Do you know that game where people try to avoid hearing “Last Christmas” by Wham! for as long as possible into December? It’s telling that the game exists, revealing not just that the song is annoyingly cheesy but that there is a lot of sameness in what gets played every December.
You could take in a lot of Messiahs, Nutcrackers and Christmas Carols without trying very hard, many of them very good but maybe a bit low-hanging on your Douglas fir of concert possibilities. Luckily, Chicago offers plenty of alternatives to yet another jinglefest — some from other musical genres or cultures, some keeping offbeat traditions and some from musical organizations for which December is just another month in the calendar.
In the realms of classical music, world music and jazz, these 10 events can put a little spice in your eggnog.
Dec. 3-7: “Falstaff”
If all you know of Antonio Salieri is F. Murray Abraham’s portrayal in “Amadeus” as a jealous, scheming sourpuss (and honestly, you’d be in good company), you might be surprised to learn that he wrote a comic opera based on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The opera “Falstaff,” titled after the fool at its center, teems with pranks, broad comedy and bubbly music. Chicago Opera Theater’s production — the 1799 opera’s Chicago premiere — features Christine Brandes, the rare conductor with experience as an operatic soloist. Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. $50-$150. fineartsbuilding.com/studebaker
Dec. 4-7: Matthew Aucoin and Julia Bullock
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra doesn’t dole out commissions for full orchestra willy-nilly these days. In fact, the only such piece the CSO will premiere all season is “Song of the Reappeared,” written by the young American composer Matthew Aucoin. No stranger to the CSO from his time as a conducting apprentice under Riccardo Muti, Aucoin set texts by the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, who was imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet dictatorship as a dissident in the 1970s. While composing, Aucoin had in mind the fierce and radiant voice of the soprano Julia Bullock, who will premiere it. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $39+. cso.org
Dec. 5-7: A Flamenco Christmas
Instead of going the easy Messiah route, the baroque-focused Newberry Consort has for the past several years zagged toward Spanish-language Christmas, presenting music that would have been heard in New and Old Spain. This year’s program focuses on flamenco, bringing in the dancer Ana María Barceló to perform alongside a band of baroque guitar, recorders, viola da gamba, singers and others practicing the Spanish Christmas tradition of zambomba. Sojourning in a corner of baroque music different from what you’d most often hear is a specialty for this scholarly group, which often dusts off music from archives at their namesake library. Various locations. $10-$70. newberryconsort.org
Dec. 12: Preservation Hall Jazz Band Presents: A Creole Christmas
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, named for its divey French Quarter home base, has for 60-plus years kept the spirit of New Orleans jazz vital like no other ensemble. They bring their horn-heavy, upbeat sound, full of call-and-response and jolly tuba backing, to a holiday concert titled “A Creole Christmas,” put on by the Evanston music venue SPACE off-site at Northwestern’s Cahn Auditorium. In past years, the program has included the likes of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here” and a light-hearted “O Christmas Tree” alongside NoLa standards like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University, 600 Emerson St., Evanston. $52-$90. evanstonspace.com
Dec. 16: Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass
Every year, an alignment births a showcase concert for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s brass section: the increased seasonal interest in brass (owing to the multitudes of heavenly host) and the built-in fan base at the Midwest Clinic, the immense music educators’ conference that happens nearby every mid-December. This year’s concert will be the first for Timothy Higgins as the newly appointed principal trombone, and he also has an arrangement of motets by Francis Poulenc on the program, originally for choir. The Poulenc settings typify the program of idiomatic arrangements and brass-only curiosities; one year’s concert included a trombone ensemble showing off a hen’s-teeth-rare soprano trombone, played by a trumpeter. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $49+. cso.org
Dec. 17: Pink Martini
The Portland, Oregon-based retro orchestra Pink Martini, celebrating 30 years of embodying an aesthetic that was already a half-century old when it started, brings its holiday show “A Season of Stars” here on tour. The effervescent band plays loungey big-band music with worldwide influences (their repertoire claims songs in 25 languages) in collaboration with performers from all walks of life, even extramusical ones. They slip into their old-school style and multiculti artistry so seamlessly that, for example, their 1997 song “Sympathique” (a.k.a. “Je ne veux pas travailler”) has been mistaken for a prewar Edith Piaf original. The vocalists for “A Season of Stars” are Edna Vázquez, Jimmie Herrod from “America’s Got Talent” and Ari Shapiro, best known for hosting NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive. $49-$172. auditoriumtheatre.org
Dec. 18-20: Klaus Mäkelä and Yunchan Lim
News of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra lately has orbited around incoming maestro Klaus Mäkelä, the Finn flying into the music directorship starting in the 2027-28 season. Every story mentions his youth (he’s just shy of 30), but this CSO concert showcases an even younger featured musician: Yunchan Lim, the 21-year-old Korean pianist who won the prestigious Van Cliburn piano competition in 2022 while still a teenager. He’ll solo on Schumann’s Piano Concerto, on a program that also includes contemporary responses to Beethoven by Jörg Widmann and Unsuk Chin, along with Beethoven himself in his Symphony No. 7. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $99+. cso.org
Dec. 19-20: Reduction 11 and Taiko Legacy 22
The Japanese drumming group Tsukasa Taiko has a regular date every December at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This year it’s Dec. 20, for its performance of traditional taiko, in a numbered series titled “Taiko Legacy” that has now reached 22. In a separate, also numbered series titled “Reduction,” musicians from Tsukasa Taiko combine forces with experimentally minded jazz colleagues, many affiliated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. In this year’s episode, “Reduction 11,” the ensemble plays “Skylanding,” composed for the dedication of Yoko Ono’s sculpture of the same name in Jackson Park, tying into the temporary MCA exhibition “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind.” Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., $10-$25. mcachicago.org
Dec. 21-23: Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake
Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake’s annual celebration of the winter solstice on Dec. 21 commences in darkness and ends in light. With sunrise at 7:14 a.m., this means the concerts begin at 6 a.m. Zerang and Drake, both percussion-orbiting multi-instrumentalists, have been mainstays of Chicago’s free-jazz scene for decades. This year’s solstice concerts mark their 35th year of heralding astronomical winter predawn, as well as Drake’s 70th birthday. For those who have a date with their oatmeal blocking out the morning performances, there are also evening concerts on Dec. 21 and 22. Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave. $35-$38. constellation-chicago.com
Dec. 26-Jan. 4: Marquis Hill
Trumpeter Marquis Hill, a hometown hero who cut his jazz teeth in the high school program at Kenwood Academy, considers it his musical mission to welcome R&B, house, hip-hop, soul and any other genre under jazz’s big added-tones tent. A Hill jam might drop a spoken-word quote and then mix it in DJ-style, or set up a post-minimalist kind of ostinato and then wail on top of it. For his long stand at the Jazz Showcase, Hill brings two different ensembles: his Blacktet, a sextet that formed more than a decade ago, for the December dates; and Signatures in Brass, where three other trumpeters will join Hill, for those in January. Jazz Showcase. 806 S. Plymouth Court. $35-$110. jazzshowcase.com
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