Ravinia Festival will test a free wheelchair service that will help those with disabilities navigate the park's new grand entrance and pedestrian underpass on concert nights. The acclaimed new entrance allows people to enter Ravinia's grounds without having to cross the at-grade railroad tracks or be delayed in the parking lot waiting for trains to pass.
More than 200 students at all three North Shore District 112 middle schools had the unique opportunity of participating in a choral celebration with renowned choral artist, Shanka Falls, through a partnership between the 112 Education Foundation and Ravinia Festival’s Reach*Teach*Play Education Programs. On Friday, May 4, this musical experience culminated with a performance at Ravinia’s beautiful Bennett Gordon Hall.
Ms. Falls, a Ravinia Teaching Artist, spent time with each grade level at Edgewood, Elm Place and Northwood schools to introduce the students to the rich tradition of gospel music, which spans from spirituals sung by African American slaves to today’s uplifting and joyful popular songs. A classical vocalist and teacher, Ms. Falls is the director of the choral program at the Ravinia Lawndale Family Music School.
Through the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce, Ravinia Festival awarded its 10th annual scholarship to a graduating high school senior intending to continue art or music studies in college. This year the $1,000 prize went to Spencer Hile of Highland Park High School.
Click here to view more great images from this day.
Continuing the year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of Ravinia Festival’s Women’s Board, three members of the volunteer group will join forces as guest programmers from 9 to 11 a.m. on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 13, on Chicago’s only classical station, WFMT 98.7 FM. Chairman Jeanne Denison, Susan Spears and Elizabeth Bergmann will reminisce about their favorite Ravinia moments with host Dennis Moore and play musical selections. Since forming in 1962, the active and innovative group has become the single biggest donor to the not-for-profit Ravinia, contributing more than $25 million and starting the festival’s REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs.
Chicago’s only classical music station, WFMT 98.7 FM, will broadcast From Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, an eight-part concert series hosted by Ravinia Festival President and CEO Welz Kauffman. The show will air at 4 p.m. Sundays from May 6 through June 10. Each hour-long episode will include performances captured live last year in Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall along with brief interviews from participants in SMI, Ravinia’s summer music conservatory, which each year offers 60-70 fully paid fellowships to the most talented young professional musicians in the world.
On Friday, April 13, our development department made a changing impact for Catalyst-Circle Rock Charter School on Chicago’s west side. Circle Rock has participated in Ravinia’s Music Discovery Program since 2008, which offers enhancement to students’ musical skills by providing resident teaching artists, interactive music learning activities and professional development for teachers, as part of the festival’s ongoing REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs. As a team, these staff members painted a inspirational mural in the school’s multi-purpose room.
As a few of you have managed to find, Ravinia Festival is now on Pinterest. Some of you might already be thinking, what's Pinterest? As defined by the booming social network themselves:
Pinterest is an online and mobile service that allows you to create online pinboards and organize and share beautiful things you find on the web. Pinterest lets you create your own visual collections or “boards,” and view and follow other boards, on pinterest.com (the "Site"), on our application for mobile devices (the “Mobile Software”), and through third party applications.
So, why follow Ravinia Festival?
The winning design of the 2012 poster was inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Women's Board of Ravinia Festival–even down to the smallest detail–the flower illustration has 50 petals.
Your purchase benefits Ravinia and its REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs.
A recent report in the Huffington Post detailed a bit of the history and success of the Venezuelan music-education system that has taken an exciting foothold around the world, including over 50 U.S. cities. Ravinia Festival is planning its third “El Sistema” orchestra in a Chicago elementary school shortly.
"El Sistema," according to Gustavo Dudamel, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a graduate of the program, is a "visionary global movement that transforms the lives of children through music."
Read the Huffington Post story.
Over the past 50 years Marshal Amplification has become synonymous with the big sound of live music everywhere, and today we were saddened by the news that the legend himself, Jim Marshall, has passed at 88 after battling with poor health for years. While artists like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton have redefined rock and roll, it would be impossible to say where rock might have landed in the history books without the "Marshall Sound." You would be hard-pressed to find a rock band today that doesn't have at least one Marshall amp as part of their set up. The man may be gone, but the legend of the "Lord of the Loud" has a permanent place in music history.
Motörhead (above) photo courtesy of Lost In Concert
For all of you Mad Men fans out there, Sunday was a pretty momentous occasion. After about 17 months off the air, and a worrisome gut feeling that it may never return to the air, Mad Men season 5 premiered on AMC. That's exciting and all, but how does that relate to Ravinia Festival?
If you were fortunate to be passing through the Thompson Center yesterday afternoon, you would have overheard world-famous Yo-Yo Ma and Renee Fleming performing in the food court with other Chicago Symphony musicians and a choir of high school students. This "flash mob" was a completely unexpected by most
Late 2011 and early 2012 has not been kind to the world of music. Recent losses such as Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Cesária Évora, Etta James, Johnny Otis, and Davy Jones have shook the musical world, and today we hear about yet another loss.
Fox News has ranked Ravinia Festival as one of the Top Alternative Music Festivals in the country. Being not only the oldest music festival in the country, but the oldest on the continent, it is very flattering to still be considered as one of the best! None of this would be possible without you. Thank you for all your patronage and support over the past 107 years (6 months, and 26 days), making Ravinia Festival the greatest music venue ever. (Yes, ever)
“What truly defines us is that music-lovers can really create their own vision of what Ravinia is to them--an intimate dinner date for two followed by a performance by the great Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or a group of friends on the lawn partying with the Blues Brothers.” – Welz Kauffman, Ravinia President and CEO.
Ravinia Festival is now on Instagram! As many of you know, and are hopefully follow, Ravinia is on Facebook and Twitter. In fact most of you reading this post right now have come from our craftily shortened link via Facebook or Twitter. However, the Ravinia social media experience doesn’t stop there.
As the season draws closer and closer this weekly playlist will become a bit more infrequent as we want to focus our efforts on bringing you new (and not all classical) music to your homes. This playlist should update about 1-2 times a month and will coincide with important summer Ravinia dates. Once our 2012 season draws to an end, we will go back to weekly or biweekly updates, with more more specific content. Expect our changes to take place starting next month. Add Ravinia Festival: This Week in Classical Music to your Spotify playlist, and listen to all your favorite works on the anniversaries of their initial premiers. Just click the Spotify logo, or the link above, and enjoy a week of historical moments. We update our playlist every week so there will never be a need to resubscribe! Below is a day-by-day listing of the track selections for this weeks edition of the playlist. We hope you enjoy!This month we want to highlight many of the black artists that have shared their talents with us at Ravinia Festival. Below is just a short list of a few of the numerous black artists that lit up the stage at the festival over the years! You can click on the images below to learn more about each of the artists. Enjoy!
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Roger Hodgson, co-founder and lead singer of progressive rock band Supertramp, will make his Ravinia debut at 8 p.m. on Thursday, August 23 as part of his Breakfast in America tour.