For this year’s list, we organize everything by category.

Music 45 2023: Who Keeps Chicago In Tune introduction
Music 45 2023: The Record Makers
Music 45 2023: The Venues
Music 45 2023: The Programmers
Music 45 2023: The Media
Music 45 2023: The Educators and Supporters

Jeff Alexander/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Jeff Alexander
President, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association
Jeff Alexander has overseen a return of concert attendance at Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center to pre-pandemic levels. Domestic touring resumed in 2023 and international touring will recommence in January 2024. Alexander inherited Riccardo Muti as music director from his predecessor Deborah Rutter in 2014, but has taken a much more subdued, behind-the-scenes approach in dealing with the illustrious Italian conductor who chose Chicago over New York and became one of our city’s most important cultural ambassadors. Though perhaps Muti’s tenure as music director might have lasted a bit longer than it did, Alexander oversaw Muti becoming “Music Director Emeritus for Life” last June. Alexander says this involves a signed multi-year contract for annual Muti returns to the CSO. Now Alexander has the choice of his life ahead of him: how to oversee a smooth transition to a successor as music director with the ability to maintain the highest quality of the CSO while also maintaining good terms with the iconic Muti. (Dennis Polkow)

Stephen Burns/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Stephen Burns
Founder/Artistic Director, Fulcrum Point New Music Project
In March, Fulcrum Point celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with “A Celebration of Chicago Trumpet,” which showcased a quintet of the instrument’s virtuosos—including Fulcrum Point founder Stephen Burns. “I try to avoid identifying Fulcrum with my trumpet career,” says Burns, “but this year we are up the yin-yang with trumpets.” Never mind—thanks to Burns’ dedication, the new music ensemble has in place an indomitable reputation for embracing diversity, from multimedia and cross-cultural events (incorporating visual arts, dance, film and more) to commissioning groundbreaking new works. Mischa Zupko, who was Fulcrum’s Composer In Residence in 2009-2010, says, “There is hardly a corner of this city that hasn’t been touched by Fulcrum Point’s bold vision,” and the organization’s upcoming year boasts projects with Ethnic Heritage Society, Poetry Foundation, The Bridge and The Chicago Humanities Festival. Burns’ philosophy: “It’s human to be an omnivore, and we all are enriched by exploring and experiencing multiple cultures, multiple directions, multiple dimensions.” When he spoke to Newcity, Fulcrum was gearing up for its November 16 Midwest premiere of LaMonte Young’s “The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer in Dream Light”—“Which,” Burns wryly notes, “has eight trumpets in it.” (Robert Rodi)

Reba Cafarelli/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Reba Cafarelli
General Manager, Third Coast Percussion
The creatively fearless and virtuosic Third Coast Percussion has been mesmerizing audiences and exploding the boundaries of classical music experience for nearly two decades. The Chicago-based quartet (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore) is the first percussion ensemble to win a Grammy Award—and has been nominated a total of seven times, including a 2024 Grammy nomination for the album “Between Breaths.” The quartet share the role of artistic director, but are evangelized by Reba Cafarelli, general manager, who wants to push the quartet to even greater recognition and to new audiences. “They aren’t pigeonholed by any musical definition or genre. Their collaborations are unbounded, working across genres with all sorts of artists from Philip Glass [composer] to Jlin [electronic musician] to Devonté Hynes [singer and songwriter].” Cafarelli says that “Third Coast sets a great example for younger musicians,” as they demonstrate how to combine entrepreneurship with riveting artistry. (Sara Stern)

Mei-Ann Chen and Blake-Anthony Johnson
Music Director and CEO, Chicago Sinfonietta
In 1987, conductor Paul Freeman had had enough. He had had enough of watching orchestras where there was a lack of diversity in the hiring and programming, of women and minority conductors and composers passed over for important work, and of orchestras playing only in venues accessible to a certain slice of society. So he formed the Chicago Sinfonietta, and set about righting those wrongs. Freeman retired in 2011 (he passed away in 2015), passing the baton to Mei-Ann Chen. Chen set the orchestral world alight, shattering glass ceilings. In 2020, Blake-Anthony Johnson came on board as CEO, and brought about the type of changes that others were talking about but were not putting into practice. This season, the orchestra begins a collaboration with The Auditorium Theatre, along with Naperville’s Wentz Concert Hall. (Aaron Hunt)

Mark Ingram and Orbert Davis/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Mark Ingram and Orbert Davis
Co-Founder/Producing Director and Music Director, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic
There has often been a gap between the worlds of jazz and classical music. But Orbert Davis and Mark Ingram bridge this gap through The Chicago Jazz Philharmonic. This is done by crossing what Davis describes as the Third Stream: “It is a concept that was coined by Gunther Schuller, basically jazz meets classical music, a new genre and concept of teaching and creating a cross-cultural dialogue,” Davis says. A composer, arranger, trumpeter and educator, Davis along with Ingram was invited to produce a work for the Chicago Jazz Festival by the Jazz Institute of Chicago in 2004. They “thought big” and created a fifty-five-piece ensemble. Since then, the CJP has garnered awards including a 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Davis and Ingram also won a 2011 Emmy Award for Outstanding Craft Achievements Off-Air, Musical Composition/Arrangement for “DuSable To Obama: Chicago’s Black Metropolis.” Their latest project, “Women Out of Time, A Salute to Lillian Hardin Armstrong, Mary Lou Williams and Nina Simone,” will be performed in February 2024. (David Witter)

Andrew Lewis/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Andrew Lewis and Betsy Hoats
Artistic Director and Managing Director, Bella Voce
As artistic director for eighteen years, Andrew Lewis is only the third person to hold that position in Bella Voce’s forty-plus-year history and is now the longest-serving. Last year’s fortieth anniversary brought the return of legendary choral conductor Paul Hillier to conduct the group and began a new administrative era with the hiring of Betsy Hoats as managing director. Although primarily an a cappella chamber choir of the first order, the Bella Voce Sinfonia of period instruments—now five years old—will perform its first solo concert, “String Equinox,” in March with music of Bach, Handel, Corelli and Telemann. A new Bella Voce recording, “Expanding the Canon,” that includes underrepresented voices often excluded from the choral canon, will be released in the spring of 2024 along with live performances of that repertoire in April. (Dennis Polkow)

Liza Malamut/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Liza Malamut
Artistic Director, Newberry Consort
Beginning her second season as artistic director of the Newberry Consort, the early music ensemble dedicated to historically informed performance, Liza Malamut is shaking things up. Malamut, who plays the sackbut (early trombone), is organizing this season’s performances around the theme of collaboration. First up is a partnership with Haymarket Opera to offer a mini-festival of seventeenth-century music by women composers, and the season continues with mash-ups of music, dance and visual art. Malamut is passionate about expanding her audience and breaking down barriers, “Though the music and work we do in period styles on period instruments can be intimidating, it’s really accessible and fun music! Our concerts are entertaining, beautiful, and sometimes heart-wrenching. We give audiences something new that they’ve never heard or seen before.” (Sara Stern)

Christina Salerno/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Christina Salerno and Stilian Kirov
Executive Director and Music Director, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra
Christina Salerno, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s executive director and  a former professional ballet dancer, teams up with Maestro Stilian Kirov, IPO’s music director, for the group’s forty-sixth season, which includes four world premieres and five commissions, including the world premiere co-commission of a new work by composer, educator, and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Augusta Read Thomas. Thomas’ “Gwendolyn Brooks Settings” (March 6) is a setting of poems from “Bronzeville Boys and Girls” featuring Anima-Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus and singers from ChiArts. “We work with a lot of youth groups and young musicians to support their music-making and expand our audiences,” says Salerno. “Our roots are in classical, but we’re evolving the canon. We love music—all music—and we try to meet our audiences where they are!” (Sara Stern)

Terell Johnson and Scott Speck/Photo: Sandy Morris | Sally Blood Photo

Scott Speck and Terell Johnson
Artistic Director, Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra/Music Director, Joffrey Ballet; and Executive Director, Chicago Philharmonic Society
What does it mean when an orchestra is musician-led? For the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, which is one of the very few orchestras in the world governed by the musicians themselves, it means that every player has a sense of ownership, along with a deciding influence over what to play. For Scott Speck and Terell Johnson, this 360-degree collaboration has an alchemy. Says Speck, “We share the opinion that every idea is worth exploring, and we are always willing to entertain something new.” He continues, “You’ll see us playing a concert of exquisite Baroque and Classical masterpieces one day, backing up a rock star like Lady Gaga the next, providing live music for a showing of ‘Black Panther,’ and playing video game music to a packed house after that.” The artistic choices and range of repertoire are all artist-led and the impact is powerful. Speck describes a recent concert: “The result was a thrilling performance of extremely diverse repertoire—and partly because the musicians had a hand in its inception, they performed it in breathtakingly engaging fashion. It was a thrill for anyone who was there.” (Sara Stern)

The Performers
Hall of Fame

Carlos Kalmar
Artistic Director/Principal Conductor, Grant Park Music Festival

Josephine Lee
President/Artistic Director, Uniting Voices Chicago (formerly Chicago Children’s Choir)

Riccardo Muti
Music Director Emeritus for Life, Chicago Symphony Orchestra