Four generations of CSO women share their stories of transformative change

As the nation pauses in March to celebrate Women's History Month, with its focus on the contribution of women in all aspects of modern life, it's an opportunity to consider the experiences of four extraordinary women now performing as members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Each is a highly accomplished trailblazer in her own right; each was hired in her 20s, and each reflects a societal perspective of an entirely different decade. Altogether they span 60 years of rapid transition. 

Lynne Turner was appointed in 1962 to the harp section, by the legendary Fritz Reiner; Joyce Noh, a violinist, was hired in 1979 by Sir Georg Solti and was the CSO's first Asian female member; Patricia Dash, percussionist, was appointed in 1986, also by Solti, in an era of lively change, and violinist Stephanie Jeong was appointed in 2011 by Riccardo Muti, when a significant leadership title, associate concertmaster, was created just for her. 

Lynne Turner, harp

Lynne Turner looks forward to celebrating her 60th anniversary with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this fall.

But her memory of the orchestra goes much further back, because her father, the violinist Sol Turner, actually joined the CSO when she was still a little girl. The elder Turner had his own impressive Chicago history, first as a student concertmaster in the Civic Orchestra in the late 1920s, and then for two professional stints in the CSO, 1943-49 and 1963-79, with a break in between at Chicago's NBC studio orchestra.

Altogether, the Turners have been part of CSO history under music directors Désiré Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, Sir Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti. The two Turners even served simultaneously in certain Martinon and Solti seasons.

"I do have some wonderful early memories of Orchestra Hall prior to joining the CSO," Lynne Turner recalled over a recent CSO concert weekend. "The most thrilling was when I was 14, when I performed Handel’s Concerto for Harp at four Young People’s concerts, a life-changing experience. It cemented my determination to become a professional."

Talent obviously ran in the household; her mother was a pianist, and her brother Richard has been the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's principal harpist since 1977. "Without question, growing up in such a family instilled in me a lifelong passion for performing," she said.

Turner was only 18 when she headed to Europe to study harp at the Conservatoire de Paris with the internationally renowned Pierre Jamet. "I was focused on a single goal — refining and honing my playing through intensive practicing every single day," she said. In very short order, Turner became the first American to win the International Harp Contest in Israel. Reiner then brought her into the CSO as its second harp in October 1962.

At first, Turner was one of only three females then in the orchestra (although at least 12 women had preceded her). "We women did have our own dressing room, but it was definitely a male-dominated environment," she recalled of the era. "Today, a musician's gender is no longer an issue, and we are moving closer to gender parity within the ranks. I think that is a very healthy evolution."

Still partial to French repertoire, Turner loves both Debussy and Ravel. "They understood the harp's unique capabilities for producing shimmering colors and dazzling percussive effects." To this day one of her favorite compositions is Ravel's Introduction and Allegro, which she performed in 2019 with the Israel Philharmonic as part of a gala concert celebrating the competition's 60th anniversary. "My son and daughter joined me for that trip, along with their spouses and my two college-age granddaughters. It was an unforgettable experience to be together for that special milestone." 

At home and on tour worldwide, Turner is deeply grateful "for the opportunity to collaborate with such accomplished colleagues," she said. "I am also continually inspired by our current maestro. Performing under the baton of Maestro Muti is an incomparable experience. He brings such insight and passion to every work he conducts, and there is an amazing chemistry. Being a member of one of the greatest symphony orchestras in the world continues to fill me with immense pride."

Joyce Noh, violin

In 1979, when Korea-born violinist Joyce Noh auditioned and won a position in the CSO, she already had two years' experience as a full-time member of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Just out of Juilliard, she had won that first job, even though her gender was known from the outset. Back then, her BSO audition was not "blind" in the first round. However, in the ’70s, it became an industry practice to have candidates perform, at least in the preliminary round, from behind a screen and out of the judges' view, to help everyone get a fair chance.

Noh was hired in Baltimore by Romanian-born conductor Sergiu Comissiona, himself a violinist, who well knew what he was getting in Noh, a student of Ivan Galamian at Juilliard. "Galamian was a very big teacher, world famous at the time, and he produced a lot of great soloists," Noh said. "At that time I was young and just out of school, and I auditioned in Baltimore because my husband at the time was taking a hospital position there. The situation was, get into the Baltimore Symphony or I would just be a housewife. Luckily I was very well-prepared, maybe overly prepared, for that job at the time."

The Chicago auditions were more competitive, and as Noh recalled, her first round was behind the screen. "When I won, there weren't that many women in the orchestra yet," she said. "I would say around 10. It was just starting. I remember Lynne Turner on the harp, a pianist, a flute player, a horn player and a couple of string players. But you know, it was so different then. First of all, a lot of women had to choose between having a family and having a career. I had three children while I was in the orchestra, very unusual at the time, and we did not have any maternity leave. My kids all came in August, when the CSO was on vacation. It was not planned that way, but it kind of worked out!"

Even the way women dressed was different, she said. "We had to be [what was considered] more appropriate, more careful. And men in the old days didn't bring their kids to work, a big feature that is different today. We certainly couldn't bring children on tour at first, and there weren't too many husbands on tour, either. My husband came on tour and complained about it, saying he felt like a second-class citizen. Also on tour, the men would just change [clothing] anywhere, and we would have to walk through that. The bulletin board in [Orchestra Hall] was in the men's area at first, too!" 

Patricia Dash, percussion

Percussionist Patrica (Patsy) Dash, who joined the CSO in 1986, first fell in love with the drums in grade school. "As a show-and-tell type of thing, someone brought drums into class, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I didn't forget about it, and I asked my parents for a drum set, which I got really from Santa, out of a Sears catalog, and I demolished it in a few weeks! So in the fourth grade, I started taking lessons at a local music store.

"The teachers were high-school kids, and mine was a really nice guy who said to me in my first lesson, 'Why do you want to play the drums? You're a girl. What are you going to do with it?' And I said, 'I don't know. I just want to.' So then I got involved with the school band program, and the band director told my parents to encourage me, which they did."

Dash went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and then to the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati for her master's, "where I even got to perform with the Cincinnati Symphony a couple times." She thinks one of the works may have been Amériques by Edgard Varèse, a colossus of the avant-garde, who wrote for a very large orchestra with lots of additional percussion.

She also began to work the audition circuit, getting into the Florida Orchestra, based in Tampa-St. Petersburg, in the fall of 1985. She soon noticed there was an opening in Chicago. "I didn't even think I would get an invitation to audition, but the Chicago Symphony was always unique in that they would hear anybody who wanted to come. With almost all the other orchestras, you had to send a tape or a resume, so I was actually surprised when I got a response with an actual audition time.

"Chicago's system helped me in two ways. First, because I was still pretty young, I really didn't have a lot to show on my resume. And second, because the CSO took so many applications, the preliminaries were done over several days. And then, those that got through the first round were invited to fly back some number of weeks, or even months, later.

"That was good for me because I was finding the whole audition thing to be a very exhausting experience. I'd put everything I had into the first round. And I'd be almost too fatigued to turn around and do my best in the second round. But in this case, the first round was in October and the second in January, when I just had a very good day."

Dash has seen vital changes at the CSO since then. "There were pretty huge societal shifts under way. In 1986, when I got in, there were still not that many women, probably somewhere between 12 and 15 of the 105, and in the older group, it was mostly white men. Now there are more women and young people from all over the world. The actual playing conditions are also better. When Orchestra Hall was completely renovated in the late '90s, we got a large room where we can rehearse and practice. Before that, the large percussion instruments were stored underneath the stage, inaccessible to anybody but the stagehands!"

Stephanie Jeong, associate concertmaster

Not long after the CSO's first performance of Philip Glass' Symphony No. 11 by Music Director Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Stephanie Jeong, the CSO's associate concertmaster, was talking enthusiastically about the historic event: Onstage were the 85-year-old composer Philip Glass, 80-year-old conductor Muti and 73-year-old pianist Mitsuko Uchida, an age group that positively rocked.


Jeong's numbers arise from the other end of the age spectrum. She began playing violin at 3 and was a member of the New York Philharmonic by her early 20s, when the CSO beckoned. She was well-known in Chicago, where she had first soloed with the CSO at 12 (in October 1999, as a soloist on Youth Concerts after winning the CSO’s Feinburg Competition).

Not yet 35, Jeong is now an 11-year veteran of the CSO. The age spread of the key performers at the Glass-Muti-Uchida program exceeded half a century.


Jeong, as a Suzuki toddler, came to the Chicago area with her family. "I don't have a memory of my earliest lessons," she said. "But I've seen photos." Her precocity was nurtured at the Betty Haag Academy of Music in Buffalo Grove, where her hurdles might have seemed different from those faced by girls in the generations before. 


"Honestly, I don't think I ever thought too much about my background or my sex growing up," Jeong said. "I guess I was lucky I had such supportive people around me. My mom, my family, my teachers never made me feel that because I was a female that it should keep me back in any way." 


By age 9, Jeong was heading to Philadelphia, where she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music as one of its youngest students ever. Next came Juilliard and several summers at the Aspen Music Festival. Then was the orchestra job hunt. She was just briefly in the New York Philharmonic when the CSO beckoned with a post on the first stand of violins, next to Robert Chen, the concertmaster. 


"It's been good to hear some of the other women talk about their earlier times in the orchestra, when even the dressing room situation had to evolve to accommodate the growing number of women. There's a stairway we go up and down every day that connects the basement level to the stage level, with two small landings. And on one of the landings there is a rather current photo of the orchestra that includes me, and on the next landing must be one of the first photos ever taken of the orchestra, in black and white, where every single member is male. 


"When you see those two photos back to back, you really see how much things have changed." They're still changing, Jeong acknowledged. "But change can feel fast and slow at the same time, especially in an orchestra like the CSO, where we are all tenured. The evolution here is usually generational. At a level like ours, when you get hired, you don't really leave. It's the best of the best."