The EYSO Difference

What IS the EYSO Difference?

It’s the excitement and thrill you feel Sunday morning before rehearsal, knowing that you’re about to explore music and art together with hundreds of your friends and colleagues.

It’s knowing that you’ll be challenged, supported, surprised, and inspired by master teachers and artists every step of the way, pushing you to develop your individual artistry and find relevance and meaning in your own life.

It’s believing that you make a difference in this special community, and feeling that your voice is seen, heard, supported, appreciated, and valued by everyone at EYSO, no matter whether it’s your first year or your tenth.

It’s the nervous excitement you feel as you walk into Fall Camp, the unbridled laughter of kindling new friendships that last beyond the rehearsal room, the pride after a performance that swept the audience to their feet, the satisfaction of knowing that you’re surrounded by people who share your passion, and the bittersweet feeling as you take the stage at the end of the year knowing that you’ve had a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It’s the warmth you feel as your child hops in the car after rehearsal, smiling with joy as the words tumble out, debriefing rehearsal; your pride in seeing your kid work together in a collaborative environment to create a performance that moves the audience to tears; and the knowledge that together they are learning, persevering, and growing in an environment that both supports and challenges them.

What is the EYSO Difference? It’s how EYSO shapes you, and how you shape each other.

Music with purpose and meaning.

Season Themes

Each year, our season theme offers a lens through which we can view the monumental works of art that we program and perform. We explore how music interacts with our bodies in space (MOVE), visual art (SOUNDSCAPES), cultural stories and tales (MYTHS & LEGENDS), our sense of perception (TIME), and the entire world around us (GAIA), creating and reinforcing how our art relates to the wider world.

Discover Past Concert Themes

Honoring Our Past, Inspiring the Future

Celebrating 50 Years of Musical Excellence

As the Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestras celebrate their 50th anniversary season in 2025–26, we honor a rich legacy of ensemble training and artistic growth while looking toward a future full of possibility. For five decades, EYSO has nurtured generations of young musicians, fostering technical skill, creative expression, and leadership on stage and in the community. This milestone season celebrates the past and launches us into an exciting future of music-making, innovation, and inspiration for aspiring artists across Chicagoland and beyond.

Explore the 2025-26 Season

Learning, leading, and growing together.

The EYSO Culture

Come with your hearts and minds open to meet new people, explore big and challenging ideas, and find yourselves transformed by the study of great music and art. Leave knowing that you’ve found a community that will support you, challenge you, excite you, and inspire you every step of your journey.

Fall Camp: An immersive start to the EYSO year

This annual tradition is where friendships are formed, and the individuals who make up each ensemble become one team, moving together with unified purpose and a commitment to the special community they’ve created. Expect laughter, sweat, confusion, pride, challenges, profundity, hilarity, singing, movement, insights, music, silence, community, and joy, just to name a few things.

Small ensembles. Big musical growth.

Chamber Music

Combine the thrill of one-on-a-part performances with the joy of ensemble playing in these tightly-knit small ensembles. In intimate 3-5 person groups coached by expert artist-educators, you lead in crafting an interpretation and taking ownership for the group performance.

See Chamber Music in Action

Where curiosity leads, and learning takes many forms

Strategies of Inquiry/Expert Noticing

Drawing on decades of experience as expert educators, conductors use innovative strategies to teach and reach outcomes. Guided in part by Eliot Eisner’s "Ten Lessons the Arts Teach", we celebrate multiple perspectives, learn to express what can’t be said, and encourage critical engagement as individuals coming together in a shared purpose.

How do we do it? We use music and instruments, tennis balls and hula hoops, singing and movement, theater and language, experiments and metaphors, and time-tested masterworks and pieces written so recently the ink is still fresh.

Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance (CMP)

At EYSO, we believe great musicianship goes beyond playing notes—it’s about understanding and performing with intention. That’s why we use Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance (CMP) , a nationally recognized approach that combines music theory, history, and performance skills.

CMP empowers students to:

Analyze and interpret music beyond the sheet music
Develop critical listening skills for ensemble performance
Connect music to its historical and cultural context
Grow as confident, expressive performers

Every rehearsal becomes a learning experience, helping students think, listen, and perform as complete artists. CMP is the foundation of how EYSO nurtures musical excellence, creativity, and lifelong skills.

Repertoire & Outcomes

At EYSO, our product isn’t just an excellent concert (though we have those too). Through thoughtful and inspirational repertoire selection, conductors build connections to season themes and navigate beyond the concert, aiming for takeaways that stay with students after the final notes.