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.

The ECSO’s March 30 program explores this theme in works by Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and the neoclassical Italian composer Salvatore Di Vittorio, whose 2015 Sea Fanfare, based on a theme by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, will open the concert.

On Sunday, March 24 (Palm Sunday) at 7:30pm, the ECSO and Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus will perform a free concert at the Cathedral of St. Patrick in Norwich, CT conducted by ECSO Music Director and Conductor, Toshiyuki Shimada.

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

The 63rd Annual ECSO Instrumental Competition finals will be held Saturday, March 9, 2024, in Evans Hall on the Connecticut College campus in New London. We are so excited to hear another year of amazing musicians and strongly encourage all to apply!

In between the Mozart and the Beethoven on the program, the ECSO will be joined by harpists Colleen Potter Thorburn (former ECSO principal harp), a Virginia Commonweath University faculty member, and Jaclyn Wappel to present the Double Harp Concerto of Bill Marx. Marx is the adopted son of Harpo Marx and Susan Fleming, and became his father’s music arranger and conductor at age 16. Though Harpo, the non-speaking Marx Brother, did not read music, he eventually learned proper harp technique from celebrated harpist Mildred Dilling.

Following recent auditions on October 28 and October 29, the ECSO announces that Phil Snedecor has won the position of Principal Trumpet and Lucas Zeiter won the Bassoon II position.

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. In 2009, Won, who hopes to form an inter-Korean orchestra with North Korean members, founded the Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra, an annual music festival in South Korea promoting the message of peace and harmony through music. In 2018, ECSO Music Director & Conductor Toshiyuki Shimada joined Won in the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea for a Peace Concert, which featured members of the Yale Symphony and young musicians from South Korea, China, Japan, and Tunisia.

The Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra’s 77th season, comprising six Saturday-evening concerts at the Garde Arts Center, 325 State Street in downtown New London, will begin on Oct. 21, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. Led by Music Director & Conductor Toshiyuki Shimada, the orchestra will play works by Amy Beach, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, George Gershwin, and Tom Myron, shifting into Dixieland mode for a joint performance with the Tom Brown 6.