Quintet Attacca (Jennifer Clippert, flute; Erica Anderson, oboe; Barbara Drapcho, clarinet; Collin Anderson, bassoon; and Jeremiah Frederick, horn) brought Rush Hour’s ninth season to a spectacular close with the charming and lively music of Brazilian composer Osvaldo Lacerda and Mexican composer Arturo Marquez in Summer Winds.
Nearly 400 people attended our season finale concert, and [...]

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This Tuesday, Rush Hour audiences enjoyed a special concert event with Bruce J. Barber II, organ, in Organ 101: Back to Bach. In addition to hearing Bach’s magnificent works on St. James’ organ, Rush Hour audiences were able to see the physical complexity of Mr. Barber’s performance through the use of a live video feed [...]

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This week, Rush Hour welcomed Emily Lodine, mezzo-soprano, Capriccio (Donna Milanovich, flute, and Stephen Hartman, harp), and Elizabeth Start, ‘cello for a memorable concert event. The performance featured the poignant I Remember - Based on the Diary of Anne Frank (music by Michael Cohen, text by Enid Futterman), as well selections from Charles Lichter’s Four [...]

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CINCO Brass Quintet (Guillaume Fortin and Dorival Puccini, trumpets; Anna Mayne, horn; Brian Risinger, trombone; and Jared Bulmer, tuba) joined Rush Hour this Tuesday to perform a diverse selection of repertoire in Brass Outings: Music of Giovanni Gabrieli, André Previn, and George Gershwin.
Jared Bulmer paused the performance after the Gabrieli Canzone per Sonare No. 1 [...]

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Third Coast Percussion members Owen Clayton Condon, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore dazzled Rush Hour audience members with a dynamic presentation of contemporary percussion music on Tuesday. Beginning with Nico Muhly’s arresting Ta and Clap, the quartet was joined by Constance Schoepflin, flute, for George Crumb’s An Idyll for the Misbegotten and [...]

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This week, Rush Hour was delighted to welcome Yang Wei, pipa, Brant Taylor, cello, and Artistic Director Deborah Sobol, piano, for their cross-cultural exploration of the works of European and Chinese composers. This “outside the box” program featured unique instrumentation in works of Bach, Beethoven, and Dvorak, as well as 2 pieces from or inspired [...]

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This week, we invited the Rush Hour audience to join acclaimed musicians Mathieu Dufour, flute, Karina Canellakis, violin, Yukiko Ogura, viola, and Kenneth Olsen, cello, for a stunning performance of chamber music from the Classical period in Eighteenth Century Virtuosity: Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn.
Executive Director Megan Balderston prefaced the concert [...]

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This Tuesday, Rush Hour was delighted to welcome distinguished performers Sandra Morgan, flute, Robert Morgan, oboe, and David Schrader, harpsichord, in their striking renderings of the works of J.S. and C.P.E. Bach. Beginning with the elegantly tempered Sonata in G Minor by Johann Sebastian and ending with the lively Sonata in G Major by Carl [...]

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This week, Rush Hour audiences joined acclaimed clarinetist Larry Combs and the finalists of the Chicago Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Competition in an exercise on interpretation in Impromptu Interplay: Improvisations on Poetry. The reciters read the works of a variety of noted poets including Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, and Pablo Neruda while [...]

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This week, the Rush Hour audience accompanied violinist Bernard Zinck and guitarist Rene Izquierdo on a musical exploration of the tango, starting with the sultry Bordel 1900 of Astor Piazzolla’s History of Tango and ending with the lively Polo of Manuel de Falla’s Canciónes Populaires Españolas.
Audience members began their journey through Argentine culture in [...]

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