The CSO’s winter tour offers a wealth of riches, on the stage and off

When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra travels to Europe, it typically has the opportunity to perform in some of the world’s most celebrated concert halls old and new, such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw or Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.

It might seem that the less-famous performance venues in Florida, where the ensemble will return for five concerts that begin Jan. 14 in Naples and continue through Jan. 18, could be something of a letdown in comparison. But according to John Bruce Yeh, the CSO’s assistant principal clarinet and something of an acoustical devotee, that is not the case. “Some of them are really good, and the one in Orlando is wonderful. It is one of the best halls we’ve played in,” he said.

In 2023, the CSO presented its first-ever concert in Orlando’s Steinmetz Hall, which opened a year earlier as part of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. “Everybody was kind of wide-eyed,” Yeh said, “and looking around and saying, ‘This is really legit.’ It was like, ‘Wow.’ Everyone was thrilled.”

The CSO has made regular visits to the Frances Pew Hayes Hall in Naples for nearly two decades, and Yeh had praise for it as well. “I remember being very impressed when we first played there,” he said. “We enjoy playing there. It’s a little more intimate and has some nice warmth.”

After its Florida appearances, the CSO will travel on to New York City for a Jan. 21 concert at Carnegie Hall, arguably the most revered concert hall in the United States, and then head to Oklahoma for a pair of performances Jan. 23-24 at the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts in Stillwater.

During the orchestra’s one previous visit to Stillwater, Yeh played only part of the program, so he didn’t get to fully gauge the hall’s acoustics. “This time I will probably experience them a little bit more,” he said, “so you’ll have to talk to me after we’re done playing for another assessment.”

There is typically not time for rehearsals at each stop during a tour. Because the CSO travels extensively, its musicians are used to making adjustments on the fly to their playing and sound to suit the acoustics of each hall as the concert unfolds.

“They are all so amazing at coming in and adapting to whatever the environment is both acoustically and physically on the stage,” said Heidi Lukas, the CSO’s director of operations. “It’s one of the really remarkable things about our orchestra. The minute they start, they have to be locked in, and they are.”

For this upcoming tour, Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s Music Director Emeritus for Life, will be on the podium at each stop. He has had led scores of tours with the CSO and other orchestras, and has abundant experience at handling different halls and their distinctive acoustics and other idiosyncrasies.

“It absolutely makes a difference,” Lukas said. “Maestro Muti is one of the world’s pre-eminent musicians. His lifetime of experience allows him to adapt quickly to any venue where the CSO performs. He’s been around the world so many times and probably has seen everything, so I don’t think anything fazes him.”

Months before the musicians ever set foot on various stages as part of a tour, Lukas and many other behind-the-scenes staff members at the CSO have spent countless hours planning and preparing to make sure all the logistics go smoothly.

Two big considerations are how the orchestra members will be arranged on the stage at each stop and where backstage the orchestra will store its trunks and other cargo that are necessary to make a concert happen.

“The places where we go, a lot of them we have been to before, and so we know what to expect,“ Lukas said. ”When there are places where we haven’t visited before, it’s really helpful if another orchestra has gone there.”

Two years ago, when the CSO traveled to the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts in Stillwater for the first time, for example, CSO staffers made a point of getting advice from their colleagues at the New York Philharmonic, which had already performed there.

Before a tour, Lukas and Christopher Lewis, the CSO’s stage manager, typically hold a Zoom meeting with the technical teams at each venue to run through their backstage needs and address any potential problems. It’s a practice they began during the COVID-19 pandemic when Zoom skyrocketed in popularity, and it has been continued since.

“It’s so much easier to walk through everything and ask questions in real time,” Lukas said. “I’m really not sure why we didn’t think of it before the pandemic, because email is great, but having these calls has been really helpful.”

Venues often have technical limits, and one of Lukas’ jobs is figuring out to overcome them. In some cases, for example, wardrobe trunks have to be kept at the hotel, instead of backstage at the hall, because of a lack of storage space. Or she comes up with another kind of a work-around.

In Naples, for example, the CSO’s trunks are brought to a black-box theater in the same complex with Hayes Hall, and that compact space is converted into dressing rooms with temporary partitions. “Typically, in the venues that we go to, the number of trunks that we have are not going to fit in the dressing rooms themselves, so we either have to become creative with something like that [the arrangements in Naples] or we have to make sure there are enough hallways to put our trunks in,” Lukas said.

Given its renowned acoustics and storied history, no ensemble would turn down the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall. Because it is in the heart of Manhattan, it presents some logistical challenges, including the lack of a loading dock. The two trucks that the accompany the CSO have to be unloaded from Seventh Avenue though the hall’s side doors. “It’s not ideal in terms of that,” Lukas said. “But they make it work.”

In general, Lukas said, newer halls are typically a “dream” for logistics. In addition to its fine acoustics, Steinmetz Hall in Orlando, for example, also boosts first-rate backstage accoutrements. “It’s brand-new, and they have a lot of space, and they have a proper loading dock and parking,” she said. “It’s just planned on a much different scale.”