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.

Alisa Weilerstein was born in 1982 to musical parents. Her father, Donald Weilerstein, is the first violin of the Cleveland Quartet, and her mother, Vivian Hornil Wilerstein, is a professor at the New England Conservatory, teaching both piano and chamber music. Ms. Weilerstein began playing the cello at four, giving her first recital not soon after. She holds a degree in Russian history from Columbia University. The Weilerstein Trio consists of her and her parents, and they are currently the Trio-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory. Her EMI Classics Debut CD came out in 2000, when she won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and garnering for herself international attention. [Source: From the San Francisco Symphony biography, playbill for Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B Minor, Opus 104 (1895), printed June 2008]