John Hiatt’s diversely rich, respected, and rowdy vocation has been a series of perfectly turned phrases with some perfectly good guitar. And now he’s adding some insightful, lingering “leftover feelings.”
Hiatt’s may not be a name you immediately recognize, but he’s always been there. “I like to sneak up from behind,” Hiatt says slyly. You’ve certainly heard many of the songs he’s written during an acclaimed career that includes nine Grammy nominations and the highest praise from peers and fans alike.
Read MoreThere’s a certain irony to the title of singer-songwriter Brett Dennen’s latest long player, See the World, considering that the bulk of it was penned when the entire globe was closed. However, upon closer examination of the project that brings him to Ravinia’s newly established and delightfully intimate Carousel Stage on Wednesday, August 4, not every moment is quite so literal in the nomadic or exploratory sense, starting with the classic-in-the-making title track.
Read MoreWhat could be more exciting for rising stars violinist Stella Chen and violist Matthew Lipman than performing again in front of a live audience after more than a year of a pandemic-forced hiatus? How about making their Ravinia Pavilion stage debuts together, performing for the first time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?
Read MoreIt’s pops night, which means fun is on the menu! Even the word itself conjures up blissful thoughts of relaxed musical evenings with friends and lots of irrepressible toe-tapping.
Read MoreYacht rock—it’s a term that has been used and reused, a term that has been somewhat understood but frequently confused, a term that brings with it a slew of different feelings from those who essentially find shelter within it from the reality of the present time. And it’s a form of music that Yacht Rock Revue has built an impressive career on.
Read MoreAmerican soprano Julia Bullock is not your standard-issue, rising young operatic diva.
The sound of Bullock’s voice—rich and warm with a smoky undercurrent and glints of steel—is inimitable. She could easily spend her career traveling the world singing standard operatic repertoire. Since graduating from Juilliard in 2015, however, she has put her voice in service to programs that go far beyond the classical repertoire’s usual boundaries.
Read MoreFor Grammy-winning, internationally renowned jazz impresario—and Chicago native—Kurt Elling, Ravinia Festival’s famed “music under the stars” have aligned into his lucky stars.
Elling (a former divinity student) baptizes Ravinia’s new, intimate, outdoor Carousel Stage on the North Lawn with jazz guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. The two will debut new music from their daring new album SuperBlue, which drops in September.
Read MoreGarrick 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.
Read MoreTo 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.
Read More“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.”
Read MoreAngel 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.
Read MoreYankovic 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.
Read MoreAt 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.
Read MoreA few years ago, the Tony-nominated director Diane Paulus was anticipating a production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses for an upcoming Chicago Opera Theatre season. Based upon the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, Monteverdi’s opera is concerned with Ulysses’s return from the Trojan wars to his wife, Penelope. Paulus had not settled upon her approach to the piece, but one inspiration coursed through her conversation like a conceptual leitmotif: “Penelope,” she said presciently. “I am very interested in Penelope.”
Read MoreSlatkin stepped down as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2018, marking the end of a 39-year run as a music director in the United States—first in Saint Louis, then the National Symphony in Washington, DC, then Detroit, which has named him its Music Director Laureate. (He has also been Conductor Laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since the 1996 conclusion of his tenure.) His calendar has far more open weeks now, but he will return to Ravinia to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program of Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov on August 7.
Read MoreMovie music has been part of symphonic pops concerts at least since the 1940s, but Henry Mancini, the famed composer of scores for such movies as The Pink Panther and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, took things even further beginning around the 1960s, when he led more than 50 performances of his most popular themes each year across the United States and beyond. But David Newman, who returns to conduct On the Waterfront after leading West Side Story, points to John Williams as the biggest catalyst in changing attitudes in the classical world about film music.
Read MoreSome 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.”
Read MoreAt the end of the concert, I raced up the aisle to get a better look at the maestro, but as I got near the stage, Bernstein came back out to lead an encore, so I sat down on the ground and had my first up-close experience of an orchestra as Bernstein pulled out all the stops for a heart-pumping rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Sousa, not Stravinsky, would be my true baptism by live symphonic music.
Read MoreAn 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.
Read MoreIn 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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