Do you know that game where people try to avoid hearing \u201cLast Christmas\u201d by Wham! for as long as possible into December? It\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
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 \u2014 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. <\/p>\n
In the realms of classical music, world music and jazz, these 10 events can put a little spice in your eggnog.<\/p>\n
Christine Brandes is the conductor for Chicago Opera Theater\u2019s production of \u201cFalstaff.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n If all you know of Antonio Salieri is F. Murray Abraham\u2019s portrayal in \u201cAmadeus\u201d as a jealous, scheming sourpuss (and honestly, you\u2019d be in good company), you might be surprised to learn that he wrote a comic opera based on Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Merry Wives of Windsor.\u201d The opera \u201cFalstaff,\u201d titled after the fool at its center, teems with pranks, broad comedy and bubbly music. Chicago Opera Theater\u2019s production \u2014 the 1799 opera\u2019s Chicago premiere \u2014 features Christine Brandes, the rare conductor with experience as an operatic soloist. Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. $50-$150. <\/i>fineartsbuilding.com\/studebaker<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n The Chicago Symphony Orchestra doesn\u2019t dole out commissions for full orchestra willy-nilly these days. In fact, the only such piece the CSO will premiere all season is \u201cSong of the Reappeared,\u201d 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 Ra\u00fal 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+. <\/i>cso.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n This year\u2019s Newberry Consort Christmas program focuses on flamenco, bringing in the dancer Ana Mar\u00eda Barcel\u00f3 to perform alongside a band of baroque guitar, recorders, viola da gamba, singers and others practicing the Spanish Christmas tradition called \u201czambomba.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n 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\u2019s program focuses on flamenco, bringing in the dancer Ana Mar\u00eda Barcel\u00f3 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\u2019d 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. <\/i>newberryconsort.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n 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 \u201cA Creole Christmas,\u201d put on by the Evanston music venue SPACE off-site at Northwestern\u2019s Cahn Auditorium. In past years, the program has included the likes of Vince Guaraldi\u2019s \u201cChristmas Time Is Here\u201d and a light-hearted \u201cO Christmas Tree\u201d alongside NoLa standards like \u201cJust a Closer Walk with Thee\u201d and \u201cWhen the Saints Go Marching In.\u201d Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University, 600 Emerson St., Evanston. $52-$90. <\/i>evanstonspace.com<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n The Chicago Symphony Orchestra\u2019s brass section performs on Dec. 16 at Symphony Center.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n Every year, an alignment births a showcase concert for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra\u2019s 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\u2019 conference that happens nearby every mid-December. This year\u2019s 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\u2019s concert included a trombone ensemble showing off a hen\u2019s-teeth-rare soprano trombone, played by a trumpeter. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $49+. <\/i>cso.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n 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 \u201cA Season of Stars\u201d 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 \u201cSympathique\u201d (a.k.a. \u201cJe ne veux pas travailler\u201d) has been mistaken for a prewar Edith Piaf original. The vocalists for \u201cA Season of Stars\u201d are Edna V\u00e1zquez, Jimmie Herrod from \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d and Ari Shapiro, best known for hosting NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered.\u201d Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive. $49-$172. <\/i>auditoriumtheatre.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Yunchan Lim will solo on Schumann\u2019s Piano Concerto, on a program that also includes contemporary responses to Beethoven by J\u00f6rg Widmann and Unsuk Chin, along with Beethoven\u2019s Symphony No. 7.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n News of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra lately has orbited around incoming maestro Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4, the Finn flying into the music directorship starting in the 2027-28 season. Every story mentions his youth (he\u2019s 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\u2019ll solo on Schumann\u2019s Piano Concerto, on a program that also includes contemporary responses to Beethoven by J\u00f6rg Widmann and Unsuk Chin, along with Beethoven himself in his Symphony No. 7. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. $99+. <\/i>cso.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n The Japanese-drumming group Tsukasa Taiko has a regular date every December at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This year it\u2019s Dec. 20, for its performance of traditional taiko, in a numbered series titled Taiko Legacy that has now reached 22. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n The Japanese drumming group Tsukasa Taiko has a regular date every December at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This year it\u2019s Dec. 20, for its performance of traditional taiko, in a numbered series titled \u201cTaiko Legacy\u201d that has now reached 22. In a separate, also numbered series titled \u201cReduction,\u201d 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\u2019s episode, \u201cReduction 11,\u201d the ensemble plays \u201cSkylanding,\u201d composed for the dedication of Yoko Ono\u2019s sculpture of the same name in Jackson Park, tying into the temporary MCA exhibition \u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind.\u201d Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., $10-$25. <\/i>mcachicago.org<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake\u2019s 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\u2019s free-jazz scene for decades. This year\u2019s solstice concerts mark their 35th year of heralding astronomical winter predawn, as well as Drake\u2019s 70th birthday. For those who have a date with their oatmeal blocking out the morning performances, there are also evening concerts<\/u><\/a> on Dec. 21 and 22. Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave. $35-$38. <\/i>constellation-chicago.com<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Jazz trumpeter Marquis Hill. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/p>\n Todd Rosenberg Photography<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n 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\u2019s 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. <\/i>jazzshowcase.com<\/u><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.wbez.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you know that game where people try to avoid hearing \u201cLast Christmas\u201d by Wham! for as long as possible into December? It\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2181155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2181154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/10-classical-world-music-and-jazz-concerts-to-see-in.com2Fbrightspot2F262F1b2Fc99.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2181156,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181154\/revisions\/2181156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2181155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dec. 3-7: \u201cFalstaff\u201d<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
Dec. 4-7: Matthew Aucoin and Julia Bullock<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"ana-barcelo1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/f67414a\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/980x1225+0+0\/resize\/840x1050!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F49%2F36%2F728df1214e6695aae3bf0e78646e%2Fana-barcelo1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nDec. 5-7: A Flamenco Christmas<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
Dec. 12: Preservation Hall Jazz Band Presents: A Creole Christmas<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Chicago](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/34e26ce\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4873x3249+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fd4%2F3a%2F3697e4264ba3820e073795c3a6d8%2Fcso20241217-104.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nDec. 16: Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
Dec. 17: Pink Martini<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"230605_YunchanLim_0463_F1](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/9885612\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5464x8192+0+0\/resize\/840x1259!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F26%2Fcb%2Fb18c2b2c4b759bb5bff67ff80089%2F230605-yunchanlim-0463-f1-james-hole.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nDec. 18-20: Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4 and Yunchan Lim<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"6186](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/9f22a29\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/800x533+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F10%2F38%2Fcb485ebd46eaa109d5ea435d3efe%2F6186-final-number-in-taiko-legacy-21-photo-by-ken-carl.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nDec. 19-20: Reduction 11<\/u><\/a> and Taiko Legacy 22<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
Dec. 21-23: Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Marquis](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/949b4e3\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6720x4480+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F35%2Ffc%2F576a87c54765a9f885b82bb10103%2Fmarquis-hill-by-todd-rosenberg.JPG\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nDec. 26-Jan. 4: Marquis Hill<\/u><\/a><\/h3>\n