Playing in the community serves multiple purposes for the Civic Orchestra

What’s in a name? For the Civic Orchestra of Chicago — the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s training ensemble for young professional musicians — the word “civic” captures a key part of the orchestra’s mission. Founded more than a century ago, today’s Civic Orchestra regularly performs free concerts in neighborhoods across the Chicago area and maintains robust partnerships with Chicago Public Schools and community organizations. 

According to Ken-David Masur, the Civic’s Robert Kohl and Clark Pellett Principal Conductor, such efforts are intended not only to benefit local communities, but also to support the growth of the orchestra’s members. “Every year, we welcome a new incoming class of young musicians, who, for the largest part, have spent their time in conservatories refining their craft, their virtuosity, and then spending a lot of time with their instruments and making music together,” he said. “But when they come to Civic … we want to show what a musician can do in the community.”

In the 2024/25 Season, the Civic Orchestra is expanding its community programming from five to six full-orchestra concerts, including a first-time performance at Northside College Preparatory High School, 5501 N. Kedzie, in December. This was one of three Civic concerts at Chicago Public Schools this season; the ensemble also returned to Senn High School, 5900 N Glenwood, in October and will perform at Kenwood Academy High School, 5015 S. Blackstone, on June 1. These performances complement the Civic’s annual series of chamber-music performances in Chicago Public Schools and its coaching partnerships. This season, Civic members will make more than 250 coaching visits to eight CPS band and orchestra programs.

Another new venue for the Civic this season is Wentz Concert Hall and Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago, on the campus of North Central College in Naperville on April 5. Along with this expansion into the western suburbs, the orchestra continues its longtime partnerships with venues in the city, such as the Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 E Chestnut — site of the Bach Marathon finale each fall — and the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr., where Masur will conduct works by Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Sergei Rachmaninov on Jan. 19.

The South Shore Cultural Center, a lakefront facility built in the Mediterranean Revival style in 1916, is now operated by the Chicago Park District and has hosted Civic Orchestra concerts annually for the last two decades. Jonathan McCormick, managing director of the Negaunee Music Institute at the CSO, credits this longstanding relationship largely to the efforts of CSO African American Network ambassador Barbara Wright-Pryor and center director Andrea Adams. Recently, the center’s partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has expanded to include chamber-music performances by CSO musicians.

The Civic Orchestra’s upcoming concert pairs two works that share the theme of personal transformation. Anchoring the program is Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, written after the composer suffered a period of depression and writer’s block following the devastating premiere of his First Symphony in 1897. Moving with his family from Moscow to Dresden, Germany — not far from where Masur grew up in Leipzig — Rachmaninov found space to compose and drew musical inspiration from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, then led by prominent conductor Arthur Nikisch. “His mind was at ease. He felt comforted. He felt inspired,” Masur said. “And we can feel that this symphony allowed him to write away from fear or away from pressure.”

The first half of the concert features Transfigure to Grace, a commission by former Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery that then Music Director Riccardo Muti and the CSO premiered in 2023. Adapted from music that she originally wrote to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African captives to Virginia, Transfigure to Grace incorporates “themes of self-reflection and the natural world — perhaps as a way to regain a connection to self and purpose,” the composer said in a 2023 interview.

Masur feels that this sense of reflection ties the Rachmaninov and Montgomery works together. “They have something quite in common in terms of the journey, musically speaking, even though the lengths of the pieces are quite different,” he said. Opening the program is Fanfare for Uncommon Times by Valerie Coleman, a contemporary American composer whose music Masur finds “very inventive.” The conductor noted that Coleman’s piece follows in a tradition of famous fanfares by American composers, such as Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. “And of course, there’s a great history of brass music and fanfare music coming from the stage of the Chicago Symphony,” he said.

Masur always looks forward to returning to the South Shore Cultural Center, with its grand acoustics and the “old-world feel” of its architecture and setting on Lake Michigan. “I always love to see the mix of people that we get there … people coming from completely different backgrounds, walks of life, families, maybe some that had never been to a concert before. And there’s also intimacy, because it’s much smaller than Orchestra Hall and also, the orchestra plays on the same level as where the audience is sitting, so you have this direct connection.”

Masur admires the variety of the Civic roster: “Civic is made up of people from different backgrounds, different countries, who want to come to the city and who want to learn how to connect their passion with other people on every level, both in great performances at Orchestra Hall, but also learning to connect with every age group.”

It’s a two-way connection. “The passion that these young professionals have — they teach me, they teach us,” he said. “As long as we can create the opportunity to bring these individuals together with people in the community, then I think music is in good hands, and also, the feeling of building a relationship of trust and of giving and of love is continued."