Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Zell Music Director Designate Klaus Mäkelä led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by Sibelius and Strauss in his podium debut at the Ravinia Festival on August 6, 2027. The summer of 2026 included a memorable orchestral blockbuster, a set of Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) concerts on August 6 and 7 at Ravinia marking Zell Music Director Designate Klaus Mäkelä’s podium debut at the iconic summer music festival.

Civic Orchestra Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur leads an October 2025 performance in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center. Audiences canmake plans to hear classical music’s next generation of musicians inconcerts performedfrom fall through springby the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s prestigious ensemble for early-career musicians that is part of the Negaunee Music Institute at the CSO.

2022 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award winner to make his CSO podium debut July 30, 2026 David Lewellen 10 min read Earl Lee, here leading the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, makes his CSO podium debut Aug. 16 at Ravinia. In 2008, just before emerging cellist Earl Lee was set to return to the Steans Institute at Ravinia, he received a diagnosis that would force him onto a new musical path. This summer, Lee will perform Aug.

Conductor, composer and producer Steve Hackman moves easily among music worlds, from rock/pop, hip-hop and R&B to classical. “I don’t see these big barriers or dividers between classical music and pop music,” Hackman said in an interview with the arts and culture site Stir. “I just see music as music. I see it in its kind of absolute form. It’s made of the same building blocks. It manifests in different ways, we experience it in different ways, and people categorize it in different ways.

July 28, 2026 James Turano 10 min read Quincy Jones (right) takes a bow with conductor Jules Buckley at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2016. Quincy Jones created the soundtrack of a generation. His name, without question, stands high on any list of the most innovative, influential, respected and successful musicians, composers and arrangers of the 20th century.

Klaus Mäkelä’s parents had one wish. “For me not to become a musician,” he said. “And unfortunately [for them],” he said, “it didn’t become true.” But to be fair, the Finnish conductor, now the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Zell Music Director Designate, didn’t stand much of a chance of fulfilling that wish. Mäkelä, who makes his Ravinia debut on Aug. 6-7, exactly 120 years to the day since the CSO first gave a concert in the festival’s pavilion, grew up in a musical family.

Veteran pianist Emanuel Ax seems busier than ever these days. In addition to concertizing all over the world, as he has for more than 50 years, “Manny,” as he is affectionately known, is championing a new piano concerto written for him by legendary composer John Williams. The work will receive its Midwest premiere Aug. 1 at Ravinia Festival, under Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Ax as soloist.

When Laura Karpman founded The Alliance for Women Film Composers in 2014, her first move was “radical,” she recalled. “We created a directory,” said the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning composer. “And the reason why it was radical is because people thought we didn’t even exist.” For Karpman, it has always been paramount to show her peers that female composers “are here, we have been here, we’re capable and prepared,” she said.

Some of composer Carlos Simon’s highest-profile recent works have confronted incendiary subjects such as George Floyd’s 2020 death at the hands of the Minneapolis police or the ugly history of slavery. But his latest creation takes a decidedly different tone. The overtly religious work is titled Good News Mass, drawing on the meaning of “gospel,” a word that refers broadly to the teachings of Christianity and specifically to the first four books of the New Testament.

Most top-tier classical music conductors are jet-setters. How else to handle schedules that often have them conducting opera in Milan or Berlin one week and orchestral concerts in London or Paris or New York or Chicago the next? Among this well-traveled cohort, Marin Alsop has to be one of the most frequent flyers. In addition to marking her sixth season as Ravinia’s chief conductor this summer, Alsop has been the principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2024.