When Gabriela Lara joins the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this week, she will become the orchestra’s first Latina and just third Hispanic member overall — another milestone in its efforts toward greater diversity and inclusion.
At the same time, she was the inaugural CSO fellow and the first to go on to become a member of the orchestra. The fellowship program was founded in 2022-2023 to promote participation of aspiring musicians from underrepresented backgrounds both in the orchestra and the field at large.
“We felt that it was a very important program to get underway,” said CSO President Jeff Alexander. “It worked out really beautifully that the first person to get into the program also won an audition for a full-time spot.”
Lara, 24, comes to the CSO after also serving as rotating concertmaster in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s pre-professional training orchestra in 2022-24, and, most recently, serving as a member of the Milwaukee Symphony during the first half of the 2024-25 season.
Although she was a CSO fellow for two seasons, orchestra officials emphasized that she had to compete for her first-violin position like anyone else, which meant taking part in blind auditions (playing behind a screen).
“It is really special,” Vanessa Moss, vice president for orchestra and building operations, said of the former fellow joining the CSO. “The other thing to recognize is she is an exceptional musician like other members of the orchestra. And in the end, that’s what she is.”
A native of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Lara began her violin studies at age 6 and became part of that country’s famed music education program known as El Sistema, or The System. It had involved more than 700,000 student musicians by 2015, including perhaps its most famous alumnus, Gustavo Dudamel, who will take over as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
“Coming here, I realized that was not normal, like everybody didn’t have that,” Lara said of her El Sistema participation from an early age. “They did it like that, and I appreciate it because it gave me a lot of what I do right now and made everything easier in some way.”
By the time she finished high school, she had already performed under two of the world’s best-known conductors — Dudamel with Venezuela’s touring Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in 2016 and Simon Rattle leading an El Sistema children’s orchestra that went to Salzburg in 2013.
She moved to the United States in 2017 to pursue her bachelor’s degree in violin performance on a full scholarship from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She studied with Almita Vamos, a famed pedagogue, and went on to receive her master’s degree in Suzuki pedagogy from Roosevelt in 2024.
“When I finished high school,” she said, “then I decided, ‘What’s next?’ I knew I wanted to keep with the violin, and I knew the best choice at that time was to leave the country and also to get a better education here [in the United States].”
As a CSO fellow, Lara performed more than 20 weeks of concerts each season with the ensemble in Orchestra Hall and on tour and received an annual stipend and mentorship from orchestra musicians.
“I love the fellowship,” she said. “It gave me an opportunity that otherwise would have been pretty hard for me to have. Rehearsing with them, just seeing them, hearing them play and being in this environment really prepared me for what’s actually going to be my job now.”
Lara didn’t realize that she was a diversity pioneer, but she is eager to help others follow in her footsteps. “I hope the fellowship keeps doing that with minorities, because it is very important,” she said.
Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the CSO joined scores of other classical-music groups in putting together a diversity, equity and inclusion action plan. Leaders worked with 50-60 stakeholders, including members of the orchestra and its chorus.
A key part of the effort was the establishment of the CSO fellowship, as well as involvement in the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative. It provides financial assistance to students from under-represented backgrounds for private instruction, summer intensives and other needs on the way to a musical career.
In addition, the CSO worked to further diversify its programming, guest artists, staff and board and to establish such audience-support groups as the African American Network and Latino Alliance.
“We didn’t put any numbers in our plan that by the year 2030 we would have to have X percent diverse board members, musicians or audience members,” Alexander said. “We just want to see it grow, and it has been growing in all areas.”
While the proportion of Asian and Asian Americans in American orchestras is higher than in the U.S. population overall, just 2.4% of musicians were Black and 4.8% were Hispanic as of 2022-23, according to the League of American Orchestras.
In 2020, then-New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, called for the elimination of blind auditions as a way to speed up the diversification of American orchestras. But Alexander said the CSO has no plans to give up its “rigorous audition process” but instead is working to boost the pool of qualified musicians from diverse backgrounds through efforts like the CSO fellowship.
Trumpeter Tage Larsen, the orchestra’s only African American member, is pleased to see more diversity in the orchestra with Lara’s appointment, but his main priority is assuring that the orchestra’s world-class musicianship is not sacrificed.
“We want representation,” he said, “but the representation shouldn’t come at the cost of the quality. I want that to come out the right way, because it could be construed as saying that minorities aren’t qualified. That’s not what I mean at all. But the emphasis on just getting a minority or a woman or a younger person or whatever it happens to be is short-sighted.”
Larsen supports the continuation of blind auditions like the one in which Lara was chosen, because there were no shortcuts for anyone.
“I’ve been on a couple of violin [audition] committees, and it’s tough,” he said, praising Lara for coming out on top. “There are so many qualified candidates, and the fact that she beat them out is quite incredible.”
As for Lara, her excitement is only growing as she approaches her first concerts with the CSO as a full-fledged member.
“Until I’m there rehearsing every week,” she said, “I’m not sure I can believe it still.”