Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Center

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1891 by Theodore Thomas and he was its conductor until his death in 1905. His successors have been Frederick Stock (until 1942), Desire Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, Sir Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim (until 2006). The orchestra has its own concert hall which was completed in 1904 and which now forms part of the Symphony Center Complex in Chicago. The many distinguished guest conductors which the CSO has seen include Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninov, Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar and Aaron Copland. More recent guest conductors include John Williams, Andre Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez.

Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist. Born to Chinese parents in Paris, he was regarded as a child prodigy, and began to study the cello with his father at age four. Ma moved with his family to Boston at age seven and later to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard University. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, recorded more than 92 albums, and received 20 Grammy Awards.