Explore the ECSO’s 2023-24 Season
Explore the fantastic programs that our Music Director & Conductor, Toshiyuki Shimada has come up with that will highlight amazing soloists, our phenomenal orchestra, and diverse programming.
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Oct. 20 – Concert to Honor Veterans
Area veterans are encouraged to attend this special concert in Willimantic. To honor them, the ECSO will play a medley of the official songs of the six services of the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Space Force. More American composers’ works will follow, such as Gershwin and Amy Beach.
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ECSO Season-opening concert: Oct. 21 – Gershwin & Dixieland
To kick off its 2023-24 season at the Garde Arts Center, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra will present a festive program of short works in several styles, including Dixieland selections with the Tom Brown 6. Wear blue to join us in celebrating Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue which was composed 100 years ago!
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November 18 – Dvořák & Bartók
The guest artist at the ECSO’s November 18 concert will be Hyung Joon Won, a South Korean-born, Juilliard School-trained violinist, who will perform Antonín Dvořák’s impassioned Violin Concerto in A Minor, composed in 1879.After intermission, the ECSO will play Béla Bartók’s five-movement Concerto for Orchestra, which had its premiere in 1944 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.
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January 27 – Mozart, Marx , & Beethoven
Happy birthday, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! January 27 is the 267th anniversary of the birth of Mozart in Salzburg—then in the Holy Roman Empire and now in Austria—roughly 185 miles west of Vienna. To mark the occasion, as a highlight of the ECSO’s first concert of 2024, Music Director & Conductor Toshiyuki Shimada will lead a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, known as the “Jupiter.” Mozart completed his last and, at about 30 minutes, longest symphony in 1788, pointing the way to the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.
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February 24 – Sounds of Scotland
Scotland’s rugged, island-bound geography and the romantic history of its tartan-wearing clans have captivated audiences for centuries, right up to today’s streamers of Outlander. Setting the tone for the ECSO’s February 24 concert will be the overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s 1847 opera Macbeth, based on William Shakespeare’s tragedy about the murderous 11th-century Scottish general.
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March 30 – Mahler & Brahms
It is often said that life is a journey. A piece of music, too, is a journey, one that holds up a mirror to life. The ECSO’s March 30 program explores this theme in works by Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and the contemporary Sicilian composer Salvatore Di Vittorio, whose 2015 Sea Fanfare, based on a theme by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, who bridged the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, will open the concert.
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April 27 – Haydn & Stravinsky Finale
The guiding motif of the ECSO’s April 27 concert, the last of its 2023-24 season at the Garde, is a magical bird consumed and reborn in fire: the phoenix of Greek mythology. With the rise of Christianity, the phoenix became a symbol of the resurrection. In this connection, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus, led by Music Director Dr. Daniel McDavitt, will perform Joseph Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass. The concert and the season will conclude not with a phoenix but with its counterpart from Russian fairy tales, the firebird.
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Under 40 Deal
The ECSO is pleased to offer $12 tickets to patrons under 40 years of age! During checkout, look for the drop down menu on the Garde Arts Center’s website.
Military Discount
The ECSO is pleased to offer $12 tickets to active military and veteran patrons as a thank you for their service!
