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Civic Orchestra of Chicago
Fate Now Conquers
Nov 8, 2021 — 8:00 PM
Overview
The Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s premier training ensemble of emerging professional musicians, returns to perform its first live concert at Symphony Center since March 2020. Led by guest conductor Thomas Wilkins, the program features Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Port of Call, an energetic piece that evokes a bustling seaside port, alongside William Schuman’s anthemic New England Triptych and Carlos Simon’s fiery tribute to Beethoven, Fate Now Conquers. Completing the program is William Grant Still’s beautiful and impassioned Symphony No. 1 (Afro-American), his most famous work, which blends blues elements into its orchestrations.
Program
Simon
Fate Now Conquers
Hailstork
An American Port of Call
Schuman
New England Triptych
Still
Symphony No. 1 (Afro-American)
Performers
Sponsors & Partners
The 2021/22 Civic Orchestra of Chicago season is generously sponsored by The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation.
Part of 2021: Year of Chicago Music
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The Civic Orchestra’s 2021-22 season, which begins Nov. 8, puts an emphasis on diversity, with an array of works by women and people of color — what Principal Conductor Ken-David Masur describes as giving “voice to musicians and composers who perhaps had been neglected.”
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For Dr. Marylou Witz, the members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago — the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s ensemble for young professional musicians — are “like family.”
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When the Boston Symphony Orchestra offered Thomas Wilkins the position of youth and family concerts conductor, he hesitated. “I thought, ‘I don’t want be known as the guy who does kiddie concerts for a living,’” he recalled.
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