The logistics of presenting 14 CSO concerts through 11 cities across 19 days

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2024 European Tour, which will run from Jan. 11 through 29 with Riccardo Muti, now Music Director Emeritus for Life, is the ensemble’s longest trip anywhere for more than 25 years.

“And we’re packing a lot into the time we have,” said Heidi Lukas, the CSO’s director of operations. “It’s quite a busy schedule.” Indeed, the CSO will present 14 concerts in 11 cities in seven countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Luxembourg.

Part of the decisions about which cities the CSO would visit and in what order had a good deal to do with the practicalities of the logistics — getting the orchestra, its accompanying staff and crew and its necessary instruments and equipment from place to place.

And that’s where Lukas and her staff come in. They have been working for months to plan this ambitious tour. Jeffrey Stang, the CSO’s production manager, has been overseeing the carnet, the customs document covering all the instruments and equipment that the CSO will bring into Europe. Operations assistant Logan Goulart has been handling performing visas, which are needed for Italy. Vanessa Moss, the orchestra’s vice president of operations, is working on over-all scheduling and communication with presenters. And Lukas is seeing to what she calls the “nitty-gritty logistics,” collaborating with travel and cargo agents to make sure everyone and everything arrives on time. “I make a lot of lists,” she said. “It’s a lot of details.”

At the same time, such an intense and complicated itinerary means that staff members across many of the CSO’s other departments, including artistic administration, communications and public relations, and development have been working hard on planning for the voyage as well.

The tour is the CSO’s first to Europe in four years, an unusually long interval caused in part by the COVID-19 shutdown. In the intervening time, Lukas said, much has changed in the travel world, such as the decrease and even elimination of porters, who have proved helpful in moving luggage and getting CSO members from airports and onto buses. “Things like that just make is smoother and faster for a group to move,” she said, “but some airports don’t have porters anymore, so we have to adapt to that.”

In all, the CSO will bring 100 musicians on its European tour and 10 or so staff members from departments such as development, operations and public relations. In addition to five stage technicians, there will also be a photographer, tour physician and security person, as well as staff from the CSO’s longtime travel agent, TravTours. “There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes support,” Lukas said.

The musicians will fly into the Brussels, the site of their first concerts. They will then take chartered and commercial flights as well as trains and buses as they venture across Europe. “Every kind of transportation mode you can imagine, we’re using on this tour,” Lukas said.

The musicians’ instruments and other necessary equipment travel separately on another plane, which will fly into the Luxembourg airport. “Our cargo agent has found that this is one of the best places to use operationally,” Lukas said.

The five stage techs on the trip will meet the cargo agents there and help transfer everything from pallets onto two semi-trailer trucks, which will travel to each venue and ultimately return the cargo to Luxembourg for the trip home.

The operations department has to carefully plan the itinerary in such a way that there is enough time between concerts to transfer the instruments and equipment and make sure they are meeting all of Europe’s transportation regulations in terms of truck drivers’ time on the road and so forth.

All of the CSO’s larger instruments will travel on the trucks, but the musicians with smaller instruments like flutes or violins have the choice of carrying of them or putting them into cargo. The operations department speaks to each musician in advance so that plans, including any necessary customs documents, can be made accordingly,  

“This is a very long and complicated tour, for sure,” Lukas said.