will continue afterward? In so many years here, I feel like I have gotten to know the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through many performances and community engagements together. I have also had the wonderful experience of working with so many young people through the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Together, we have thought through the stage between student and professional life, and explored what it means to be a musician, a citizen, and to serve our communities. We have talked about what it means to be a member of a larger group that truly, deeply collaborates, and at the same time act as an individual leader to start something new. We have talked about culture’s ability to express truth, build trust, and to be of profound service to others.

We have tried many things to those ends—Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony without a conductor, the Brandenburg Marathon every fall, the establishment of the Civic Fellowship Program, collaborations throughout Chicago Public Schools, and two Concerts for Peace. The first Concert for Peace brought Greater Chicagoans from 150 zip codes to St. Sabina Church on the South Side to stand together for peace and for each other. The second felt equally profound when we witnessed Civic members collaborating with the families of victims of violence in the Notes for Peace songwriting program—work that I know continues today. As I have watched the Chicago community in many forms, I have seen the power of art help us to understand and heal. And I am proud of those Civic members—like their many colleagues—that I have seen acting as humans first, musicians second, and instrumentalists third.

I commend the Civic Orchestra for its passion and devotion, and I welcome KenDavid Masur as its principal conductor. I have admired him since he was a teenager and have followed his development as a musician and a superb human being. With Ken-David, Civic will begin another great era in its history. I am humbled when I see the support of the CSOA, Civic’s Board, and its donors for its work. I know these young citizen musicians will make great contributions to culture for decades to come.

Yo-Yo Ma

Photo by Jason Bell

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THE CIVIC ORCHESTRA AT 100 by phillip huscher

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t began just over one hundred years ago, with twelve double-spaced typewritten pages from Frederick Stock, the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, about the pressing need for a new direction in American orchestras. “Times have changed,” he wrote, meaning that the musical world was a different place after the end of World War I, “and we must change our methods with them.”

What Stock outlined was nothing less than revolutionary—the founding of a new American school of orchestral musicians, “the first of its kind to be organized on the Western continent,” as he wrote, without overstatement.

When the new Civic Music Student Orchestra, as it was called at the time, was announced in mid-December 1919, the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial entitled “For American Musicians.”

With the war, it said, America discovered it was dependent on Germany not only for drugs and dyes, but also for orchestral players. “We had been filling our orchestras with Germans and Austrians and neglecting the development of American talent.” Now the future looked very different. “The new orchestra,” the Tribune continued, “will be a training school from which every American community that has reached the orchestra stage of development can draw its players.” That first year, five hundred men and women applied for a place in the orchestra; eighty-six were accepted.

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top to bot tom: Chicago Tribune, January 20, 1920 Second CSO Music Director Frederick Stock (Fernand de Gueldre photo)

From the first rehearsal, on January 29, 1920, and in rehearsals held four times each week over the next two months, the original Civic Orchestra began to lay the groundwork for a different kind of symphony orchestra in the United States.

The morning after the first rehearsal, the Tribune printed a photograph of Stock surrounded by six of his young new players, three of them women—a bracing and welcome sight at a time when the Chicago Symphony was made up entirely of men. The future was already looking brighter.

“Orchestra Hall has not held so many smiles in a long, long time,” W.L. Hubbard wrote in the Tribune after the Civic Orchestra’s opening concert on March 29. Following the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, the biggest work on the program, John Wessling, the concertmaster, presented Stock with a baton, in appreciation for what they had accomplished together.

With his new baton, Stock concluded the concert with Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March. Afterward, the Tribune reported, the capacity audience, sharing the musicians’ happiness but also sensing the importance of the occasion, rose and “cheered the young players and their director, Frederick Stock, to the echo.”

From the beginning—and to a certain degree, to this day—the Civic Orchestra has suffered from certain misapprehensions. “Many people believe it to be a student’s orchestra, which it is not at all,” the Tribune critic Edward Moore wrote in 1921. “Instead of being a means of teaching young people how to play, it is a means for teaching young artists how to play together,” he said, echoing Stock’s expressed intent to develop orchestral players, not just musicians. It was an orchestra, in other words, about the building of orchestras. “It is the opening of the door to the utilization of the abundance of splendid material we possess in our young musicians—a material which until now has been left virtually untouched and wasted,” he said. But the Civic was also already an impressive orchestra in its own right.

Within the first two years—giving concerts in Orchestra Hall and other performances scattered around the city—the Civic Orchestra was doing

precisely what it set out to do. After six months, four of its members were graduated into the symphony orchestras of Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland— and into the Chicago Symphony itself, as Wessling moved into the violin section of Chicago’s big orchestra. The second season sent three members off, all of them to the Cleveland Orchestra. Today, hundreds of former Civic Orchestra members have taken positions in orchestras all over the country—in Nashville and Kansas City, San Francisco and Tulsa, Des Moines and Honolulu, at the Metropolitan Opera and the Houston Ballet, and, closer to home, at Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Grant Park Symphony. And over the past century, 164 Civic players have become members of the Chicago Symphony, winning spots in every section of the orchestra. The current CSO roster holds fourteen players who once were members of the Civic Orchestra—from as long ago as the 1950s to as recently as 2012.

Take a look at the stage tonight, a century after Stock’s revolution began, and you will doubtless see many musicians who will end up in major American orchestras around the country. Then look again and listen, and what you will see— and hear—is an orchestra that can afford to be judged “only by the most uncompromising critical yardstick,” as one critic predicted nearly a century ago. That is the true measure of its success and the mark of Stock’s accomplishment—the creation of an orchestra that was in fact “the first of its kind,” as he claimed one hundred years ago, and remains one-of-a-kind to this day.

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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C I V I C C E N T E N N I A L C E L E B R AT I O N Elisabeth and William Adams, Penny and John Van Horn Co-chairs

N E GAU N E E M U S I C I N S T I T U T E B OA R D Liisa Thomas Chair Lori Julian Vice Chair

L E AG U E O F T H E C H I C AG O SY M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A A S S O C I AT I O N Sue Bridge President Cheryl Istvan Acting Vice President, Fundraising

W O M E N ’ S B OA R D O F T H E C H I C AG O SY M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A A S S O C I AT I O N Shelley Ochab President

CIVIC CENTENNIAL COMMIT TEE Dora and John Aalbregtse Nancy Abshire Jayne Alofs Katie Barber James Borkman Sue Bridge Carol Brosk Judy Colandro-Johnson Sharon Conway Regine Corrado Juli Crabtree Madlyn Daniel Mimi Duginger Charles Emmons Hazel Fackler Judy Feldman Chester A. Gougis Jessica Jagielnik 8

Kathleen Jordan Lori Julian Jerry Kaplan Sue McCandless Claretta Meier Mimi Murley Margo Oberman Liz Parker Mary Plauché Sharon Quigley Mary Rafferty Courtney Shea Steve Shebik Elizabeth Shelly Kim Shepherd Kathy Solaro Susie Stein Barbara Wright-Pryor

THE CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO’S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY THE ELIZABETH F. CHENEY FOUNDATION. The Civic Orchestra of Chicago thanks the following sponsors and contributors for their support of the Civic Centennial Celebration.

DIAMOND Elisabeth and William Adams Robin and Richard Colburn Lori Julian

Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Penny and John Van Horn Lisa and Paul Wiggin

P L AT I N U M Steven and Megan Shebik

Terrence and Laura Truax

FR I E N D S O F T H E C I V I C C E N T E N N I A L C E L E B R AT I O N John and Dora Aalbregtse Anonymous Barbara Asner Christopher and Katherine Barber Ann Blickensderfer Laurence and Patricia Booth James Borkman Robert J. Buford Brian Burrows Robert Callahan, in honor of John von Rhein Tim and Bette Anne Duffy Jeanne and Reese Elledge Charles and Carol Emmons Hazel Fackler Peter Gallanis Ann and John Grube John Hart and Carol Prins Kyle Harvey Judy Istock Cheryl Istvan List as of February 14, 2020

Jan and Bill Jentes Jared Kaplan and Maridee Quanbeck Joe Klingelhoffer and Mary Klingelhoffer Stolper William Klingelhoffer and Jill Brindel Robert Marks David E. McNeel Nick McWilliams Vanessa Moss Eileen Murray Mimi and Robert Murley Mr. & Mrs. Anthony Nichols The Osprey Foundation Marian Pawlick Mary Plauché Sidney Robinson Earl and Sandy Rusnak Cecilia Samans Shea Family Foundation Donald and Nancy Woulfe Helen and Sam Zell 9

THE CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY THE ELIZABETH F. CHENEY FOUNDATION.

ONE HUNDRED FIRST SE ASON

CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO KEN-DAVID MASUR Principal Conductor

Sunday, March 1, 2020, at 7:00

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION BENEFIT CONCERT Ken-David Masur Conductor Yo-Yo Ma Cello berlioz

Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9

ravel

La valse

dvořák

Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104

Allegro Adagio ma non troppo Finale: Allegro moderato yo-yo ma

Please note that this performance is being recorded and broadcast live on WFMT 98.7 FM. There will be no intermission.

The Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s Centennial Celebration Concert is generously sponsored by The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation.

The appearance of Yo-Yo Ma as soloist on this evening’s concert is made possible by Judson and Joyce Green.

The Centennial Campaign for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concerts for Young People is supported by a generous lead gift from The Julian Family Foundation.

This program is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

The WFMT 98.7 FM broadcast of this concert is generously sponsored by The Julian Family Foundation.

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comments by phillip huscher hector berlioz

Born December 11, 1803; Côte-Saint-André, France Died March 8, 1869; Paris, France

Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 composed 1843–44 first performance February 3, 1844, Paris.

The composer conducting

i n s t r u m e n tat i o n two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets and two cornets, three trombones,

This music is what Berlioz was able to save for the concert hall from his troubled opera Benvenuto Cellini. The Roman Carnival Overture is not literally the overture to Berlioz’s opera; that music, too, has become an orchestral favorite, and to hear Berlioz’s own first-hand report, it was the only music applauded at the premiere of the opera on September 10, 1838, at the Paris Opera.

“The rest was hissed with exemplary precision and energy,” he later recalled.

But even after the humiliation of failing at Europe’s most important opera house had begun to fade, and the work itself was virtually forgotten, Berlioz didn’t give up on it.

In the early 1840s, when his career as a conductor temporarily overtook that as a composer, Berlioz pulled some of the best music from the opera and fashioned this Roman Carnival Overture to add to his concert programs. For Berlioz, it was only a small souvenir of a major work, but from the very first performance 12

timpani, cymbals, tambourines, triangle, strings a p p r ox i m at e performance time 9 minutes

under his baton in 1844, it found immense success with the public. The failure of Benvenuto Cellini continued to haunt and mystify Berlioz: “I have just re-read my poor score carefully and with the strictest impartiality,” he wrote in his Memoirs, “and I cannot help recognizing that it contains a variety of ideas, an energy and exuberance and a brilliance of color such as I may perhaps never find again, and which deserved a better fate.”

In the meantime, the Roman Carnival Overture enjoyed an untroubled and highly successful career.

The original overture to Benvenuto Cellini gave Berlioz the pattern he would use for the Roman Carnival and all subsequent overtures: a brief allegro introducing a larger slow section, crowned by the return of the allegro. Here the fast music comes from the Mardi Gras finale to act 1; the slow melody is Cellini’s tender and expansive aria, now sung by the english horn. The contrast of love song with joyous dance music is highly effective, the orchestration is brilliant even by Berlioz’s standards, and, like Beethoven’s Leonore overtures, it conveys a sense of drama the opera itself rarely achieves.

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maurice r avel

Born March 7, 1875; Ciboure, France Died December 28, 1937; Paris, France

La valse (Choreographic poem for orchestra) composed 1919–20 first performance December 12, 1920; Paris, France

i n s t r u m e n tat i o n three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and english horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,

In 1911, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales were intended as a loving tribute to the “useless occupation” of social dancing.

By 1919, when he wrote La valse, the world was a changed place, and after the war the public had lost patience with mere frivolity.

La valse is not the piece Ravel planned to write. In 1906, he began to sketch Wien (Vienna), a tribute to Johann Strauss, Jr. and “. . . a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which is mingled in my mind the idea of the fantastic whirl of destiny.” This is still true of the music Ravel finally composed in 1919, at the request of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. But fate now made the waltz a bitter reminder of a vanished era and newsreels showed that Vienna was no longer a city in its glory.

Ravel finished La valse in 1920. It wasn’t what Diaghilev expected and he

bass drum, cymbals, triangle, snare drum, castanets, tam-tam, antique cymbals, two harps, strings a p p r ox i m at e performance time 13 minutes

refused to stage it: “. . . this is not a ballet; it is a portrait of a ballet, it is a painting of a ballet.” The two men never worked together again. Nonetheless, Ravel published the piece as a “choreographic poem for orchestra,” and it was finally danced in Antwerp in 1926 and in Paris in 1928 by Ida Rubinstein’s troupe, which also gave the premiere of Boléro just two days later.

The first page of the score is marked “mouvement de Valse viennoise.” The music is a masterful evocation of the evasions and collisions between a brilliant surface and dangerous undercurrents.

Ravel provided a brief scenario: Swirling clouds afford glimpses, through rifts, of waltzing couples.

The clouds scatter little by little; one can distinguish an immense hall with a whirling crowd. The scene grows progressively brighter. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo. An imperial court, about 1855.

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antonín dvoř ák

Born September 8, 1841; Nelahozeves, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904; Prague, Bohemia

Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104 composed November 8, 1894– February 9, 1895; revised June 1895

first performance March 19, 1896; London, England. The composer conducting

clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, strings

i n s t r u m e n tat i o n solo cello, two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two

a p p r ox i m at e performance time 40 minutes

It was Victor Herbert, the composer of Babes in Toyland and Naughty Marietta, who inspired Dvořák to write the most beloved cello concerto in the repertoire. We owe this historical curiosity, along with some of Dvořák’s most popular music, to Jeannette M. Thurber, the wife of a New York wholesale grocer, who exhausted her husband’s millions establishing an English-language opera company that folded and a national conservatory of music that flourished long enough to entice Dvořák to settle temporarily in the New World. The composer agreed to serve as director of her school for $15,000, and when he arrived in 1892, Victor Herbert was the head of the cello department. Herbert, who had come to the United States from Vienna only six years before, was highly regarded as a cellist, conductor, and composer, though he hadn’t yet written the first of the forty operettas that would make him enormously popular.

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For several years, Dvořák had been unmoved by a request from his friend Hanuš Wihan, the cellist of the Bohemian Quartet, to write a cello concerto. During his second year at the National Conservatory, Dvořák attended the premiere of Victor Herbert’s Second Cello Concerto, given by the New York Philharmonic on March 9, 1894. Dvořák enthusiastically applauded Herbert’s concerto, and he heard something in it that made him think, for the first time, that there was important music to be written for solo cello and orchestra. This concerto would prove to be the last major symphonic work of his career.

On April 28, 1894, Dvořák signed a new two-year contract with the conservatory. After spending the summer holiday in Bohemia, he returned to New York on November 1; a week later he began this concerto. While he was writing the second movement, he received word that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová (with whom he had once been in love), was seriously ill. As a tribute to her, he quoted at length one of her favorite melodies, “Kéž duch můj sám”

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(Leave me alone), the first of his Four Songs, op. 82. He completed the concerto on February 9, at 11:30 in the morning.

After the premiere of the New World Symphony in 1893, Dvořák said, “I know that if I had not seen America I never would have written my new symphony.” The cello concerto shows no such outward signs of the composer’s American experience—it doesn’t imitate the rhythms and melodies of the native music he heard in the United States—and has often been accepted as an early warning sign of his homesickness. In fact, once Dvořák returned to Bohemia for the summer of 1895, with his new concerto in his bags, he realized that he couldn’t leave his homeland again; in August, he wrote to Mrs. Thurber asking to be released from his contract. Since he had already contributed so much to American music, she could not refuse. The unveiling of the Cello Concerto, the last of Dvořák’s American products, belongs to the final chapter of his life: the premiere was given in London in March 1896, with the composer conducting.

The literature for solo cello and orchestra isn’t extensive. At best, Dvořák can’t have known more than the single concertos by Haydn (a second was discovered in 1961) and Schumann, the first of Saint-Saëns’s two, and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra.

Dvořák had written one long-winded cello concerto in his youth. Now, with little previous inclination and few useful models, Dvořák gave the form its finest example. Brahms is reported to have said, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this?

Had I known, I would have written one long ago.”

T he first movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is as impressive as anything in the composer’s output. The music is long and expansive. The orchestral exposition commits the textbook sin of traveling to a foreign key for the second subject—a luxury traditionally saved for the soloist—but Dvořák’s theme is so magnificent (the critic Donald Tovey called it “one of the most beautiful passages ever written for the horn”) that it can justify the risk. Dvořák later admitted the melody meant a great deal to him. Once the soloist enters, the music grows richer and more fanciful. The development section dissolves into simple lyricism. By the recapitulation, Dvořák is writing his own rules: he bypasses his first theme and goes straight for the big horn melody, as if he couldn’t wait to hear it again. The movement is all the stronger for its daring and unconventional architecture.

Dvořák’s progress on the slow movement was sidetracked by the memory of Josefina, and, as a result, the music he wrote is interrupted midway by the poignant song she loved. The depth of his feeling for her, often debated and sometimes denied, is painfully clear. Josefina died soon after Dvořák permanently returned to Bohemia, and, hearing the news, he took this jaunty rondo finale down from the shelf and added a long, contemplative coda as a memorial. The concerto still ends in high spirits, but it’s no longer the same piece Dvořák took home from the New World.

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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profiles Ken-David Masur Conductor In this 2019–20 season, Ken-David Masur celebrates the beginning of his tenure as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Masur has conducted distinguished orchestras around the world, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago and Detroit symphonies, l’Orchestre National de France, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the National Philharmonic of Russia, and orchestras throughout the United States, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, and Scandinavia.

In addition to regular appearances at Ravinia, Tanglewood, and the Hollywood Bowl, Masur has conducted internationally at festivals such as the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Colmar International Festival in France, Denis Matsuev’s White Lilac Festival in Russia, the Tongyeong Festival in South Korea, and the TV Asahi Festival in Tokyo, Japan.

Masur recently concluded a landmark tenure as associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he led numerous concerts, at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, of new and standard works featuring guest artists such as Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Joshua Bell, Louis Lortie, Kirill Gerstein, and Nikolaj Luganski. For eight years, Masur served as principal guest conductor of 16

the Munich Symphony, and previously as associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony as well as resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony.

Masur is passionate about the growth, encouragement, and application of contemporary music and has conducted and commissioned dozens of new works, many of which have premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, an annual summer music festival in New York City founded and directed by Masur and his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur.

Music education and working with the next generation of young artists being of major importance to him, he has led orchestras and master classes at the New England Conservatory, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and at leading universities and conservatories in Asia, Europe, and South America.

Ken-David Masur has recently made recordings with the English Chamber Orchestra and violinist Fanny Clamagirand, and with the Stavanger Symphony. As founding music director of the Bach Society Orchestra and Chorus at Columbia University, he toured Germany and released a critically acclaimed album of symphonies and cantatas by W.F. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, and J.S. Bach. WQXR recently named Masur’s recording of Gisle Kverndokk’s Symphonic Dances with the Stavanger Symphony one of the Best New Classical Releases of July 2018. Masur received a Grammy Award nomination from the Latin Recording Academy in the Best Classical Album of the Year category for his work as a producer of the album Sálon Buenos Aires.

Photo by Adam DeTour

profiles

Yo-Yo Ma Cello Yo-Yo Ma’s multifaceted career is testament to his enduring belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works from the cello repertoire, collaborating with communities and institutions to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Ma strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.

In August 2018, Ma began a new journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in one sitting in thirty-six locations around the world, including Chicago.

The Bach Project continues Ma’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to explore music as a means not only to share and express meaning, but also as his contribution to a conversation about how culture can help us to imagine and build a stronger society and a better future.

It was this belief that inspired Ma to establish Silkroad, a collective of artists from around the world who create music that engages their many traditions. In addition to presenting performances in venues from Suntory Hall to the Hollywood Bowl, Silkroad collaborates with museums and universities to develop training programs for teachers, musicians, and learners of all ages.

Throughout his career, Yo-Yo Ma has sought to expand the classical Photo by Jason Bell

cello repertoire, frequently performing lesser-known music of the twentieth century and commissions of new concertos and recital pieces. He has premiered works by a diverse group of composers, among them Osvaldo Golijov, Leon Kirchner, Zhao Lin, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Giovanni Sollima, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and John Williams.

In addition to his work as a performing artist, Ma partners with communities and institutions from Chicago to Guangzhou to develop programs that champion culture’s power to transform lives and forge a more connected world.

Among his many roles, he is artistic director of the annual Youth Music Culture Guangdong Festival and a UN Messenger of Peace, and is the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees. From 2010 to 2019, Ma served as the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Negaunee Music Institute, where the programs and initiatives he established continue to be integral to the Civic Orchestra’s curriculum. Ma’s discography of over 100 albums (including nineteen Grammy Award winners) reflects his wide-ranging interests.

Yo-Yo Ma plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 “Davidoff ” Stradivarius.

Yo-Yo Ma will reunite with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile for the first time in nearly a decade for the Not Our First Goat Rodeo tour, including a performance in Millennium Park on August 13, 2020.

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civic orchestra alumni perspectives JASON SNIDER  Class of 1998

“ There were so many rewarding and challenging programs that we played!

Nothing was off limits to us, and I remember the orchestra played quite well.

We worked with so many fine conductors, and I got my first taste of what playing in a great orchestra with great conductors was like—Barenboim, Boulez, Mehta, Runnicles, Spano, and others. I gained so much from working with the Chicago Symphony musicians as well—master classes, lessons, and coachings that I remember to this day!”

Horn, Boston Symphony Orchestra

AMY HESS  Class of 2015

“ Civic was the first orchestra I played in that had a real sense of self [ . . . ] there was a heightened atmosphere of collective purpose and camaraderie. We expected each other to show up prepared and ready to put forth our best effort, and I felt strengthened knowing that we were all on the same journey of figuring out what our futures in music would look like. It was this environment that nurtured my love for orchestral playing.”

Viola, Lyric Opera Orchestra

JOSÉ MARTINEZ  Class of 2017

“ One of the most memorable experiences during my time in the Civic Orchestra was playing Reinhold Glière’s epic Symphony no. 3 under Jay Friedman. That was my last performance with the group (February 28, 2017).

Having to leave the USA a couple of months later in order to start a new life back in Spain made it very emotional for me. The music of that concert still resounds in my brain. Without any doubt, the whole concert situation that day will be a highlight of my life forever.”

Principal Tuba, National Orchestra of Spain

7,000+

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171

Civic Orchestra alumni

Alumni who are currently members of the CSO

Alumni have gone on to become CSO musicians

civic orchestra alumni perspectives

LARRY LARSON  Class of 1983

“ Playing in the Civic Orchestra provided such a boost and a kick in the pants as to how to deal with life in a symphony orchestra. From the guidance we received in our one-on-one lessons with Mr. Herseth, to the weekly trumpet sectionals with him on repertoire, and of course the rehearsal process of putting together very heavy repertoire in a relatively short amount of time, we all really got a sense of what to expect when we landed our first jobs. The repertoire we covered and the colleagues who I met and performed with over those two seasons made lasting and lifelong impressions on me.”

Principal Trumpet, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony

SONIA MANTELL  Class of 2016

“ My experience with Civic allowed me to become a better orchestral musician.

Rehearsing and performing great works with great guest conductors, as well as the open rehearsals with Maestro Muti, were very fulfilling and eye-opening.

Playing with Civic also allowed me to build connections with members of the CSO . . . I also appreciated the community engagement projects we did throughout the year; those were moments when I felt like we were collectively making an impact with our craft.”

GREG ZUBER  Class of 1982

“ Playing with the Civic Orchestra was a great opportunity that allowed me to get high-level performing experience with exceptional colleagues and gave me confidence going forward with my aspirations.”

Principal Percussion, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Cello, Lyric Opera Orchestra

20,000+

40+

Audience members reached each season

Concerts each season

u t o p t o b o t t o m : Members of the 2018–19 Civic Orchestra of Chicago gather for a photo on the Armour Stage of Orchestra Hall. (Photo by Todd Rosenberg) | The first image of the Civic Music Student Orchestra, with its founder and music director Frederick Stock, ca. March 1920. (William T. Barnum photo)

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profiles

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 Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur, musicians of the CSO, and some of today’s most luminary conductors including CSO Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti.

From 2010 to 2019, Yo-Yo Ma was a leading mentor to Civic musicians and staff 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-first century.

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 field 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 fifteen Civic members are designated as Civic Fellows and participate in intensive leadership training that is designed to build and diversity their creative and professional skills.

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 offers 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 information on the Institute and its programs, please visit cso.org/institute.

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civic orchestra artistic leadership Coaches from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Robert Chen Concertmaster The Louis C. Sudler Chair, endowed by an anonymous benefactor Baird Dodge Principal Second Violin Li-Kuo Chang Acting Principal Viola The Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair, endowed by an anonymous benefactor John Sharp Principal Cello The Eloise W. Martin Chair Richard Hirschl Cello Daniel Katz Cello Brant Taylor Cello Alexander Hanna Principal Bass The David and Mary Winton Green Principal Bass Chair

Sarah Bullen Principal Harp Emma Gerstein Flute Jennifer Gunn Flute and Piccolo Scott Hostetler Oboe and English Horn Stephen Williamson Principal Clarinet William Buchman Assistant Principal Bassoon Daniel Gingrich Associate Principal Horn Mark Ridenour Assistant Principal Trumpet Jay Friedman Principal Trombone The Lisa and Paul Wiggin Principal Trombone Chair Charles Vernon Bass Trombone

Gene Pokorny Principal Tuba The Arnold Jacobs Principal Tuba Chair, endowed by Christine Querfeld David Herbert Principal Timpani The Clinton Family Fund Chair Vadim Karpinos Assistant Principal Timpani, Percussion Cynthia Yeh Principal Percussion The Dinah Jacobs (Mrs. Donald P. Jacobs) Principal Percussion Chair Mary Sauer Former Principal Keyboard Peter Conover Principal Librarian

In honor of the Civic Orchestra’s centennial, Riccardo Muti conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Civic Orchestra of Chicago in a special side-by-side performance on the stage of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to open the 2018–19 season on September 20, 2018. (Photo by Todd Rosenberg)

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profiles

Civic Orchestra of Chicago

Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor violins John Heffernan* Concertmaster Genevieve Smelser Assistant Concertmaster Joy Vucekovich Principal Elliot Lee* Assistant Principal Miguel Aguirre+ Jamie Andrusyak Fahad Awan Joshua Burca Hannah Cartwright Hannah Christiansen* Joe DeAngelo Diego Diaz Queenie Edwards+ Alexandria Hill Paula Johannesen+ Luke Lentini Amanda Marshall Marianne Martinoli Zoë Merrill Joanna Nerius+ Tabitha Oh* Maki Omori Rachel Peters Anna Piotrowski Owen Ruff Arianna Schickel Naomi Schrank Kristen Seto Brent Taghap Sofie Yang+ viol as Benjamin Wagner Principal Chloé Thominet Assistant Principal Elizabeth Bellisario Ye Jin Goo Roslyn Green+ Rachel Mostek Sofia Nikas Enrique Olvera Hanna Pederson Bethany Pereboom*

Taisiya Sokolova Seth Van Embden cellos Philip Bergman* Principal Najette Abouelhadi Assistant Principal Eva María Barbado Gutiérrez James Cooper Noémie Golubovic Jordan Gunn Dara Hankins Jingjing Hu Martin Meyer Denielle Wilson+ basses Lindsey Orcutt Principal Isaac Polinsky Assistant Principal Adam Attard Nick DeLaurentis Emmett Jackson Wesley Jones Maggie Lin Vincent Trautwein flutes Evan Fojtik Alexandria Hoffman* Eric Leise oboes Erik Andrusyak Samuel Waring Laura Yawney* cl arinets Laurie Blanchet Nicolas Chona Juan Gabriel Olivares* bassoons Chia-Yu Hsu Nicholas Ritter Ben Roidl-Ward

horns Abigail Black Fiona Chisholm Stephanie Diebel+ Kayla Howell Katherine Seybold trumpets Matthew Baker+ David Nakazono Dan Price Michael Terrasi trombones Brian Johnston Ignacio del Rey bass trombone Robinson Schulze tuba Jarrett McCourt timpani Jason Yoder percussion Joseph Bricker Simón Gómez Gallego+ Taylor Hampton Benjamin Krauss Boyan Tantchev harp Eleanor Kirk Jordan W. Thomas+ librarian Elizabeth Bellisario * Civic Fellow + Civic Alumni

Tonight’s preconcert performance in the rotunda was given by ATLYS, a touring string quartet of Civic Orchestra alumni including Jinty McTavish (violin, 2015–17), Rita Andrade (viola, 2013–16), and Genevieve Tabby (cello, 2014–16), with Sabrina Tabby (violin).

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