What Folks Are Saying...

• "I've been waiting my entire professional lifetime for an orchestral concert like the Chicago Sinfonietta performed last week at Symphony Hall... I was on fire. Thank you for this GIFT, and for the kind of music-making that turns our troubled world into a night of Bliss. Bravissimo!

  Concert Patron

• "Chicago Sinfonietta has made an Olympic sport of high-jumping over classical convention"

  Chicago Tribune

• Chicago Sinfonietta—an orchestra that routinely challenges all aspects of the dead-white-guy default-programming strategy for classical music.

  Crain's Business Chicago

• Will Mei-Ann Chen, conductor of the Chicago Sinfonietta, be my new best friend? She is KILLING it!

  Social Media

• More fun than humans are usually allowed to have on a Monday night.

  Social Media

• Outstanding, creative, unique, brilliant… the Chicago Sinfonietta as I know and love! Extraordinary!!!

  Concert Patron

• “…. Chen took the lid off the talented ensemble she’s inherited and helped the players to deliver performances on a higher level than they’ve been able to show in recent years. The Beethoven sounded as if this were an almost entirely new orchestra.”

  Andrew Patner, Chicago Sun-Times

• “Despite the ravages of the world outside, the hall became a place of real fellowship. ‘Surely Dr. King is smiling down on this,’ a beaming Chen said toward the concert’s end. I’d say not just King, but the people’s music champion Kodaly, the American excavator Ives and the great musical humanist Beethoven himself. Glory be.”

  Andrew Patner, Chicago Sun-Times

• "The most fun I’ve had in a long time at a music performance. The orchestra absolutely had us dancing in our seats during the Beethoven. Thank you for everything Sinfonietta does to make classical music accessible for all."

  Concert Patron

• “Not a single bar sounded routine, with this crackling performance rising in intensity from the famous opening motif through the blazing final bars. “She’s a little bundle of fire,” said one elderly lady in attendance, and indeed Chen’s hyperkinetic direction is a wonder to behold.”

  Lawrence Johnson, Chicago Classical Review

• What an epic evening! The best, most meaningful concert I have been to in my life.

  Social Media

• “Chen, 38, is a musician for whom ‘dynamic’ and ‘electric’ seem altogether too limiting. Her entire body is a bundle of podium energy; her keen ear and sharp eyes miss nothing. Thanks to her clear beat and articulate gestures, orchestral musicians pick up at once on her interpretive ideas, sending them out to the listener with much the same immediacy of effect.”

  John Von Rhein, Chicago Tribune