Elgin Symphony Orchestra performs music of Beethoven, Brahms, Morlock

The award-winning Elgin Symphony Orchestra will present works from Beethoven, Brahms, and Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023, at 2:30 p.m., at the Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin, Illinois.

American violinist Stella Chen, who is the recipient of a 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artists Award, will be featured for Brahms’ Violin Concerto. The program will also include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Morlock’s Oiseaux bleus et sauvages.

Chen is the winner of the International Queen Elisabeth Grand Prize - Queen Mathilde Prize in the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition. She is also the first recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, the top prize winner of the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and youngest ever prize winner of the Menuhin Competition. Holding a doctorate degree from the Julliard School, Chen has performed around the world, and has collaborated with such notable artists as Itzhak Perlman, Robert Levin, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Matthew Lipman, and the Silk Road Ensemble.

The program will be conducted by Andrew Crust, an American/Canadian conductor, and a finalist in the ESO’s music director search. Crust is currently in his third season as music director of the Lima Symphony and served as associate conductor for the Vancouver Symphony from 2019 – 2022. Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.

Crust is a versatile conductor. His experience includes working with orchestras, youth orchestras, and ballets. As a Pops conductor, he has collaborated with artists including Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Tony DeSare, Michael Bolton, Dee Daniels, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors.

Tickets are available on the ESO’s website, www.ElginSymphony.org, and, from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, by calling its box office at 847-888-4000. Tickets start at $20. Student tickets are $10, and youth age 17 and under are free with an accompanying adult.