Andrew Bird & the CSO

About This Event

This is Andrew Bird's first-ever performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he's using it to play his breakthrough album 'The Mysterious Production of Eggs' front to back with a full orchestral arrangement for its 20th anniversary — a genuine one-off, not a normal tour stop with strings quietly added in the background.

Bird is Chicago's own, born in Lake Forest in 1973, and the record being reimagined here is the one that actually made his career: a 2005 album he recorded and scrapped three separate times across studios in Chicago, Los Angeles, and his own farm in northern Illinois before it came together. It introduced most listeners to his signature sound — heavily looped, multi-tracked violin layered with actual whistling as a lead instrument, not a novelty trick — and turned him from a niche jazz-and-folk player into the genre-crossing act he's known as now.

Worth knowing: this runs two nights (Friday and Saturday), both at 7:30 PM, and tickets start at $109 — WBEZ and the Sun-Times both ran features on this specific booking, a real sign it's not a routine tour stop getting orchestral backing tacked on.