We take a detour through jazz-mad Europe. Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, and Kurt Weill all fell in love with American jazz, and their sassy music bears its stamp. Victor Goines, jazz clarinetist and president of Jazz St. Louis, rocks and wails in Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto. Kurt Weill’s Suite from The Threepenny Opera includes hits like “Mack the Knife,” and the program ends with the honking horns and swaggering tunes of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. 

EPSG:4326

An American in Paris

Touhill Performing Arts Center

Get your tickets today to experience the moment when our YO musicians take the stage to perform with their St. Louis Symphony Orchestra counterparts in a side-by-side concert led by Leonard Slatkin, SLSO Conductor Laureate and founder of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. Slatkin leads the combined musicians through Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture followed by Joseph Schwantner’s evocative New Morning for the World (Daybreak of Freedom), which features narrator and Director of SLSO’s IN UNISON Chorus Kevin McBeth channeling the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s stirring Francesca da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante brings the program to a powerful close.

St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra: SLSO Side-by-Side

We return to jazz’s American home for a program featuring Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Aaron Diehl trio makes its debut in Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite. John Alden Carpenter was an early classical composer to incorporate jazz in his ballet Krazy Kat, while Paul Turok channels a past St. Louis resident in A Joplin Overture. 

Rhapsody in Blue

A feast for the eyes and ears. French animator Grégoire Pont conjures an entire world before our eyes. In Albert Roussel’s The Spider’s Feast, Pont's sketches dance on screen while the SLSO plays. Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf is accompanied by the Academy Award-winning short film, and the SLSO captures the energy of Francis Poulenc’s colorful musical fables, Les Animaux modèles.  

Musical Fables

Stifel Theatre

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Inspired by our city’s past and present, we celebrate, we reflect, we relate. Music invites us to engage with the spirit of our city echoed through the sonic worlds of St. Louis-born Olly Wilson and current resident Christopher Stark. Allison Loggins-Hull prompts us to reflect on our homeland, while Laurence Crane and Cassie Wieland create gentle spaces for continued contemplation.

Live at the Pulitzer: Material and Memory

Pulitzer Arts Foundation

A call for unity. Florence Price was a pioneer, a key figure in the Black Chicago Renaissance, championed by America’s finest performers. Price’s Third Symphony, written during the height of the Great Depression, combines deep passion with an ear for great tunes and danceable rhythms. Valerie Coleman’s Umoja seeks a union for family, community, nation, and race. Violinist Augustin Hadelich, an international sensation and a St. Louis favorite, plays Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto.  

Barber and Price

Two unlikely friends—the mighty lion and the little mouse—take us on an adventure that proves even the smallest acts of kindness can make a big difference. Familiar tunes from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt bring the story to life as students dance and make music along with SLSO musicians. Based on the book The Lion and the Mouse by Jenny Broom, illustrated by Nahta Nój. Tickets are available for purchase here. 

Family Concert: Tiny Tunes: The Lion and the Mouse

The Sheldon

SLSO Concertmaster David Halen leads a program that showcases the lush sounds of Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet and Antonín Dvořák’s masterpiece Piano Quintet in A major, featuring pianist Peter Henderson. 

Ravel and Dvořák: Strings with Piano

“O fortuna!” Right from its famous opening notes, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana shakes the Stifel to its foundation. Orff’s work charts the course of fate with songs of joy, love, and celebration. Stéphane crafts a first half trilogy of loss and fateful farewell. In Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, pure sounds are as if directly descended from heaven, then Lera Auerbach brings us to the heat of the sun in Icarus. In the Love-death from Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde we end with a salute to eternal love.  

Carmina Burana

“Lift every voice and sing, till Earth and Heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of Liberty!” Join your SLSO and the inimitable IN UNISON Chorus—marking its 30th year in 2024—for this one-of-a-kind celebration of Black History Month, featuring Grammy- and NAACP Image Award winning vocalist BeBe Winans. Don’t miss this soulful celebration of unity, freedom, and Black musical expression. 

Lift Every Voice

An operatic extravaganza. Stéphane leads us on a journey through 300 years of heart-stopping melodies, captivating drama, and thrilling dances. The fanfare from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, one of the very first operas, sets us on a path through Mozart, Rossini, Puccini, Bellini, and Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours,” now best known as the hippopotamus ballet from Fantasia. The SLSO’s Associate Concertmaster Erin Schreiber gives a virtuoso turn in Sarasate’s Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen. Associate Principal Cello Melissa Brooks performs Bellini’s mellifluous melodies  

Operatic Favorites

A diverse and dynamic program featuring Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale Suite, Martinů’s Quartet with snare drum, and a new work by Shannon Wood for English horn, cello, piano and timpani. 

Stravinsky, Martinů, and Shannon Wood: Percussion Spotlight

Lose yourself in the enchanting world of the Madrigals with Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Academy Award-winning film, Encanto. Experience this heartwarming tale come alive on the majestic Stifel Theatre’s big screen, accompanied by your own St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performing the film's magical, chart-topping soundtrack live.  

Encanto In Concert

Two classic ballet scores join an exciting new dance collaboration. Aaron Copland’s popular Appalachian Spring Suite ends with variations on “Simple Gifts,” while Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet captures the thrills and tragedy of a star-crossed love. American composer Adam Schoenberg writes music that sounds like a cross between Radiohead and Copland. The SLSO commissioned Adam Schoenberg for a new score to be danced by St. Louis’ own The Big Muddy Dance Company.  

Romeo and Juliet

Power takes many forms. It can be the majesty of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, known as the “Emperor.” Israeli pianist Tom Borrow, a world traveler at just 22, brings his “supremely incandescent” touch to the concerto, written at a time of war. It can be American composer Julia Wolfe’s Pretty, tearing down walls between musical styles, between players and audiences, between genders. It can be the sheer orchestral power and imagination of Hector Berlioz’s virtuosic overture to the comic Shakespearean opera Beatrice and Benedict.  

Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto

Majestic horns herald the arrival of spring with a program of music including Beethoven’s enchanting Sextet in E flat major for two horns and string quartet, and Paul Hindemith’s masterly Sonata for Four Horns. 

Beethoven and Hindemith: Horns with Strings

People and Place. We celebrate dynamic musical practices from the Americas. Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon tells a future creation story, while Clarice Assad introduces us to the vibrant folk melodies and dances of South America. Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov conjures the sounds of Brazil in memory of a close friend, and Molly Herron ponders the evolution of the sarabande and its roots in the new world.

Live at the Pulitzer: People and Place

Reignite the spark of hope with Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Last Jedi as our heroes brave the relentless pursuit of the First Order. Journey alongside Rey as she seeks the galaxy's last hope, the legendary Luke Skywalker. Experience the thrill, the fear, the anticipation, as the fate of the Resistance hangs in the balance. Get swept away into the Skywalker saga like never before as your St. Louis Symphony Orchestra breathes new life into John Williams’ Academy Award–nominated score, performed live along with the film. Dive into a universe of thrilling mysteries, daring missions, and earth-shaking revelations. May the Force be with you! 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi In Concert

Youth grows into experience. Pianist Marie-Ange Nguci, “one the most promising talents of her generation,” according to Le Figaro, makes her North American concerto debut. She brings a youthful spirit to Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, music of an ambitious teenager. Finnish conductor John Storgårds leads us into the Nordic woods. The SLSO’s strings seduce us in Jean Sibelius’ The Lover, and then give shade in Per Nørgård’s Glade. Sibelius’s final symphony, the Seventh, leads us from dark forest into shining light.  

Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto

The SLSO and Jazz St. Louis come together for a very special festival. In three concerts over two weeks, Leonard Slatkin explores the ways jazz has enriched orchestral music. Each program ends with a work by George Gershwin, here suite from the opera Porgy and Bess. George Antheil’s Jazz Symphony is one of the first works of orchestral jazz, and Duke Ellington’s final work, The Three Black Kings was written as a eulogy for Martin Luther King, Jr. Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins makes her SLSO debut in Emmy winner Jeff Beal’s new jazz-inflected Violin Concerto. 

Events in St. Louis, MO

An American in Paris

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

St. Louis Symphony Youth ...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Rhapsody in Blue

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Musical Fables

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The Artelize Podcast - A ...

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The Artelize Podcast: A l...

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The Artelize Podcast and ...

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Live at the Pulitzer: Mat...

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Barber and Price

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Family Concert: Tiny Tune...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Ravel and Dvořák: Strings...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Carmina Burana

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Lift Every Voice

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Operatic Favorites

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Stravinsky, Martinů, and ...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Encanto In Concert

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Romeo and Juliet

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Beethoven’s Emperor Piano...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Beethoven and Hindemith: ...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Live at the Pulitzer: Peo...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Star Wars: The Last Jedi ...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Beethoven’s Second Piano ...

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Porgy and Bess

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra