Chicago Seven

The CHICAGO QUADIO collection will be available on June 17. Housed in a rigid two-piece box, nine albums are presented in sleeves that replicate the original release down to the last detail, including mini posters, and the iron-on that came with Chicago VIII. To ensure optimal sound quality, Rhino has remastered each album in both its original quadrophonic and stereo mix on each disc, and so that the quadrophonic mix will play on surround sound systems.

In the summer of 1917, Chicago businessman Cyrus McCormick, Jr., the farm machine magnate, met ̀the 26-year-old composer Sergei Prokofiev while on a business trip to Russia. Prokofiev was unknown to McCormick, but the composer recognised the distinguished American’s name at once, because the estate his father had managed owned several impressive International Harvester machines. McCormick expressed an interest in the composer’s new music, and he eventually agreed to pay for the printing of his unpublished 'Scythian Suite'. He also encouraged Prokofiev to come to the United States, and asked him to send some of his scores to Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Frederick Stock. Prokofiev made his debut with the Chicago Symphony the following season, playing his First Piano Concerto and conducting the orchestra in his Scythian Suite in December 1918, both U.S. premieres and returned to Chicago four more times.