On May 9, 2026, the University of Chicago’s University Symphony Orchestra (USO) and our Alumni Orchestra are celebrating music director Barbara Schubert’s 50-year tenure with two landmark performances:

  • Brahms — Academic Festival Overture (Alumni Orchestra)
  • Mahler — Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” (USO)

I’m playing in both pieces across the May 9 and May 10 performances — roughly two hours of music in total, with the Mahler alone clocking in as an eighty-minute marathon. Wish me luck.

Scored for over 100 players, including a full chorus and an expanded brass section, the Resurrection culminates in a final movement that moves from despair to transcendence. “It’s an incredibly compelling piece, almost overwhelming in terms of the range of emotions that it expresses and the types of colors that it has,” Barbara once said, “so it seemed like a wonderful goal as a culminating event.”

Reading through Barbara’s interviews and reflections has been genuinely inspiring — particularly her leadership in cultivating such a vibrant musical community, one that draws thoughtful, curious people and radiates outward into Hyde Park. Music does unite people, but it still takes talent, hard work, and a great deal of love and kindness to conduct 100+ talented (and, let’s be honest, occasionally arrogant and snarky) musicians.

“She’s created a space for creativity in our lives and helped souls bloom — whether they knew it at the time or not.” — Hobaugh

In Barbara’s own words:

The baton makes no sound, as we all know: it is only a catalyst to the fundamental process of bringing a piece of music to life, first for the players and then for the audience. I view the notes on the page as merely a blueprint for the music itself — a set of guidelines, carefully crafted by the composer, which need to be deciphered, interpreted, invigorated, and animated by the conductor, but actually brought into existence as music by the players themselves. It is the skill, the perception, the perseverance, and the artistry of each and every member of the ensemble that enables a symphony orchestra to function as a unified entity, able to communicate the abstract and the ineffable through the captivating art form of music.

Full article here. Thank you, Barbara 💖

Full article here. Thank you, Barbara 💖

Barbara has also, in her own way, taught me how to stay professional and astonishingly efficient. The fact that we put on five concert programs each year — pulled together in limited rehearsal time, around the schedules of perpetually busy students — is no small feat:

With an orchestra like ours, it’s a different experience from preparing a performance with an orchestra that’s full of professionals who have performed, say, the Brahms First [Symphony] twenty times. Some of our student musicians may be coming to something like the Brahms First for the very first time. So they do need a little bit more technical instruction; we need to rehearse things slowly; we need to take it apart in a way that you wouldn’t have to do at the early stages of rehearsing with a professional orchestra. But I find that process fascinating. I like to be as efficient as I possibly can in terms of rehearsal. It’s a combination of leading them in rehearsal, of giving them the general picture and the overall idea, but also honing in on specific details — pointing out what to listen for, what has to be loud or softer, what the goals of the phrase are, what the details are, what’s important about the composer’s style, and so forth.

References