Samuel Magad, longtime Chicago Symphony concertmaster, dies at 94

Samuel Magad, the longtime concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has died at the age of 94. The orchestra announced that Magad died on May 25, 2026, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

Magad served in the Chicago Symphony’s first violin section from 1958 until 2007 and held the position of concertmaster for 35 years, longer than any other musician in the orchestra’s history. Born in Chicago on May 14, 1932, he first appeared with the orchestra at the age of 11 after winning the CSO Youth Auditions. In March 1944, under music director Désiré Defauw, he performed the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at Orchestra Hall.

After studying at DePaul University with Paul Stassevitch and serving in the U.S. Army Orchestra in Washington, D.C., Magad joined the Chicago Symphony at the invitation of Fritz Reiner in 1958. He was promoted to assistant concertmaster by Jean Martinon in 1966, before being named concertmaster in 1972 by Georg Solti.

During his decades with the orchestra, Magad frequently appeared as a soloist with the CSO under conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Rafael Kubelík, Erich Leinsdorf, and James Levine. His repertoire with the orchestra included concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók, Berg, Korngold, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Vivaldi, among many others.

Magad’s violin playing can also be heard on several landmark Chicago Symphony recordings, including Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Also sprach Zarathustra, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Beyond the orchestra, he was active as a chamber musician, collaborating with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Maxim Vengerov, and Mstislav Rostropovich.

Outside Chicago, Magad also served as founder and music director of the Northbrook Symphony for two decades and worked as concertmaster of both the Grant Park Orchestra and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. His long career made him one of the defining orchestral violinists of the Chicago Symphony’s modern era.