On Monday, January 25th the Ravinia Women’s Board launched a new youth orchestra, called REACH at Hibbard Elementary.  "What a wonderful feeling it was to watch as 72 students received their instruments and started to make music for the first time.  It was like Christmas with no wrapping paper!" said Caroline Huebner. 

The  Women’s Board of Ravinia Festival, in conjunction with  Ravinia’s professional education staff and the People’s Music  School of Chicago, has created a new student orchestra for children 8 to 12 years old at the William  G. Hibbard Elementary School in the Albany Park  neighborhood of Chicago. The students selected their instruments, which were funded by a grant from Fifth Third Bank, and played them for the first time. WGN News was there to capture the event. You can watch  the video here. The program is modeled on the  successful “El Sistema” orchestral education plan devised in Venezuela. It is a system of total immersion  in music study. The Women’s Board continues a instrument drive, please contact Agatha Hwong at 847-266-5045 or Agatha@ravinia.org. 

Photo by Patrick Gipson. Special thanks to Caroline Huebner & Patty McGrath, Co-chairs of the Reach*Teach*Play Task Force.

Is there a better time of year to celebrate than summer? Could there be a better event to have a celebration then the Women's Board Gala Benefit Evening? I think not and this year's ultimate party will be on July 31, 2010. Don't miss it!

Honoring the 80^th birthday of the great American composer Stephen Sondheim with a program featuring an incredible lineup of soloists who have been featured in Ravinia’s Sondheim celebrations since they began in 2001.

The evening of Sondheim’s “greatest hits,” will star Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, George Hearn and Michael Cerveris. Conductor Paul Gemignani will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lonny Price will direct. The program will include highlights from past Ravinia Festival presentations of Sondheim shows including Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Passion, Sunday in the Park with George, Anyone Can Whistle, West Side Story and Gypsy.  

Fourth graders at Sherwood Elementary learned to play world rhythms on percussion instruments as part of their 10 week residency with internationally acclaimed world percussionist Doug Brush.  Ravinia Festival partners with the District 112 Education Foundation to bring high quality music programs to Highland Park’s elementary and middle schools.  

This photo was provided by Isaac Sinnett. He is a project manager for the Education & Community Partners department at Ravinia Festival.

“Next summer, North America’s oldest music festival nearly explodes with musical milestones,” Welz Kauffman said.

The celebrations begin as soon as the residency starts when Ravinia favorite Garrick Ohlsson sits down at the Steinway to mark the 200^th birthday year of Frédéric Chopin. The 150^th birthday of Gustav Mahler is celebrated with James Conlon concluding his multi-year Mahler cycle when he leads the CSO in the Adagio of the unfinished 10^th symphony. On the same program, Samuel Barber’s centennial is celebrated with his Adagio for Strings and Joshua Bell performing the Violin Concerto.

Closer to home, the birthdays of Music Director James Conlon, 60, and former Music Director Christoph Eschenbach, 70, will be acknowledged throughout the summer.  Conlon, will recreate excerpts from his first Wagner Ring Cycle. Then the CSO returns to the Martin Theatre for two performances each of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro, featuring such stars as Frederica von Stade and Nathan Gunn. Eschenbach takes a musical travelogue through his career in concerts that feature him as conductor and soloist working with such colleagues and protégés as Renée Fleming, performing Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

The 20^th anniversary of the deaths of two music icons—Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland—is commemorated in concerts that feature some of their most treasured creations including Appalachian Spring, The Age of Anxiety and Candide.

The 200^th anniversary of Mexican Independence is acknowledged in a few guises next summer, including the CSO concerts that feature one of Mexico City’s favorite sons, Jorge Federico Osorio, performing all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos over two nights.

Come celebrate with us at Ravinia!