Excitement and curiosity at the onset of a new season for the Civic Orchestra

After five years as the Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Ken-David Masur is more comfortable and confident in the position than ever. At the same time, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association officials have made clear their belief in him, extending his tenure through the 2026/27 Season. 

“I absolutely feel the relationship has grown even stronger. It is so exciting to me just seeing every year the new ideas and the excitement and the curiosity of these musicians,” said Masur, 47, who also serves as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and guest conducts internationally. 

Masur will be on the podium Oct. 27-28 for the first concerts of the Civic Orchestra’s 2024/25 Season, which will run through June 1-2, 2025. Programs take place at Symphony Center as well as community venues across the city like the South Shore Cultural Center (7059 S. South Shore Drive) and Senn High School (5900 N. Glenwood Ave). 

Explore the Civic Orchestra 2024/25 Season

The Civic Orchestra was founded during the 1919/20 Season by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s second music director, Frederick Stock, as a training ensemble, and it has continuously operated for more than a century since. While there are other significant organizations, such as the New World Symphony in Miami, it stands as the only fall-to-spring pre-professional ensemble associated with a major symphony orchestra. Musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra lead sectional rehearsals and master classes and serve as mentors to Civic Members.    

The ensemble has 90 members with an average age of about 25, and its central mission is to serve as a bridge from the academic to the professional world. About 75 percent of the players have already earned their master’s degrees and are out of school and the rest are in the process of earning degrees. The members are required to live in the Chicago area, working part-time for the Civic Orchestra and filling out their time with other work or studies. They are appointed to two-year terms and select members are invited to continue for a third and final year. Civic maintains an extensive list of Associate Members who serve as substitutes and extra players, as do alumni.  

While the Civic Orchestra largely follows a well-established format, there have been modifications in recent years, like the addition of a possible third year of membership — an option that was instituted in 2018-19. Another big change came in 2021-22 with a program line-up that, perhaps more than any before it, emphasized diversity with an array of works composed by women and people of color. Masur said it is “absolutely important” to normalize the presentation of such music and eliminate any questions about why inclusiveness is necessary. “You see the diversity,” he said, “and you see it is a reflection of what we think is extraordinary music, extraordinary voices and music that moves us.” In addition, the orchestra continues to expand its presence in Chicago neighborhoods, increasing its full orchestra performances in community venues to six this season, up from five last season.  

That accent on diversity has only strengthened since with examples in 2024-25 like the Symphony No. 3 (1938) by Florence Prince, a Black composer who has surged into the public consciousness in the last decade or so after being largely forgotten following her death in 1953. “What we’ve done has only scratched the surface in the last few years,” Masur said. 

A smaller tweak came last year, with the ensemble’s annual J.S. Bach Marathon, a tradition begun at Yo-Yo Ma’s urging in 2014. The celebrated cellist served as the CSO’s Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant in 2010-19 and devoted considerable attention to the Civic Orchestra. During this annual one-day event, ensembles from the orchestra spread out across the city to each perform one of J.S. Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos and then traditionally would regroup that evening to perform all of them in one location. But last season, Masur altered the evening program to include members of the Chicago Symphony Chorus performing two Bach cantatas. “That was a very new approach,” he said. “It was a slight change while at the same time keeping the format of doing a Bach Marathon.” This year’s iteration on Nov. 8 at the Fourth Presbyterian Church (126 E. Chestnut St.) will feature four of the six Brandenburg Concertos as well as Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3.  

In 2013-14, the ensemble founded its Civic Fellows program, a leadership training initiative in which a dozen or so members of the ensemble are chosen for additional education and engagement work in collaboration with the Negaunee Music Institute (the CSO’s education wing). Eleven Fellows were chosen for 2024-25, and they will curate and perform chamber concerts of contemporary music on Jan. 12 and May 17, 2025, in addition to engaging with Chicago Public Schools, participating in the Institute’s Notes for Peace project, leading independent projects of their own design. 

Masur is typically with the Civic Orchestra for at least three residencies each season, each based around a concert program. This season, in addition to the season opener, he will lead the finale of the Bach Marathon on Nov. 18 and the Jan. 19-20 and June 1-2 programs. “I’m extremely excited,” he said. “I’m looking forward to exploring these programs. I’m looking forward to the freshmen group. It’s always very exciting to have the new members come in and mix with the existing ones.” In addition to his work on the podium, Masur is a close partner with Jonathan McCormick, the Director of the Negaunee Music Institute, who also leads artistic planning for the department.   

Conducting the rest of the full-orchestra concerts in 2024-25 are a series of guest conductors, including Alexander Shelley, a British maestro whose posts include music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, who is making his Civic debut. He will be joined by three returnees — Erina Yashima (a former CSO Solti Conducting Apprentice and veteran guest conductor of the Civic Orchestra), Carlos Miguel Prieto and Thomas Wilkins. In addition, CSO trombonist Michael Mulcahy will lead a Civic brass and percussion concert on March 5 and Jerry Hou will take the podium March 22, 2025, for the Crain-Maling Foundation CSO Young Artists Competition Finals for his Civic debut.

Part of each full-orchestra program is what Masur called a “large standard-repertoire piece” — works like Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (Dec. 8-9), Debussy’s La mer (Feb. 10) or Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 (June 1-2). These are the kinds of compositions that the Civic musicians will be asked to perform regularly when they secure orchestral jobs, the conductor said, so it’s important to have exposure to them now. Each program also has at least one work by a contemporary composer. “The direct connection between musician and composer, I feel, especially in the last few years,” Masur said, “has been ignited much more and that’s an exciting thing to see. Many of the pieces that we are performing have been written very recently and it’s important to us to make sure those are on the program.” 

In addition to this mix of established staples and new works, Masur and McCormick try to make sure there is thematic cohesion to each program. “You want there to be a thread throughout, that there is a narrative that makes sense on each of these programs, and that it has variety and contrast,” Masur said.  

For example, the Oct. 27-28 season-opening program explores the relationship between famed composer Robert Schumann and his wife, Clara, a major composer and one of the great piano soloists of the 19th century. The centerpiece of the program is Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s Clara, a five-movement work in which she pays tribute to the creative twosome. “You have this piece about the connection between Robert and Clara, one of the great couples of music history,” Masur said. “It’s sort of a tone poem that has these musical sketches about their relationship, their influences and their love of one another and Gabriela’s own take on that relationship.” Also on the program are Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, Rhenish, which Robert wrote following a trip to the Rhineland with Clara, and  Humperdinck’s arrangement of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey from Richard Wagner’s opera, Götterdämmerung — another work from the Romantic era with a geographical connection.  

Connections to Italy run through the June 1-2 program, which opens with Respighi’s beloved Fountains of Rome, a 1916 tone poem that evokes four of Rome’s most famous fountains, and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, which the composer began during a trip to the Italian Alps. Rounding out the program is Andrea Tarrodi’s Liguria, which was premiered by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2012 and performed many times since. It was inspired by a group of small villages along the coast of the Ligurian Sea in northwest Italy.   

With the planning and preparations over, Masur is ready to dive into the 2024/25 Season and launch the next stage of his now-extended tenure as principal director. “I’m absolutely thrilled with how it is going,” he said. “I look forward to much more.”