Music

It’s hard to believe – or maybe it isn’t – that we are into the first weekend of November 2023. We sneaked through October with some warmer-than-usual weather, allowing for pleasant enough outdoor music activities for longer-than-normal, but the time for cessation of most live music outdoors is here. Nevertheless, our intrepid readers know that […]

When Maestro Ken Lam announced in May 2022 that he would be leaving after five years as music director of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra to accept a prestigious job at the Juilliard School in China, the conductor’s timing was off. The news arrived too close to the start of the 2022-2023 concert season for the […]

Taichi Fukumura has strong ties to Illinois. The season’s first candidate, who will be conducting the concerts this Friday and Saturday in Springfield and Bloomington, spent much of his early career in Chicago. “I was there for seven years or eight years – I’ve lost count,” he said. He had initially moved to the Windy […]

While we work our way through the month of October, the outdoor gigs are getting the cold shoulder as we begin to drift indoors to the warm embrace of manufactured heat and creature comforts. Let’s see what we can find going on in the scene. First, I’d like to jump ahead to Sunday, Oct. 29, […]

Welcome to our first full weekend of October as we find ourselves in the midst of fall flings, autumnal outings, Oktoberfest-erings and all such things that happen as we finish out the year of outdoor festivals and begin to consider the approaching cooler weather. So let’s get out while we can and enjoy all the […]

Here we are wrapping up another month of mighty music-making as we slip on into October for the year of 20 & 23 or the Year of the Rabbit in Chinese culture or 5784 in the recently started Jewish new year. But all that matters not, for we are not here to do a thing […]

As we roll along into the last full weekend of September (Oct. 1 is a week from Sunday), let’s get outside while we can to enjoy the last of the year’s under the sky gigs, while preparing ourselves for the upcoming colder weather and inside shows to come. On Thursday, the Moving Pillsbury Forward group […]

Off we go to imbibe the music made in our fair city and surrounding towns this weekend. The festivals and fairs are winding down, but the bars, wineries and breweries are still going strong as we gallop through the year. Let’s take a gander at where to wander for the fun stuff happening around here. […]

Things are rolling right along as we travel through 2023, heading toward the autumn season. Soon enough the outdoor festivals will cease and winter will be upon us, so let’s not tarry and get to what we got going now. One of the finest, most fun and fellowship-connected festivals in the area, in my humble […]

Lilting, soulful and harmonic melodies played on violins will fill Springfield Sept. 7-13. Twelve violins from the international project Violins of Hope will be on display at the Illinois State Museum. Six of the violins will be featured in concerts across town and played by local musicians. The week of music is sponsored by the […]

Good day to you, fellow followers of the Springfield-area music scene, and welcome to the official end of summer as Labor Day weekend is here. I don’t really go with official assessments usually, but it’s definitely a reminder that summer is behind us and fall is approaching before the upcoming you-know-what rears its cold, frosty […]