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During the current season, enjoy these orchestra events at Krannert Center:
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An orchestra is a large group of instrumentalists based around those who play stringed instruments. Today's major modern symphony orchestras include about 100 musicians, nearly two-thirds of whom play string instruments, including the violin, viola, cello, and bass. Other instruments you will find in a modern symphony orchestra are flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, and percussion instruments. Smaller orchestras of about 35 musicians or less are known as chamber orchestras. Because so many people perform together in an orchestra, a conductor leads the musicians and helps interpret the musical score for the entire ensemble.
Each season, Krannert Center invites a selection of the world's finest orchestras to perform in the Marquee Great Hall Series. They present standards of the orchestral repertoire -- such as symphonies of Beethoven or Tchaikovsky -- as well as contemporary and newly commissioned works. Sometimes the orchestras invite soloists on their tours to perform concerto repertoire.
The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonia da Camera (a chamber orchestra), two local orchestras, present a series of performances at Krannert Center each year. The orchestral ensembles of the University of Illinois School of Music also perform at Krannert Center.
All of these orchestras hold concerts in Krannert Center's Foellinger Great Hall, noted throughout the country for its excellent acoustics. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra liked the Foellinger Great Hall so much that it used to travel to Krannert Center to make its recordings. Most orchestras enjoy performing at Krannert Center, and their enthusiasm for the Great Hall leads to some exceptionally fine performances.
The roots of the modern symphony orchestra date back to the 17th century, when Baroque composers such as Lully in France, Handel in England, and Bach in Germany wrote music for larger ensembles that combined string and wind players. But composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is considered the father of the symphony, a musical form that has created a permanent place for large orchestras in Western musical history. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies. Beethoven learned a great deal by studying Haydn's music, and the nine symphonies that Beethoven wrote soon became the standard by which all other symphonies are judged.
Asian and African cultures also have orchestras made up of indigenous musical instruments.
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