Artist News
Garrick Ohlsson’s audience on July 12 will be the last of his four nights at Ravinia this summer, as well as his 40th overall between the festival’s stages, but in one way they will also be his first, anywhere. That Ravinia audience will be the first to hear him conclude a series begun over a year ago—thanks to the pandemic.
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South Side–native pianist and vocalist Alexis Lombre is the latest outstanding artist to have come up through both Ravinia programs, and Backstage caught up with the now sometime Detroiter in the midst of work on her second solo album, which she’s dubbed an amalgamation of everything that she listens to and everything that she is. She’s been prepping the first single, “Come Find Me,” from the new collection of original tracks with a fellow Chicagoan, Grammy-winning guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, as producer, and Lombre has recently released a mini-documentary series on her YouTube channel to give fans a sneak peek at the creative process.
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“Life is great,” said Ramsey Lewis on an April afternoon, socially distanced in his Streeterville home in Chicago.
Our conversation was originally to be of the face-to-face variety, but with faces having become a focal point of health awareness, we instead took to the phone.
At 85, Lewis is now enjoying the freedom of retirement. He stepped away from touring nearly two years ago, leaving behind the roars of recognition he would hear when playing the first bars of “Hang On Sloopy.” No more audiences, no more applause. Why, I wondered.
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Like many others, we here at Ravinia are big fans of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts video series, and have included some names that are also set to be featured in our 2020 summer concert season.
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The playfulness of the phrase “klezmer attack” gives an excellent sense of the musicians who conceived it: the Copenhagen-based sextet Mames Babegenush. A tight-knit group, the six men built on bonds that reach back to their youth. With 15 years of concerts and five studio albums under their collective belt, Mames has developed passionate fans on several continents, thanks to their unique, joyful take on klezmer, the Eastern European Jewish folk-music tradition.
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Like all the world’s elite violin soloists, Anne Akiko Meyers brings supercharged skills and innate musicality to the instrument. What sets the San Diego native apart is her uncommon curiosity and openness and a kind of “Aw, shucks” groundedness. Her popular appeal led her to become Billboard’s top-selling traditional classical instrumental soloist in 2014, and it helps explain why many of her 37 albums have debuted at number one on the classical charts.
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Kian Soltani, one of classical music’s rising stars, is in a committed new relationship and they are making beautiful music together. She has accompanied the 27-year-old cellist to some of the world’s most celebrated venues, including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall (where he made his acclaimed recital debut last spring), and now Ravinia, where he will be the featured soloist for the annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular.
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To put in perspective the magnitude of Nickelback’s popularity with the mainstream masses, the Canadian rockers are behind only The Beatles among the best-selling import acts in America throughout the entire 21st century. The group’s more than 50 million album sales include the elusive diamond status (10-times platinum) for the album All The Right Reasons, alongside 23 chart-topping hits and a dozen consecutive sold-out world tours.
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“We’ve always loved Ravinia,” says Lee Loughnane, the sole trumpeter the band Chicago has had since its inception in 1967. “It’s great to be able to come back and play the music that we’ve all grown up with: we grew up writing and playing it, you folks grew up listening to it. We haven’t played Ravinia in a few years, and we’re excited to come back and play two nights [August 10 and 11]. And if you like the Chicago Symphony and the group Chicago, you will like the surprise we have for you on those two nights! I won’t tell you what it is, but you have to come to the show to see it.”
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Angel Blue, a rising American soprano who makes her Ravinia debut with an August 8 recital in the Martin Theatre, remembers exactly where she was when the opera bug bit her—hard.
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Last weekend, Paul McCartney gave fans in LA a treat they hadn’t been able to savor for more than 50 years—in the midst of his Dodger Stadium set, the onetime Beatle welcomed his former bandmate Ringo Starr onto the stage they last shared on August 28, 1966. The two knights jammed to their classics “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter” before Starr gave the audience his signature wish of “peace and love.”
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No doubt Bernstein would have beamed upon the accomplishments of the 16-year-old cello virtuoso Ifetayo Ali-Landing, who will perform his Meditation No. 3 from Three Meditations from ‘Mass’ at Ravinia this summer with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on July 27—her debut with our nation’s top ensemble. At an age when most people her age are concerned with acne or just making it through gym class alive, Ms. Ali-Landing has already amassed a slew of important awards and concert appearances.
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Yankovic is a hit-after-hit-after-hit wonder who has built a devoted, multigenerational fan base one song parody at a time. It is a testament to his longevity that he has outlasted many of the musicians he has spoofed. Earlier this year, he won his fifth Grammy (Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package) for his aptly titled 15-disc career retrospective Squeeze Box, which came in a package designed like his accordion. His last three albums, Straight Out of Lynwood, Alpocalypse, and Mandatory Fun, ranked in the top 10 on the Billboard charts, with Mandatory achieving number-one status.
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At 61 years old, Grammy Award–winning singer, accomplished composer, and much-loved actor Lyle Lovett finds himself a different man than he once was. He’s breathing deeper and living a tad slower, and he’s content, both on and off the stage.
And he’s never been happier.
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Some opera singers might dabble in jazz or record a one-off Broadway album, but Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot has made musical variety the hallmark of his career. He has performed with Liza Minnelli and Marvin Hamlisch and appeared in prestigious New York cabaret rooms like the Café Carlyle and 54 Below. Most notably, he won a 2008 Tony Award for his portrayal of Emile de Becque in a revival of South Pacific—his Broadway debut—and won another major award later in London for the same role. “I was never a closed-genre person,” Szot says. “I was always open to everything.”
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Yankovic quickly became one of the biggest-selling comedy recording artists in history. Since his self-titled debut release, the singer has released 13 more studio albums, several of which have gone platinum, and has won five Grammy Awards, accepting the latest earlier this year for Squeeze Box, an anthology bringing together his original songs and signature parodies of such hits as “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “Piano Man” by Billy Joel, and more.
An argument can be made that today’s leading pianists lead more complete careers. They still perform abundant solo recitals and orchestral concertos like their forbears, but many also place a regular emphasis on collaborative chamber music. As evidence, look no further than four of the pianists featured this year at Ravinia—Daniil Trifonov, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Jon Kimura Parker, and Marta Aznavoorian.
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In just the years since her Ravinia debut in 2011—“One of my favorite experiences performing onstage,” she said—she became a coach/mentor on the American and British incarnations of The Voice and has landed two hotly anticipated projects, an Aretha Franklin biopic (“I’m literally sitting at the piano right now practicing for the role,” she quipped) and the screen adaptation of Cats in which she will portray Grizabella. The film is scheduled for release this December.
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What do neo-soul innovator D’Angelo, “Lady Marmalade” Patti LaBelle, guitar god John Mayer, “Shout” singer Ronald Isley, and gospel great Smokie Norful all have in common? Well, outside of being exceptional artists in their respective fields, they’ve all had the fingerprints of star session guitarist Isaiah Sharkey on their recent tours or albums (including a multiple Grammy winner) in the midst his steady ascent as an esteemed solo artist.
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