RESPIGHI, TARRODI & SIBELIUS 2
Ken-David Masur CONDUCTOR
JUNE 2 | 7:30
The 2024–25 Civic Orchestra season is generously sponsored by Lori Julian for the Julian Family Foundation, which also provides major funding for the Civic Fellowship program.
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH SEASON
CIVIC ORCHESTRA OF CHICAGO
KEN-DAVID MASUR Principal Conductor
The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair
Monday, June 2, 2025, at 7:30
Ken-David Masur Conductor
RESPIGHI Fountains of Rome
The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn
Triton Fountain in Early Morning—
The Fountain of Trevi at Midday—
The Fountain at the Villa Medici at Sunset
TARRODI Liguria
INTERMISSION
SIBELIUS
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43
Allegretto
Andante, ma rubato
Vivacissimo—
Finale: Allegro moderato
The 2024–25 Civic Orchestra season is generously sponsored by Lori Julian for the Julian Family Foundation, which also provides major funding for the Civic Fellowship program.
Major support for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago is also provided by John and Leslie Burns; Robert and Joanne Crown Income Charitable Fund; Nancy Dehmlow; Leslie Fund, Inc.; the Maval Foundation; Judy and Scott McCue; Leo and Catherine Miserendino; Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation; the George L. Shields Foundation, Inc.; and Paul and Lisa Wiggin.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher and Laura Emerick
OTTORINO RESPIGHI
Born July 9, 1879; Bologna, Italy
Died April 18, 1936; Rome, Italy
Fountains of Rome
COMPOSED
1915–16
FIRST PERFORMANCE
March 11, 1917; Rome, Italy
INSTRUMENTATION
2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and english horn, 2 clarinets and bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bells, chimes, 2 harps, piano, celesta, organ, strings
APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME 15 minutes
Ottorino Respighi came to this country for the first time in December 1925. He was already well known among music lovers for Fountains of Rome, a brilliant tone poem he completed in 1916, three years after he settled in Rome. Respighi and his wife, Elsa, a soprano, began their American sojourn in New York City, where he played his new piano concerto with the Philharmonic under Willem Mengelberg. Pines of Rome, a sequel to Fountains of Rome, was to be given its
world premiere later that season by the Philharmonic under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, who was already one of Respighi’s greatest champions.
After New York, Respighi traveled to Chicago to appear with the Chicago Symphony, which had already welcomed a number of composers as guest conductors, including Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev, and Respighi’s fellow countryman, Ferruccio Busoni. Respighi was the rare artist who held the stage in three different roles—as composer, conductor, and pianist, “a dangerous test for any man to subject himself to,” the Chicago Post said the day after his January 29 debut. “But he is one of those who, with proper humility, has estimated his powers accurately.”
Respighi had caused a stir in New York when he spoke bluntly with a Musical America reporter: “Atonality? Thank heaven, that’s done for! The future course of music? Who can say? I believe that every composer should first of all be individual.” He went on to clarify that for him, dissonance, like polytonality, had its place—“as a means to expression it has important uses.”
For many in the Chicago audience who
this page: Ottorino Respighi, photo by Ghitta Carell (1899–1972), 1934. Gallica Digital Library | opposite page: The Villa Medici in Rome, tempera on parchment, by Gaspar van Wittel (1653–1736), 1685. Museo Nazionale di San Martino, Naples, Italy. Photo by De Agostini, Getty Images
had already heard some of Schoenberg’s thorniest music, including the U.S. premiere of his Five Pieces for Orchestra in 1913, Respighi’s works came as a welcome sign of modernism in moderation.
The novelty of Respighi’s language is largely lost on audiences today. Some of his most radical sound effects, such as a phonograph recording of a nightingale’s song in Pines of Rome, which were once hotly debated, can seem passé nearly a century later. The imagination of his orchestral writing, rivaled only by Ravel among early twentieth-century composers, is easily overlooked in the electronic age. His brilliant color palette and the powerful sweep of his writing long ago became the lingua franca of film scores. (Even though
Respighi’s work is no longer in fashion as concert music, his is still the style of choice for epic adventure movies—John Williams, today’s most celebrated film composer, claims Respighi is one of his primary inspirations.)
Respighi’s U.S. tour was a triumph. In Chicago, audiences embraced his appearance, his stage presence, considerable pianistic skills, intoxicating music, and ability to coax powerful performances from the orchestra.
Although he was born in Bologna and studied in Saint Petersburg (with Rimsky-Korsakov) and Berlin (with Max Bruch), it was Rome that became Respighi’s most successful musical subject soon after he settled
there in 1913. Respighi spent the rest of his life in Rome and taught at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia for many years; his longest absences were his two North American tours.
Like most visitors to Rome, Respighi was struck by the city’s many magnificent fountains (the official count stands at over 2,000), a few of them among Rome’s most important cultural monuments. “I wonder why no one has ever thought of making the fountains of Rome ‘sing,’ ” he wrote to his wife when he started to compose this music, “for they are, after all, the very voice of the city.” This association dates back to the time of Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, who promoted the expansion of the extensive system of aqueducts that fed fountains both monumental and modest in size—in plazas, at major intersections, and in home gardens. For his first orchestral impression of Rome, Respighi selected just four fountains, visiting each one at a different time of day.
Together, the four pieces form a richly atmospheric portrait of a day in the city. They owe much of their idiomatic coloristic effect to the teachings of Rimsky-Korsakov as well as a general impressionistic style to Debussy and a stylistic bent to Richard Strauss, whose own tone poems had recently set a new standard for the genre. Unlike those composers, Respighi wasn’t so much a pioneer as a great assimilator who had the rare skill of combining the best of what he heard around him and producing works of strong individuality. As a result, Fountains of Rome eventually
enjoyed a popularity equal to that of Sheherazade, La mer, and Don Juan.
Respighi begins in a gentle landscape at dawn at the site of the fountain of Valle Giulia. “Droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh damp mists of a new Roman day,” he writes.
With a rude blast of horns, we suddenly stand before Bernini’s great Triton Fountain, one of the glories of the Roman baroque. Respighi perfectly captures Bernini’s mythological demigod blowing on his conch shell—even if it’s car horns that we now associate with the Triton, located at one of Rome’s busiest intersections. Years after Respighi’s death, his widow commented that her husband had captured the sensuous sounds of Rome “before these dreadful automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, and police sirens ruined it all.” Respighi was certainly thinking of a more pastoral age when the traffic consisted of “troops of naiads and tritons, who come running up, pursuing each other, and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water.”
It is now midday, and we move to Rome’s most famous fountain, the Trevi Fountain, celebrated in literature and film (from Three Coins in the Fountain, inspired by the legend that the visitor who tosses coins into the fountain will return to Rome, to Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg’s then-scandalous, water-logged embrace). Respighi matches the triumphant splendor and radiance of the eighteenth-century
sculpture with “Neptune’s chariot drawn by the sea horses and followed by a train of sirens and tritons.” He finishes the day at the Villa Medici at the “nostalgic hour of the setting sun.” This is the fountain that the Medici family dynasty commissioned in 1587 and that
ANDREA TARRODI
Born October 9, 1981; Stockholm, Sweden
Liguria COMPOSED 2012
FIRST PERFORMANCE
April 20, 2012; Stockholm, Sweden. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding conducting
INSTRUMENTATION
3 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and english horn, 2 clarinets and E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, large suspended cymbal, large tam-tam, chimes, vibraphone, xylophone, guiro, crotales), harp, strings
APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME
10 minutes
Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi often refers to colors in the titles of her works, for instance, . . . we’d roll and fall in green (2011), Serenade in Seven Colours (2013), and Nocturne in Blue and Green (2018).
Corot painted in the nineteenth century. “The air is full of the sound of tolling bells, twittering birds, and rustling leaves. Then all melts away gently in the silence of the night.”
—Phillip Huscher
That tendency is likely the result of having synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense (such as hearing) involuntarily triggers an experience in another sense (such as seeing). Or, in Tarrodi’s case, hearing a specific musical note and seeing a particular color.
“I have synesthesia, so I approach music from a visual perspective,” Tarrodi said in an interview with BBC Music Magazine. “Different notes and chords have different colors. When I was young, I was initially torn between painting and composing, and I still approach music through an artistic lens. I do sketches and drawings of the shape of the music before I write it and then always do a painting or illustration on the scores when I complete them.”
That process came into play when she wrote Liguria, inspired by an Italian seascape.
Commissioned by the Swedish national radio and written for the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra,
Liguria has been performed many times in Sweden and abroad. In 2017 it was performed at the BBC Proms. In a program note, Tarrodi wrote:
On the northwest coast of Italy, by the Ligurian Sea, are five fishing villages clinging to the steep cliffs. These are called Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare; between the villages are paths connecting them through the mountains. In August 2011 I visited this area, and as soon as we arrived, I knew that I wanted to write music about it.
The result is a work that can be described as a “walking tour” among the villages: Riomaggiore with its high waves; Manarola with its clock tower; Monterosso al Mare, where sunbathers hurried to secure a place on the beach and open up their colorful beach umbrellas, as if in a scene in a Fellini film; Vernazza with its watchtower and cliffs; and lastly, Corniglia, where the night sky was filled with stars.
Based in Stockholm, Tarrodi has written for a variety of instrumentations, orchestras, and choirs. After she won a Swedish composition contest in 2010 for her orchestral piece Zephyros, her music began to be performed by ensembles around the world. She is composer-in-residence at the Nordic Chamber Orchestra.
Tarrodi’s music is tonal and often described as impressionistic. She said,
There’s always been the same feeling in my music, but I’ve evolved technically over the years and have learned to express myself better. I prefer writing for orchestra because of the huge palette of sounds available.
Writing for chamber ensembles, though, helps me to learn skills and techniques, which I can then translate to my orchestral writing. When you write chamber music, you can really focus on the details because you often tend to have more time to do so.
—Laura Emerick
previous page: Andrea Tarrodi, photo by Nicklas Thegerström | opposite page: Jean Sibelius, portrait painted by his brother-in-law, Eero Järnefelt (1863–1937), 1892
JEAN SIBELIUS
Born December 8, 1865; Tavastehus, Finland
Died September 20, 1957; Järvenpää, Finland
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43
COMPOSED 1902
FIRST PERFORMANCE
March 8, 1902; Helsinki, Finland. The composer conducting
INSTRUMENTATION
2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, strings
APPROXIMATE PERFORMANCE TIME
44 minutes
The spell of Italy often has a salutary effect on artists from the North. Goethe regularly recommended making the trip to Italy—
Mendelssohn took his advice and returned with his Italian Symphony. Berlioz toured Italy against his better judgment and ended up staying fifteen months, addicted to the countryside (Harold in Italy is the souvenir he brought us). Wagner claimed he got the idea for the opening of Das Rheingold in La Spezia on the western seacoast. Tchaikovsky later nursed a broken spirit in Italy and took home his Capriccio italien, as untroubled as any music he ever wrote.
Jean Sibelius went to Italy in 1901. Even then, his name suggested northern lights and bitter cold to people who had not yet heard his music. To those who had—in particular the overly popular Finlandia, first performed at a nationalistic pageant in 1899—Sibelius was the voice of Finland. But in Italy, Sibelius’s thoughts turned away from his homeland, and he contemplated a work based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. While staying in the sun-drenched seaside town of Rapallo, he toyed with a four-movement tone poem, Festival, based on the same “Stone Guest” theme that Mozart had treated in Don Giovanni. Nothing ever came of these ideas, but he did begin his Second Symphony, which he finished once back in Finland.
We should not credit Italy alone with the warmth and ease of Sibelius’s Second Symphony, for years later, he would return there only to write Tapiola, the bleakest of all his works. But Sibelius did love Italy (he later admitted it was second only to his native Finland), and his extended stay there in 1901 certainly had a profound effect on Finland’s first great composer. His sketchbooks confirm that ideas conceived in Rapallo turn up throughout the Second Symphony, and even Sibelius himself admitted that Don Juan stalks the second movement.
Sibelius is more interesting as a composer than as a national voice. Ultimately, the qualities that give his music its own quite singular cast—the bracing sonorities and craggy textures and the quirky but compelling way his music moves forward—are the product of musical genius, not Finnish heritage. It is true that as a schoolboy, he developed an abiding interest in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, and that he knew, loved, and sometimes remembered his native folk song when writing music. But he did not even learn Finnish until he was a young man (having grown up in a Swedish-speaking household), and his patriotism was fueled not so much by landscape and congenital pride but by marriage into a powerful and politically active family. It is precisely because Sibelius’s music is not outwardly nationalistic (of the picture-postcard variety) that it is so profound—specific and evocative yet also timeless and universal.
The symphony was the most important genre for Sibelius’s musical thoughts at a time when the form didn’t seem to suit most composers. Strauss, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók, for example, all wrote symphonies of various kinds, but their pioneering work was done elsewhere. The one contemporary of Sibelius whose symphonies are played today, Gustav Mahler, took the symphony to mean something quite different. Sibelius and Mahler met in
Helsinki in 1907, and their words on the subject, often quoted, suggest that this was the only time their paths would ever cross, literally or figuratively. Sibelius always remembered their encounter:
When our conversation touched on the essence of symphony, I said that I admired its severity and style and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs. This was the experience I had come to in composing. Mahler’s opinion was just the reverse. “Nein, die Symphonie müss sein wie die Welt. Sie müss alles umfassen.” (No, the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.)
Those lines have often been repeated to explain why Mahler’s symphonies sprawl and sing, resembling no others ever written, but they are just as useful in seeing Sibelius’s point of view. By 1907 Sibelius had fixed his vision on
this page: Eero Järnefelt’s Landscape from Kangasala, oil on canvas, 1891. Järvenpää Art Museum, Finland | opposite page: View of the harbor in Rapallo located in the Italian region of Liguria, where Sibelius began writing his Second Symphony during the winter of 1901. Photo by Touring Club Italiano, Marka, Universal Images Group via Getty Images, 1910
symphonic music of increasing austerity; his Third Symphony, completed that summer, marks the turning point. That same summer, Mahler put the final touches on his Eighth Symphony, scored for eight vocal soloists, chorus, boys choir, and huge orchestra; taking as its text a medieval hymn and the closing scene from Goethe’s Faust; and lasting nearly two hours—the work we know as the Symphony of a Thousand. Five years earlier, in 1902, the year Sibelius’s Second Symphony was first performed, Mahler had unveiled his third, which lasts longer than Sibelius’s first two symphonies combined.
Sibelius’s Second Symphony is a bold, unconventional work. We know too many of his later works, and too much later music in general, perhaps, to see it that way, but at the time—the time of Schoenberg’s luscious Transfigured Night, not Pierrot lunaire; of Stravinsky’s academic E-flat symphony, not The Rite of Spring—it staked out new territory to which Sibelius alone would return. The first movement, like much of his most characteristic music, makes something whole and compelling out of bits and pieces. As Sibelius would later write: “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.” Heaven’s floor turns out to be designed
in a familiar sonata form, but this isn’t readily apparent. (Commentators seldom agree on the beginning of the second theme, for example.) Certainly, any symphony that begins in pieces can’t afford to dissect things further in a traditional development section. In fact, for Sibelius, development often implies the first step in putting the music back together. (Once, when asked about these technical matters, Sibelius cunningly chose to speak about “a spiritual development” instead.)
There is true, sustained lyricism in the slow second movement, but that is not how it opens. Sibelius begins with a timpani roll and restless pizzicato strings from which a bassoon tune struggles to emerge. Melody eventually does take wing, but what we remember most is the wonderful series of adventures encountered in the process.
The scherzo is brief, hurried (except for a sorrowful woodwind theme
inspired not by Finland’s fate, as commentators used to insist, but by the suicide of Sibelius’s sister-in-law), and expectant. When, after about five minutes, it leads straight into the broad first chords of the finale, we realize that this is what we have been waiting for all along. From there, the fourth movement unfolds slowly, continuously, and with increasing power and majesty. It rises and soars in ways denied the earlier movements, and that, of course, is Sibelius’s way: heaven’s floor visible at last.
—Phillip Huscher
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Laura Emerick is the digital content editor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
PROFILES
Ken-David Masur Conductor
Ken-David Masur is celebrating his sixth season as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
Masur’s tenure in Milwaukee has been notable for innovative thematic programming, including a festival celebrating the music of the 1930s, when the Bradley Symphony Center was built; the Water Festival, which highlighted local community partners whose work centers on water conservation and education; and last season’s inaugural citywide Bach Festival. He has also instituted a multi-season artist-inresidence program and led highly acclaimed performances of major choral works, including a semi-staged production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt featuring music by Grieg. This season, which celebrates the eternal interplay between words and music, he continues an artist residency with bass-baritone Dashon Burton and conducts Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. In Chicago, Masur leads the Civic Orchestra, the premiere training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in a variety of programs.
In the summer of 2024, Masur made his debut at the Oregon Bach Festival and returned to the Tanglewood Festival. This season also features return appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony,
and the Omaha Symphony. He made his subscription-series debut with the New York Philharmonic in September.
Masur has conducted distinguished orchestras around the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, National, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Orchestre National de France; Minnesota Orchestra; Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra; Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway; and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo. He has also made regular appearances at the Ravinia, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, and Grant Park festivals, in addition to international festivals, including Verbier. Masur formerly was associate conductor of the Boston Symphony, principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony, and resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony.
Passionate about contemporary music, Ken-David Masur has conducted and commissioned dozens of new works, many of which have premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, an annual summer festival in New York City founded and directed by Masur and his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2024.
Masur and his family are proud to call Milwaukee their home and enjoy exploring all the riches of the Third Coast.
PHOTO BY SCOTT PAULUS
Civic Orchestra of Chicago
The Civic Orchestra of Chicago is a training program of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Negaunee Music Institute that prepares young professionals for careers in orchestral music. It was founded during the 1919–20 season by Frederick Stock, the CSO’s second music director, as the Civic Music Student Orchestra, and for over a century, its members have gone on to secure positions in orchestras across the world, including over 160 Civic players who have joined the CSO. Each season, Civic members are given numerous performance opportunities and participate in rigorous orchestral training with its principal conductor, Ken-David Masur, distinguished guest conductors, and a faculty of coaches comprised of CSO members. Civic Orchestra musicians develop as exceptional orchestral players and engaged artists, cultivating their ability to succeed in the rapidly evolving music world.
The Civic Orchestra serves the community through its commitment to present free or low-cost concerts of the highest quality at Symphony
Center and in venues across Greater Chicago, including annual concerts at the South Shore Cultural Center and Fourth Presbyterian Church. The Civic Orchestra also performs at the annual Crain-Maling Foundation CSO Young Artists Competition and Chicago Youth in Music Festival. Many Civic concerts can be heard locally on WFMT (98.7 FM), in addition to concert clips and smaller ensemble performances available on CSOtv and YouTube. Civic musicians 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.
To further expand its musician training, the Civic Orchestra launched the Civic Fellowship program in the 2013–14 season. Each year, up to twelve Civic members are designated as Civic Fellows and participate in intensive leadership training designed to build and diversify their creative and professional skills. The program’s curriculum has four modules: artistic planning, music education, social justice, and project management.
A gift to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago supports the rigorous training that members receive throughout the season, which includes coaching from musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and world-class conductors. Your gift today ensures that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association will continue to enrich, inspire, and transform lives through music.
Civic Orchestra of Chicago
Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor
The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair
VIOLINS
Harin Kang
Yebeen Seo
Darren Carter
Rose Haselhorst
Sean Hsi
Munire Mona Mierxiati
Joanna Nerius+ Tricia Park
Sean Qin
Hobart Shi
Mia Smith
Keshav Srinivasan
Justine Jing Xin Teo
Alec Tonno
Herdis Gudmundsdottir
Marian Antonette Mayuga*
Isaac Champa
Kaylin Chung
Adam Davis
Ebedit Fonseca
Valentina Guillen Menesello+
Pavlo Kyryliuk
Lara Madden Hughes
Matthew Musachio*
Emily Nardo+
Annie Pham
Maris Pilgrim
VIOLAS
August DuBeau
Yat Chun Justin Pou
Lucie Boyd
Calvin Dai+
Elena Galentas
Iris Ingelfinger
Xiaoxuan Liang
Larissa Mapua+ Matthew Nowlan
Teddy Schenkman+
Sava Velkoff*
CELLOS
J Holzen*
Sam Day
David Caplan
Miquel Fuentes
Luis Gonzalez
Lidanys Graterol
Jun Lee
Buianto Lkhasaranov
Nick Reeves
BASSES
Hannah Novak
Broner McCoy
Walker Dean
Andrew French+
Daniel W. Meyer
Bennett Norris
J.T. O’Toole*
Alexander Wallack
FLUTES
Daniel Fletcher
Jungah Yoon
Alexander Day
PICCOLO
Alexander Day
OBOES
Jonathan Kronheimer
Will Stevens
Hannah Fusco
ENGLISH HORN
Will Stevens
CLARINETS
Hae Sol (Amy) Hur*
Elizabeth Kapitaniuk
BASS CLARINET AND E-FLAT CLARINET
Henry Lazzaro
BASSOONS
Edin Agamenoni+
Mackenzie Brauns+
* Civic Orchestra Fellow + Civic Orchestra Alumni
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Christine Breeden
HORNS
Layan Atieh
Erin Harrigan
Emmett Conway
Adam Nelson
Mark Morris
TRUMPETS
Sean-David Whitworth
Hamed Barbarji Abner Wong
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Arlo Hollander
Dustin Nguyen
BASS TROMBONE
Tim Warner
TUBAS
Nick Collins
Ben Poirot
TIMPANI
Tomas Leivestad
PERCUSSION
Charley Gillette
Alex Chao
Cameron Marquez*
HARPS
Kari Novilla*
Ksenia Sushkevich
PIANO
Wenlin Cheng
CELESTA
Chungho Lee
ORGAN
Tyler Kivel
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Benjimen Neal
NEGAUNEE MUSIC INSTITUTE AT THE CSO
the board of the negaunee music institute
Leslie Burns Chair
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Ken-David Masur Principal Conductor
The Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor Chair
Coaches from the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra
Robert Chen Concertmaster
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Brant Taylor Cello
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Mark Almond Principal Horn
Esteban Batallán Principal Trumpet
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Tage Larsen Trumpet
Michael Mulcahy Trombone
Charles Vernon Bass Trombone
Gene Pokorny Principal Tuba
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Justin Vibbard Principal Librarian
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Ms. Susan Norvich
Mr. & Mrs. Aaron Oberman
Ms. Emilysue Pinnell
Mary and Joseph Plauché
Ms. Liisa M. Thomas and Mr. Stephen L. Pratt
Laura and Terrence Truax
Theodore and Elisabeth Wachs
$4,500–$7,499
Dora J. and R. John Aalbregtse
Joseph Bartush
Charles H. and Bertha L. Boothroyd Foundation
Ann and Richard Carr
Harry F. and Elaine Chaddick Foundation
CIBC
Dr. Brenda A. Darrell and Mr. Paul S. Watford
Charles and Carol Emmons
Tarek and Ann Fadel
Mr. Graham C. Grady
Ms. Dawn E. Helwig
Mr. James Kastenholz and Ms. Jennifer Steans
Dr. June Koizumi
Leoni and Bill McVey
Jim and Ginger Meyer
Stephen and Rumi Morales
David † and Dolores Nelson
Dr. Linda Novak
The Osprey Foundation
Lee Ann and Savit Pirl
Robert J. Richards and Barbara A. Richards
Dr. Scholl Foundation
Dr. & Mrs. R. Solaro
Ms. Joanne C. Tremulis
Mr. Paul R. Wiggin
Zell Family Foundation
$3,500–$4,499
Anonymous (2)
Mr. & Mrs. Paul Clusen
Mr. & Mrs. Dwight Decker
Mr. Clinton J. Ecker and Ms. Jacqui Cheng
Judith E. Feldman
Ms. Mirjana Martich and Mr. Zoran Lazarevic
Mr. Bruce Oltman
$2,500–$3,499
Anonymous
David and Suzanne Arch
Mr. James Borkman
Adam Bossov
Ms. Danolda Brennan
Ms. Rosalind Britton
Mr. Ray Capitanini
Ms. Debora de Hoyos and Mr. Walter Carlson
Lisa Chessare
Mr. Ricardo Cifuentes
Patricia A. Clickener
David and Janet Fox
Mr. † & Mrs. Robert Heidrick
William B. Hinchliff
Michael and Leigh Huston
Dr. Victoria Ingram and Dr. Paul Navin
Merle L. Jacob
Ronald E. Jacquart
Ms. Stephanie Jones
Anne and John † Kern
Northern Trust
Ms. Jane Park
Mr. & Mrs. Jeffery Piper
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Racker
Erik and Nelleke Roffelsen
Mr. David Sandfort
Gerald and Barbara Schultz
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Scorza
Jessie Shih and Johnson Ho
Amanda A. Sonneborn
Carol S. Sonnenschein
Mr. † & Mrs. Hugo Sonnenschein
Mr. Peter Vale
Mr. Kenneth Witkowski
Jack And Goldie Wolfe Miller Fund
Ms. Camille Zientek
ENDOWED FUNDS
Anonymous (5)
Dr. & Mrs. Bernard H. Adelson Fund
Marjorie Blum-Kovler Youth Concert Fund
Civic Orchestra Chamber Access Fund
The Davee Foundation
Frank Family Fund
Kelli Gardner Youth Education Endowment Fund
Jennifer Amler Goldstein Fund, in memory of Thomas M. Goldstein
Mary Winton Green
John Hart and Carol Prins Fund for Access
William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fund
Richard A. Heise
Julian Family Foundation Fund
The Kapnick Family
Lester B. Knight Charitable Trust
Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Chair Fund
The Malott Family School Concerts Fund
Eloise W. Martin Endowed Funds
Murley Family Fund
The Negaunee Foundation
Margo and Michael Oberman Community Access Fund
Nancy Ranney and Family and Friends
Helen Regenstein Guest Conductor Fund
Edward F. Schmidt Family Fund
Shebik Community Engagement Programs 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 helped to support these stipends for the 2024–25 season.
Ten 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 Lori Julian for the Julian Family Foundation
Nancy A. Abshire
Mason Spencer,* viola
Dr. & Mrs. Bernard H. Adelson Fund
Elena Galentas, viola
Fred and Phoebe Boelter
Daniel W. Meyer, bass
Rosalind Britton^
Sam Day, cello
John and Leslie Burns**
Layan Atieh, horn
Will Stevens, oboe
Robert and Joanne Crown
Income Charitable Fund
Charley Gillette, percussion
Kyungyeon Hong, oboe
Buianto Lkhasaranov, cello
Matthew Musachio,* violin
Sam Sun, viola
Mr. † & Mrs. David Donovan
Bennett Norris, bass
Charles and Carol Emmons^ Will Stevens, oboe
David and Janet Fox^
Carlos Lozano Sanchez, viola
Ellen and Paul Gignilliat
Tiffany Kung, bass
Mr. & Mrs. Joseph B. Glossberg
Hannah Novak, bass
Richard and Alice Godfrey
Darren Carter, violin
Jennifer Amler Goldstein Fund, in memory of Thomas M. Goldstein
Alex Chao, percussion
Chet Gougis and Shelley Ochab
Nick Reeves, cello
Mary Winton Green
Walker Dean, bass
Jane Redmond Haliday Chair
Munire Mona Mierxiati, violin
Lori Julian for the Julian Family Foundation
David Caplan, cello
Lina Yamin,* violin
League of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association
Kari Novilla, harp
Leslie Fund, Inc.
Cameron Marquez,* percussion
Lester B. Knight Charitable Trust
Daniel Fletcher, flute
Elise Maas, violin
Tricia Park, violin
Brandon Xu, cello
Jocelyn Yeh, cello
Mr. Philip Lumpkin
J.T. O’Toole,* bass
Mr. Glen Madeja and Ms. Janet Steidl
Herdis Gudmundsdottir, violin
Maval Foundation
Mark Morris, horn
Dustin Nguyen, trombone
Sean Whitworth, trumpet
Judy and Scott McCue
Cierra Hall, flute
Dr. Leo and Catherine
Miserendino^
Lidanys Graterol, cello
Elizabeth Kapitaniuk, clarinet
Sava Velkoff,* viola
Ms. Susan Norvich
Nick Collins, tuba
Benjamin Poirot, tuba
Margo and Michael Oberman
Hamed Barbarji, trumpet
Bruce Oltman and Bonnie McGrath†^
Alexander Wallack, bass
Sandra and Earl Rusnak, Jr. †
Loren Ho, horn
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation
Alex Ertl, trombone
Joe Maiocco, bass trombone
The George L. Shields Foundation, Inc.
Keshav Srinivasan, violin
Derrick Ware, viola
Dr. & Mrs. R. Solaro^
Sanford Whatley, viola
David W. and Lucille G. Stotter Chair
Ran Huo, violin
Ruth Miner Swislow Charitable Fund
Kimberly Bill, violin
Ksenia A. and Peter Turula
Abner Wong, trumpet
Lois and James Vrhel
Endowment Fund
Broner McCoy, bass
Theodore and Elisabeth Wachs^
Amy Hur,* clarinet
Paul and Lisa Wiggin
Layan Atieh, horn
Tomas Leivestad, timpani
Dr. Marylou Witz
Marian Mayuga,* violin
Anonymous
Hojung Lee, violin
Anonymous
J Holzen,* cello
Anonymous^
Carlos Chacon, violin
† Deceased * Civic Orchestra Fellow ^ Partial Sponsor ** Civic Administrative Fellowship 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 February 2025
