One of the few opportunities to enjoy free music in the majestic confines of Symphony Center will take place May 21 at 8 p.m. when the DePaul Symphony Orchestra presents its annual spring concert at Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. The program, conducted by Cliff Colnot, includes Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and Debussy’s Symphonic Fragments from “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.”

John Hagstrom, a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s fabled brass section and director of DePaul’s Trumpet Studio, also will be the featured soloist in a performance of the Hummel Trumpet Concerto.

For more than three decades, the DePaul Symphony Orchestra’s annual spring concert has been made possible thanks to the generosity of Joseph and Marie Grant. DePaul alumni, the Grants began a now-longstanding tradition at the Music School with their sponsorship of this annual orchestral concert event in 1986. The Grants have both passed away in recent years, but their support for the concert has continued through an estate gift to the School of Music.

The DePaul Symphony Orchestra’s stature and reputation as a training ground for great musicians has been greatly enhanced in recent years. Colnot, who has conducted the 90-member ensemble since 1997, noted, “It would have been folly to think that this Orchestra could have attempted Stravinsky’s masterpiece, ‘The Rite of Spring.’ But thanks to an evolving orchestra culture, the administration’s tireless support and the faculty’s deep involvement, the Orchestra is now poised to accomplish the unthinkable.”

Colnot’s own life in music encompasses the worlds of classical music, jazz and pop. An artist of many persuasions – conductor, arranger, composer, orchestrator and commercial music entrepreneur – Colnot serves as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW series and as resident conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

Debuted to the public in 1913, “The Rite of Spring” was rocked by scandal at its first performance, provoking a spectacle of outrage – catcalls, fistfights and rioting in the streets of Paris. This revolutionary score of dissonant sounds and jolting rhythms forever changed Western music and made Stravinsky a figure of world renown.

Although Hummel wrote dozens of works, none achieved the popularity of his sole trumpet concerto. Penned in 1803, the work is written for a dazzling virtuoso, and in its slow movement, imitates one of Mozart’s greatest slow arias, the “Elvira Madigan” andante from the C Major Piano Concerto, K.467.

Rarely performed, the suite of four symphonic fragments from Debussy’s failed opera, “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,” completes the program. Though the DePaul Symphony Orchestra concert is free and open to the public, tickets are required. For more information, please contact the Orchestra Hall Box Office, (312) 294-3000.