Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center – April 27, 2024

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In the week that Foxtrot’s convenience stores closed, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened the concert with John Adams’s The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra). As with everything that followed, it was a hit.

Then it was on to Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1, arranged by Atovmyan in eight movements, which challenged the time-worn, or is it worn-out, tradition of saving applause until the end of the piece.

It wasn’t always so according to a nice little article I found with some history and differences of opinion on the topic.

In any event, a sizable portion of the audience could not restrain themselves, perhaps because they were attracted to the event by the appearance of Wynton Marsalis and the jazz orchestra. No such tradition at jazz concerts.

It even became interactive, and funny, when some in the audience started clapping during a moment of silence before the ending to one of the movements. The conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, acknowledged the faux pas, and, when the movement really ended, turned to the audience with a nod and then back to the musicians for a look of appreciation for not missing a beat.

After intermission the jazz orchestra joined the CSO on stage, bringing the head count to about 573, or maybe not quite that many, but it was so crowded that some of the violinists had to sit at the kid’s table.

The guests played Duke Ellington’s Mooche, not to be confused with Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher.

Then the groups, with their own distinct stylistic arrangements, separately took on Prokofiev’s Selections from Romeo and Juliet, alternating between the eight movements (each one followed by applause), before finishing together with Marsalis’s All American Pep from Swing Symphony. Something for everyone.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Symphony Center – October 24, 2023

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What a great program, starting with Barber’s The School for Scandal Overture, followed by a short break to raise the grand piano to center stage from below, which for some reason I always get a kick out of. I wouldn’t mind them bringing the whole orchestra up from below, maybe with the aid of a fog machine.

We were then treated to Conrad Tao playing Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, which reminded me of Michelle Cann’s rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue I saw a few months ago in the way that the music seems to enliven the musician. I kept envisioning a Tao bobblehead giveaway day, but the CSO failed me in that regard.

Tao started choking up before his encore when telling the audience how much he appreciated their applause, having grown up going to concerts at Symphony Center. He then favored us with his transcription of the 1953 (as opposed to 1939) Art Tatum recording of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I love Tatum and Tao did him justice.

After all that, we were just getting started, coming back after intermission with Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, complete with finger snapping, and ending with Sensemaya by Silvestre Revueltas, an enjoyable piece that was new to me.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra – March 17, 2023

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Winston Churchill or Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift or somebody we never heard of, first said that “everything old is new again,” though Peter Allen said it best. In any event, I found Banner, a 2014 tribute to the Star Spangled Banner, to be more fun to listen to than the original. I have to admit, however, that, in the middle of the eight-minute piece, there was a lot of seemingly random stuff going on that reminded me of the bag of leftover Lego bricks I keep in a drawer that fit in somewhere, but not necessarily with each other.

Banner was followed by Cantus arcticus, Op. 61, or, more descriptively, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra. Again, surprisingly, I liked it, though the extended silences did make me want to take that opportunity to tell the woman in front of me to stop looking at her phone.

I wondered whether the composer first wrote the music or recorded the birds. And did the birds get a chance to rehearse? Moreover, can this piece be performed outside, just using random bird sounds in the park, birds scatting, for the musicians to react to, a jazz version if you will.

Last, and in my mind, least, came Carmina Burana. To be fair, I loved the music, just, as always, not the chorus or operatic soli. For my money, the earlier bird chorus was more pleasing.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Concert for Chicago – Millennium Park – June 27, 2022

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My kind of program. No world premieres, just terrific standards, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor.

As good as the Grant Park Symphony is, even a heathen like me felt like I could appreciate the step up with the CSO playing. They were crisp, just like the air on this beautiful evening, when the gods also turned off the competition from the helicopters and sirens.

It was so magical that everyone around me actually listened to the music rather than orally exchanging recipes or whatever it is they usually find it necessary to discuss during a concert.

Admittedly, there was a woman coughing about six seats away, but even she did so in tune and time, so as to come off as a new kind of percussion instrument.

And, unsurprisingly, with the biggest crowd of the year in attendance, there were a few seconds of a crying baby, but the parents, unlike the ones on my recent flight, had the grace to remove themselves with child from the scene. To be fair to the people on the plane, however, there wasn’t anywhere they could get off at 30,000 feet, and the overhead bins were full.

The only real downside for me was that Conductor Riccardo Muti found it necessary to speechify afterward about how culture could bring us all together and solve all the world’s problems (sounds good, but maybe he should pay more attention to the news), and do an infomercial for the orchestra to the extent that I expected them to lower the giant screen and start flashing a subscription phone number with a list of ailments that classical music can cure.