Chicago author and musicologist Doug Adams will sign copies of his new, beautifully illustrated book The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films at 6:45 prior to the live performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra of the entire score to the first movie in the trilogy on Aug. 19 at Ravinia Festival. A special version of the The Fellowship of the Ring—from the which the score has been digitally removed—will be shown on screens in the pavilion and on the lawn with the CSO providing the live soundtrack. Adams’s hardcover book is billed as a comprehensive account of Howard Shore’s scores (with a foreword by Shore). It comes complete with a CD of Lord of the Rings “Rarities.” The book will be available at Ravinia Gifts in the dining pavilion, where the signing takes place at 6:45 pm TONIGHT.
Frampton Stays Alive in Your Memories
Did you know that the July 5 Peter Frampton show at the Ravinia Festival was recorded? Every moment of the amazing show was captured in pristine multi-track quality! And you were there. Peter Frampton partnered with Abbey Road Live, the "live" team associated with the legendary London studio, to capture the entire show for this limited-edition, numbered collectible CD set! There are three complete CDs packaged in a handsome DigiPak container that includes every moment of the 3+ hour show! You also get a bonus fourth CD, which has an exclusive interview with Peter by legendary radio personality Redbeard. To purchase these, click here, and just scroll down for the Ravinia show! Remember, this is a limited edition, and once they are gone, there will never be any more made!
Guster’s Adam Gardner Reveals Darkest Secret
In the new issue of Ravinia Magazine, Guster guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner reveals that the hardest thing he ever had to give up was sucking his thumb. “I didn’t stop sucking my thumb until I was 8 years old. I was tired of sneaking ‘hits’ in the bathroom.” Find out what else Adam and bandmates Ryan Miller and Brian Rosenworcel have to say in the in the new issue of Ravinia Magazine, free in the park every concert night. Remember the magazine, which includes features and programs notes, changes every week. Don’t miss an issue! Guster performs with Jack’s Mannequin on Sept. 3. Pavilion and lawn tickets are available.
Think You’re Too Busy to See Lyle Lovett? Look How Busy He’s Been!
Lyle Lovett returns to Ravinia for an Aug. 21 concert, but that’s not all he’s been up to. During the past year, he taped the final Austin City Limits episode done in Studio 6A, the show’s 36-year home; visited policymakers on Capitol Hill and performed at the Library of Congress during ASCAP’s We Write the Songs event; sang the National Anthem at Game Four of the World Series; performed with the Kansas City Symphony for the annual environmental fundraiser "Symphony in the Flint Hills"; honored Kris Kristofferson at Leadership Music's Dale Franklin Award gala; performed at Lincoln Center to benefit Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps; and recorded tracks for forthcoming Guy Clark and Buddy Holly tribute albums. Oh, and he also has an album of his own that he’s started recording. So what’s your excuse? Order pavilion or lawn tickets now.
New Steans Vocal Director Named to IU Faculty
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announced that pianist and vocal coach Kevin Murphy and soprano Heidi Grant Murphy will join its faculty as professor of practice and adjunct professor of practice, respectively, this fall. Kevin Murphy becomes director of the program for singers at Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute in 2012.
This Week in Tweets Aug 3 - Aug 9
Each week this summer we post the top tweets of the week about Ravinia Festival under the heading This Week in Tweets. During the last week we scoured the depths of the twittersphere to bring you the best tweets that mention your favorite outdoor music festival. Log on to Twitter, follow @RaviniaFestival, tweet about us or twitpic your lawn set-up and you might wind up in our blog feature! Featured tweets will win you great prizes all summer long. We’ll contact you to claim your prize if you are featured. Don’t forget to read the contest rules too!
Composer Nico Muhly Comes to Ravinia for World Premiere
in Classical
Called one of the greatest young composers of the day, Nico Muhly has confirmed that he will be attendance when his new work, The Edge of the World, receives its world premiere at Ravinia on Aug. 9. Muhly’s concerto for five pianos and orchestra was commissioned by Ravinia and written for The 5 Browns, who will perform it here with the CSO. Five grand pianos will dominate the stage as the musical siblings will also perform other works for multiple piano.
Later that week, a second Ravinia commission, Rufus Wainwright’s Five Shakespeare Sonnets, will be performed by the singer/songwriter in his CSO debut on Aug. 14.
Ravinia Welcomes Singers to Steans Music Institute
Ravinia has welcomed 15 singers to the Steans Music Institute, the festival’s summer conservatory. The singers receive a fully paid fellowship to work with the Steans faculty, led by Brian Zeger. They will also participate in master classes open to the public and will give concert performances on Aug. 8, 11 and 15.
Representing the finest emerging talents from around the world, this year’s participants are soprano Betty Waynne Allison of Ladysmith, B.C, Canada; soprano Elizabeth Baldwin Sylvania, Ohio; baritone Jonathan Beyer of Chicago; soprano Janai Brugger-Orman of Chicago; soprano Lucia Cesaroni of Toronto; baritone Michael Kelly of Massapequa, NY; tenor Seil Kim of Seoul, South Korea; soprano Caroline MacPhie of Lancashire, U.K.; tenor Alex Mansoori of Seattle; soprano Ileana Montalbetti of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada; bass Liam Moran of Brookline, MA; mezzo-soprano Naomi O'Connell of County Clare, Ireland; tenor David Portillo of San Antonio; soprano Elizabeth Reiter of Chicago; and baritone Jorell Williams of Brentwood, NY.
They will be accompanied by piano participants Jonathan Ware of Dallas; Renate Rolfing of Honolulu; Adam Neilsen of Salt Lake City; Brent Funderburk of Spartanburg, SC; and Natalia Katyukova of Moscow.
Free Screening of A Good Man, Kartemquin Documentary on Bill T. Jones Work at Ravinia
At 7:30 p.m. on August 30, Ravinia Festival will host a free screening of A Good Man, the documentary directed by Gordon Quinn and Bob Hercules about choreographer Bill T. Jones's struggles and triumphs in creating a full-evening dance-theater work for Ravinia Festival. The movie was co-produced by PBS's American Masters, which will air it nationally on November 11. What's unique about the documentary is Ravinia President Welz Kauffman, who hired the Tony-winning Jones to create a work celebrating the Lincoln bicentennial, also invited the filmmakers in at the very beginning so they could capture the two-year creative process in bringing Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray from concept to stage. Tickets are required and seating in Bennett Gordon Hall is limited. Call 847-266-5100 or reserve your space now.
This Week in Tweets July 27 - Aug 2
Each week this summer we post the top tweets of the week about Ravinia Festival under the heading This Week in Tweets. During the last week we scoured the depths of the twittersphere to bring you the best tweets that mention your favorite outdoor music festival. Log on to Twitter, follow @RaviniaFestival, tweet about us or twitpic your lawn set-up and you might wind up in our blog feature! Featured tweets will win you great prizes all summer long. We’ll contact you to claim your prize if you are featured. Don’t forget to read the contest rules too!
Hibbard Elementary School Student Orchestra Appears on Making Chicago Great
WCIU, the U, created a terrific “Making Chicago Great” segment on its You & Me This Morning show about our student orchestra at Hibbard Elementary School, just one of Ravinia Festival’s many REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs.
James Conlon honored with ECHO Klassick Award
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Ravinia Festival Music Director James Conlon has been honored with a 2011 ECHO Klassik Award, one of the most established and well known music awards in the world, in the category “Music DVD Recording of the Year (Documentary)” for the film A Surprise in Texas: The Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The award will be presented to Conlon, as well as the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, at the Konzerthaus Berlin on October 2, 2011.
The documentary follows Conlon and the competitors of the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition during its rigorous three-week competition and offers an intricate view into the inner world of the most prestigious piano competitions. Some of the pianists featured in the documentary are Haochen Zang, Nobuyuki Tsujii, and Yeol Eum Son.
The last time Conlon received the ECHO Klassik award was in 2002 in the category of “Editorial Achievement of the Year” for his nine recording series of Alexander Zemlinksy’s operas and orchestral works with the Gürzenich Orchestra-Cologne Philharmonic. The ECHO Klassik Awards are annually presented by the German Phono Akademie—the cuturial institute of the German music industry association. Those who receive the ECHO Klassick are selected by a jury of individuals in politics, arts and media, and the classical division of the German music industry association. The Jury decides on the recipients of the award based off of the artist’s quality and popular success of their performances, reflecting both the opinions of critics and music connoisseurs.
Congratulations James Conlon on your continued success!
CANNON BALL!!!!!!!
No, Ravinia did not just open up a public pool. We have something better! From 3-4:45 PM on Sunday July 31st, Ravinia hosts the event Cannon Ball for high school students! Where did Cannon-Ball come from? Throughout the year, Ravinia has worked with local high school students to help us answer the difficult question facing the classical music industry: How do we market classical music to teenagers? All year we worked with a group of motivated and talented students from Highland Park High School; and with their help, we began this summer’s Classical Youth Initiative to encourage students to attend classical concerts at Ravinia.
The way the classical youth initiative contest is simple. We have kept track of every high school student that has come to the classical concerts Ravinia hosts every summer. For every night so far, each student who showed their high school ID at the box office not only got in for free on the lawn, but also won a point for their school. The school with the most points at the end of the summer will win a $1000 grant from Ravinia to their high school’s arts program! Anyone who attends Cannonball will win two points for their school!
CannonBall is a pre-concert hangout for high school students. We are going to have games, food and drinks, before the July 31st CSO concert. We want students to share their love of classical music with each other and hopefully spread the word about the great times that can be had while listening to classical music. After the party ends, the CSO Tchaikovsky concert begins, where kids can hear one of the most recognizable classical pieces, the 1812 Overture set to live cannons!
If you are a high school student who wants to attend, please go to our Facebook event page for CannonBall and click “attend”.
If you are a parent of a high school student, click on that same link, send it to your and tell them to join the party. We hope to see you there!
Eddie Pratt
Communications Intern
This Week in Tweets: July 20 - 26
Each week this summer we post the top tweets of the week about Ravinia Festival under the heading This Week in Tweets. During the last week we scoured the depths of the twittersphere to bring you the best tweets that mention your favorite outdoor music festival. Log on to Twitter, follow @RaviniaFestival, tweet about us or twitpic your lawn set-up and you might wind up in our blog feature! Featured tweets will win you great prizes all summer long. We’ll contact you to claim your prize if you are featured. Don’t forget to read the contest rules too!
Congratulations to our Women’s Board on a Great Gershwin Gala
Congratulations to our Women's Board at Ravinia Festival for creating a truly remarkable gala benefit last night, raising over a million dollars to support the nonprofit festival and our mission of bringing music back to budget-strapped schools. Hope you were there to hear the unparalleled Chicago Symphony Orchestra recreate George Gershwin's only Ravinia appearance (1936).
The evening began with a cocktail party that gave everyone a chance to socialize in their red-carpet finery. The party then moved to the real main course of the evening, the CSO concert that featured soloists Sylvia McNair, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Kelli O’Hara singing the great Gershwin songs like “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The Orchestra opened the evening with the Cuban Overture and returned for what Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times called “a giddy, exuberant, razor-sharp rendering of An American in Paris.” The concert ended with Kevin Cole, who plays Gershwin like no one else, performing “Rhapsody in Blue.” It was that piece that had audiences clambering into the trees to get a glimpse of the great Gershwin when he played the piece himself here in 1936. David Alan Miller proved a popular last-minute replacement on the podium for James Conlon, who was ill.
With over 800 guests in attendance, I had the great good fortune at the black-tie dinner of sitting between Col. James Pritzker and Broadway sensation (and star of the evening) Kelli O’Hara, who is even more ravishing up close. Dinner, with each course themed to the music on the program (for example, Rhapsody in Blueberries) was catered by Food for Thought. The gala Marquee was decorated by Event Creative and featured elegant gold draping and towering centerpieces of green hydrangeas and yellow calla lilies.
The 2011 Gala Benefit Evening was overseen by the Women’s Board committee headed by Gala Co-chairmen Gail Hodges and Susan Schmitt. Sarah Barden, Jean Berghoff and Annette Dezelan served as the Gala Benefactor co-chairmen. Jeanne Denison is the Women’s Board chairman. Kelly Grier, Rick Lenny and Mike Murray served as the Trustee Benefactor co-chairmen.
The annual gala is the only performance fund-raiser thrown for the not-for-profit festival, but is just one of the myriad activities, including the oversight of Ravinia Gifts, that make the Women’s Board such solid contributors to the social fabric and the bottom line of Ravinia. The group of dedicated and very active volunteers began in 1962 and will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Over that time, they have given more money in support of the festival and its educational mission that any other person or group.
A point of pride for the Women’s Board and everyone at the festival is that they founded our educational programs and continue to be active in our REACH*TEACH*PLAY efforts today. Last year, they started two elementary school orchestras at Hibbard Elementary School—based on the el sistema method of instant immersion in music—and they have plans to start a third orchestra at a different school soon.
On behalf of Ravinia, I want to thank the Women’s Board and its gala committees, all of our event sponsors and the brilliant artists who contributed to a perfect evening. Even the weather respected Gershwin. And the living was easy.
--Nick Pullia
Director of Communications
Sights and Sounds of Ravinia
Gustav MahlerRavinia Festival offers some of the most talented and interesting classical artists, musicians and composers throughout the summer, but some of what Ravinia offers might be unnoticed aurally. The unique atmosphere at Ravinia Festival provides sights and sounds of nature that are often missed in the city life of Chicago. But why is this important to notice? They’re just birds, bugs and critters that some might find less than favorable as they chime in during the soft moments of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major (“Eroica”). The reason these sounds should be appreciated is because many composers have used the sounds of nature as inspiration for some of the most influential pieces of music of all time.
Take, for example, Gustav Mahler, a favorite Austrian composer of the late Romantic era. Mahler would often leave the city life of Vienna to compose in the countryside and would draw bundles of inspiration from the natural sounds of the outdoors inside a composition hut (Komponierhäuschen) in Steinbach am Attersee and later in Maiernigg on the shores of Wörthersee in Carinthia. The natural symphony of sounds that the countryside offered Mahler helped him produce some of his most memorable work, including Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”).
The aesthetic of the countryside and forests also helped Mahler paint images with his thick orchestral layering which is signature of his style. In fact, one of Mahler’s most memorable quotes is, “Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.” Ravinia Festival seems like a fitting place for composers like Mahler.
James Conlon’s Mahler series will end Thursday, August 4, during the 2011 season. Take the opportunity to enjoy Gustav Mahler's music in a setting that he spent the majority of his mature composing life enjoying—the sights and sounds of mother earth at Ravinia Festival.
Conductor David Alan Miller Steps in For James Conlon
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Highly regarded as a champion and interpreter of American music, conductor David Alan Miller will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at our Gala Benefit Evening this Saturday, July 23, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the CSO’s annual summer residency at Ravinia as well as legendary American composer George Gershwin with a program including his most beloved music. Miller, who has appeared at Ravinia 19 times since his 1997 festival debut, replaces James Conlon, who has withdrawn due to illness. The concert also features vocalists Sylvia McNair, Kelli O’Hara, Brian Stokes Mitchell and pianist Kevin Cole. The program, which includes Cuban Overture, selections from Porgy and Bess, An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue and “Gershwin around the Piano,” song selections to be announced from the stage, is based upon the all-Gershwin program that the composer himself performed at his one and only appearance at Ravinia Festival in 1936.
Hosted by the Ravinia Women’s Board, the annual Gala is the only performance fundraiser benefiting the not-for-profit festival’s mission, especially its efforts to bring music back to the schools through its REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs.
This Week in Tweets: July 13-19
Each week this summer we post the top tweets of the week about Ravinia Festival under the heading This Week in Tweets. During the last week we scoured the depths of the twittersphere to bring you the best tweets that mention your favorite outdoor music festival. Log on to Twitter, follow @RaviniaFestival, tweet about us or twitpic your lawn set-up and you might wind up in our blog feature! Featured tweets will win you great prizes all summer long. We’ll contact you to claim your prize if you are featured. Don’t forget to read the contest rules too!
2011 Life Trustee Award
In 1971 Ravinia Festival moved into the vanguard of social progress when it accorded the newly created title of Ravinia Festival Board President to Mrs. Glen A. (Marion) Lloyd, who the following year became Ravinia Festival Board Chairman, making her the first woman to serve in that capacity for a major Chicago arts organization. Mrs. Lloyd held that position through 1975.
In 1993 Marian P. Tyler (now Marian Pawlick) followed in her footsteps when she became chairman of the Ravinia Festival Board of Trustees, having served as a board member since 1985. Chairman of Ravinia’s Board through 1995, she has held important leadership positions with other local organizations as well—the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Art Institute of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Lake Forest College—but it is at Ravinia that her presence seems most conspicuous. When you get off the train or enter the park from the west parking lot, her name is the first thing you see as you pass through the Tyler Gate, named in recognition of her leadership and generosity to the festival.
Is it a cosmic coincidence that in 1973, the second year of Marion Lloyd’s chairmanship, Ravinia named James Levine as the festival’s second music director, while in 1994, the second year of Marian Tyler’s chairmanship, Christoph Eschenbach was named the festival’s third music director? Or might it be simply that under the leadership of two exceptional women, Ravinia Festival made major artistic strides?
Whatever the connection, it is fitting that this year Marian Tyler becomes the recipient of the Marion M. Lloyd Life Trustee Award. Presented annually by the Ravinia Associates—our young professionals’ board—the award recognizes the exceptional generosity and leadership of one of the festival’s Life Trustees. The award, perhaps not coincidentally, was named after its first recipient, Marion Lloyd, who was honored in 2004, the year of Ravinia’s centennial celebration. Other recipients have included Morris A. Kaplan (2005), Joan and Stanley Freehling (2006), Eloise W. Martin (2007), Sarah W. Armour (2008), Emory Williams (2009) and Richard D. Harza (2010).
This article is from the Ravinia Magazine.
Delightful Rachmaninoff and Poe
James Conlon will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Milwaukee Symphony Chorus in a performance of three highly regarded Sergei Rachmaninoff pieces: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Vesna Cantata, and The Bells on July 21.
The last of these pieces is a musical accompaniment to go along with an Edgar Allen Poe poem, The Bells. The exact story the poem tells has been widely debated. Is it about the different sounds a bell can make and the emotions they stir? Does the poem use the sounds of a bell to show the passing of seasons and thus act as a metaphor on aging? Some have even speculated the poem is the story of a man losing his wife in a fire; and the final section of the poem the man losing his mind in grief. Nobody will ever know what poem was exactly about since it was published after Poe died in 1849. To find out what this story means to you, make sure to come to the performance on July 21st. The concert will begin at 8 pm and take place in the Pavilion.
The full poem can be found here: The Bells
*This concert is a part of the Classical Youth Initiative; and any high school students who show their IDs not only get in free, but also help their school’s fine arts program win an $1,000 grant from Ravinia!
Eddie Pratt
Communications Intern