The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced its 2026-27 lineup Thursday, featuring everyone from Yo-Yo Ma to Andrew Bird. The lineup also includes a world premiere from composer Mason Bates, a season-long deep dive into Beethoven and a healthy showing of Finnish music.
That last part is thanks to CSO’s incoming music director, Klaus Mäkelä. Although the 30-year-old Finnish conductor and cellist will not officially be in the role until the following season, Mäkelä’s is already helping shape what gets played inside Orchestra Hall.
“I have lots of music that I really want to bring to the orchestra. and this is just a couple pieces,” Mäkelä said from his backstage office this week. “I bring music that I think the orchestra should play. I also bring music that I think the audience should hear, and some things that I really just think are fun.”
That fun includes William Walton “Belshazzar’s Feast,” which Mäkelä will conduct in October. “It’s an incredible masterpiece. If I would buy a ticket to one concert, that would be the concert,” said Mäkelä, who is in town for the announcement and to conduct a showcase of 20th century compositions, including Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”
Next season, he will spend five weeks in Chicago as he ramps up to his full-time appointment. During one of those appearances, Mäkelä will conduct Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in October, a nod to the CSO’s long history with the piece. The orchestra has won multiple Grammy Awards for its recordings of the work.
Now, the new maestro will look to put his spin on it. “One of the great things about it, is that as long as your interpretation has deep logic and coherence, it can take really lots of different treatments,” he said.
Then, next spring he will return to conduct the U.S. premiere of a new work co-commissioned by the CSO from Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. The season also includes a U.S. premiere from another Finnish composer, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chicago’s orchestra will also premiere “The Escapist Symphony” from Bates, a former CSO composer in residence, which Manfred Honeck will conduct in February.
Together, the 2026-27 season represents an era of new music, which Mäkelä has championed. Other contemporary works making their CSO premieres include Julia Wolfe’s “Liberty Bell,” Arturo Márquez’s “Fandango” and Philip Glass’ “The Light.” As for whether Chicago audiences will get to hear Glass’ “Lincoln” symphony, which the composer withdrew from a planned premiere at the Kennedy Center and will instead debut this summer at Tanglewood, Mäkelä said only that “we hope one day to be able to bring it here too.”
“I think it’s important to keep playing new music, because orchestras have always played new music,” Mäkelä said. “But it’s also important to play old music and to put things in context.”
That context arrives, in part, with the season-long exploration of Ludwig van Beethoven, timed to the 200th anniversary of his death. There will be performances of each of Beethoven’s five piano concertos by acclaimed Chinese pianist Lang Lang, spread across a three-concert residency in March. It all builds to Mäkelä conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (which concludes with “Ode to Joy”) to close out the season in June 2027.
That performance is one of several on the lineup that include a collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Chorus under director Donald Palumbo. The chorus will also appear in a spring performance featuring selections from Italian composer Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell,” conducted by CSO music director emeritus Riccardo Muti.
The CSO will also go the road in January with an eight-city, 12-concert European tour under Mäkelä’s baton. That follows the maestro’s first tour with the orchestra last month to the East Coast. For him, tours are essential to artistic growth. “I’ve never been on tour with an orchestra that hasn’t come home as a better orchestra,” he said.
As Mäkelä prepares to become the orchestra’s 11th director, he faces a series of challenges: There are multiple vacancies on stage that need permanent filling, and global politics have affected classical music’s talent pipeline. Plus, not all musicians want to perform in the United States right now.
“We are not searching for the best players, we are searching for the most suitable players who make our orchestra a better orchestra,” Mäkelä said. “Unless we choose the right people and the best people, our orchestra doesn’t stay the world’s best, so it’s a wonderful challenge.”
Other highlights of the 2026-27 CSO season include:
- French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will make three appearances next season — Oct. 18, Feb. 11-13 and May 24 — as the CSO’s artist in residence.
- The season will open Sept. 17-19 with an appearance from former CSO artist-in-residence Hilary Hahn. The program conducted by Petr Popelka will feature Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Robert Schumann’s Overture to Manfred and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5.
- The superstar Canadian pianist and 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition winner Bruce Liu is returning to Chicago on Nov. 1. Last summer, Liu helped the CSO open its annual residency at Ravinia. His performance this fall will feature a wide range of music, including Chopin.
- Fan-favorite Yo-Yo Ma returns to the CSO on Nov. 11 with one of the first concertos he ever recorded, Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto.
- CSO’s annual movie series that pairs films with live orchestra performance, kicks off with “How to Train Your Dragon 2” (Nov. 27-29). The series will also include “Elf” (Dec. 11-13), “West Side Story” (Jan. 29-30) and “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (June 25-27, 2027).
- The holiday season will include performances of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” Dec. 17-19.
- On April 4, 2027, Mexican singer-songwriter Lila Downs will bring her program, “Cambias mi mundo” to town. It’s a soulful blend of songs about identity and justice.
- The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will return for a two-day residency in April 2027, during what will be the final season with legendary trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as artistic director.
- Tan Dun, the Oscar-winning Chinese composer and conductor, who will make his CSO debut with a program of his own works May 20-22. The program will also feature percussionist Yuri Yamashita in her CSO debut. Composers Masaaki Suzuki and Maxim Emelyanychev will also take the podium in Chicago for the first time.
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.