Chicago might have already hit its first deep freeze, but the local classical music scene pulses with life this season. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, the Chicago Symphony’s artist-in-residence, returns to sing a work specially written for her and string trio Time For Three (Feb. 10), and director-in-waiting Klaus Mäkelä bookends his East Coast CSO tour with two home-turf appearances (Feb. 19-21 and March 5-6, all three at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; cso.org). Meanwhile, Lyric’s production of “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” (March 21 to April 4; www.lyricopera.org), composed by the bountifully gifted Gabriela Lena Frank, ought to be on any art-lover’s calendar — not just the opera buffs.
Surveying the music calendar this season, however, I noticed a theme: Presenters, big and small, were going out on a limb with bold and unusual themes. Perhaps their concerts feature obscure or wet-ink works. Maybe they serve up tried and true classics with a twist. All piqued my interest — and, I hope, yours.
Keeping up with the Ha-Ha-Hahlers
When he’s not a host on WFMT, Robbie Ellis is a singer and musical humorist in the mold of Tom Lehrer. A very Viennese program at the Northbrook Symphony, which he recently joined as general manager, leans on those chops. Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 might be the main event, but Ellis also sings a short song by Alma Mahler and his own satirical “Radetetetetzky March,” a fond sendup of the Vienna Philharmonic’s famed New Year’s concert tradition. Also slated: Lehrer’s “The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz” and “Alma,” the latter with some 21st-century updating by Ellis.
“The Titan,” 4 p.m. Jan. 11 with the Northbrook Symphony, Sheely Center for the Performing Arts, 2300 Shermer Road, Northbrook; tickets $50, free for audiences ages 6 to 17; northbrooksymphony.org
Dinner and a show
OK, make that brunch. Apollo’s Fire, a welcome addition to the Chicago early music scene since its post-pandemic expansion from Cleveland, brings its “Baroque Bistro” series to Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights. Place your order before the start of the concert, dine in, then cap it off with dessert and a performance — in this case, a smorgasbord of Irish fiddle tunes, spirituals and even some early jazz.
“Blues Café 1700,” 1 p.m. (12 p.m. doors) at Hey Nonny, 10 S. Vail Ave., Arlington Heights; tickets $38-$50; apollosfire.org
The Chicago Sinfonietta stays current
The coming year will be a premiere-apalooza for this beloved local ensemble, with new works appearing on each of its subscription concerts this season. Kathryn Bostic composed the score of the 2024 film “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat,” adapting a book of the same name by Sinfonietta cellist Edward Kelsey Moore; Bostic creates a suite from the film for the orchestra’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day concert. Then, in March, Sinfonietta and Deeply Rooted Dance Theater team up for “Seventh Sense: Incidents in the Life of Queen Amanirenas,” a rumination on an ancient queen of Kush by English composer Shirley J. Thompson.
“Open Heart,” 4 p.m. Jan. 18 at Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville, and 4 p.m. Jan. 19 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive; “Still I Rise,” 7 p.m. March 6 at Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville, and 7 p.m. at Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St. Tickets for both concerts $30-$70 at chicagosinfonietta.org
A less-heard “Dichterliebe”
Who says Schumann’s poet has to be a man? (In fact, the composer’s original dedicatee was a German soprano.) Mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey leaves her mark on the immortal song cycle under the auspices of Art Song Chicago (formerly the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago). Myra Huang supports on the piano.
“Dichterliebe,” 7 p.m. Jan. 25 at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall, 430 S. Michigan Ave.; $49 general admission, $43 seniors, $16 students; artsongchicago.org
Experiments and exhibitions
Museums don’t always spring to mind as hotbeds for live music. But this winter, two city institutions will host concerts related to ongoing exhibitions. First, the Art Institute invites Grammy darlings Third Coast Percussion to perform pieces for player piano by late architect Bruce Goff, the subject of a major retrospective running through March. Then, the MCA hosts two performances tied to the closing of “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind”: artist Anna Martine Whitehead staging Ono’s “Cut Piece,” and Northwestern’s Contemporary Music Ensemble playing compositions by Ono and her contemporaries.
“Bruce Goff — Rolls and Reimaginations by Third Coast Percussion,” 6 p.m. Jan. 29 in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium, 111 S. Michigan Ave.; free with museum admission but registration at artic.edu required.
“Day for Yoko Ono,” 12 p.m. Feb. 7, and “Night for Yoko Ono,” 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18, both in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Edlis Neeson Theater, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; $30 general admission, $24 seniors, $10 students and teachers; mcachicago.org
A Weill rarity
Emigre composer Kurt Weill was a prolific composer for the stage, yet only his “Threepenny Opera” and “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” get staged with any regularity. Chicago Opera Theater breaks the mold by reviving “Der Silbersee,” a 1933 “play with music” about a poverty-stricken man, the police officer who shoots him and the curious intertwining of their lives.
“Der Silbersee,” March 4-8 at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets $58-158; chicagooperatheater.org
The music of invention
Before the Industrial Revolution, the dot-com boom and the rise of AI, there was the Renaissance. The printing press, clocks, muskets — all these inventions changed humankind forever. The Newberry Consort explores how instruments also evolved thanks to technological innovations, contrasting music from the Renaissance against similar selections from the Middle Ages.
“Corkscrews, Coils, & Clocks” with the Newberry Consort, in three performances: 7:30 p.m. March 13 at the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel (1025 E. 58th St.), 4 p.m. March 14 at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church (939 Hinman Ave., Evanston) and 4 p.m. March 15 at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall (430 S. Michigan Ave.); $45 general admission, $25 affordable access, $10 students, free for children; newberryconsort.org
A chorusmaster’s final bow
Bruce Tammen has built the Chicago Chorale into one of the city’s finest large choral ensembles. He retires at the end of this season with Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem on May 31, but March’s headlining presentation of “The Peaceable Kingdom” — a seldom heard, eight-movement work by midcentury American composer Randall Thompson — best reflects his venturesome programming.
“The Peaceable Kingdom,” 8 p.m. March 14 at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster Ave., and 3 p.m. March 15 at Hyde Park Union Church, 5600 S. Woodlawn Ave.; $30 general admission, $15 students; chicagochorale.org
A VR “Butterfly”
“I’ve always felt like I belonged in opera, except in pieces set in Asia,” Lyric Opera chief artistic officer Matthew Ozawa said in a feature on the company’s website. He’s not alone: “Madama Butterfly” is endlessly popular yet divisive, with many alienated by its stereotypical portrayals of Japanese people and customs. Following his gut-punch of a “Fidelio” last year, Ozawa and an Asian American creative team lean into Puccini’s imagined Japan by setting the opera in a video game simulation.
“Madama Butterfly,” March 14 to April 12 at Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker Drive; tickets $47-$390; lyricopera.org
A Bach Passion? It’s possible
Bach is recorded as having composed five Passion oratorios, but only two, the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, survive — one of music history’s great tragedies. But we have crucial clues about another, the St. Mark Passion. First, its libretto survives. Second, historians believe it was a parody work — not in the Tom Lehrer or Robbie Ellis sense, but in that it recycled music Bach had already written. Musical sleuths have leaned on Bach’s corpus to reconstruct the work ever since. The latest attempt, by British composer Malcolm Bruno, gets its local premiere thanks to Bach in the City, a successor organization to the Bach Week Festival.
“Bach’s St. Mark Passion,” 7:30 p.m. March 20 at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster Ave.; $30 general admission, $25 seniors, $10 students and children; bachinthecity.org
Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.