The traditions of jazz and classical music have enjoyed parallel histories but relatively few intersections. Yet players from Benny Goodman to Wynton Marsalis have famously commuted between the two realms, and composers from George Gershwin to Duke Ellington to Leonard Bernstein have negotiated areas of artistic agreement that have linked certain of their traditions in often exciting ways, creating the bedrock of symphonic jazz.
I would like someday to give a lecture or write an article making a case for disliking classical music—at least some of it. I fear that people new to classical music may hear something they really detest and, not knowing the infinite variety of classical music, incorrectly conclude that they don’t like any classical music at all. But just about everyone, no matter how knowledgeable or devoted to music, must admit that there are portions of the repertoire they don’t enjoy.
In my case, there are numerous swaths of the classical repertoire that simply don’t appeal to me. Most pertinent at present, I don’t like Wagner.
So on ghastly summer days with 99-degree heat and 99 percent humidity, that's where I went in my imagination. Lying on my bed, I would put Scheherazade on the phonograph while nibbling grapes and sipping lemonade, as if I were the Persian ruler to whom the stories were being told. It didn't dispel the heat, of course, but somehow, in that setting, the climate seemed more natural and bearable--at least for as long as the music lasted.
This Saturday is the annual Gala Benefit Evening hosted by Ravinia’s Women’s Board, which this year also incorporates Ravinia’s annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular, noteworthy to many for its performance of the beloved “1812” Overture with live cannon fire. But more spectacular to me is …
But music is a living art. And no matter how glorious its past, in order to be fully alive, it must be constantly replenished by sounds that reflect the world as it is today, not as it was 300 or even 75 years ago. This season’s Ravinia schedule includes a range of artists who will be playing the music of the here and now as well as masters of the past.
Everyone knows that the key to a good run is a good playlist. Our newest mixtape mirrors your workout by starting off slow, like a warm-up, and slowly building into a full sprint of great tracks by this season’s artists. It will be sure to keep you moving while simultaneously enjoying the Ravinia summer sound.
In this column I like to address real questions about Ravinia Festival posed to me by fellow Highland Parkers who I bump into at various locations around town. It seems a lot of these questions have been building up over the winter, so now that summer is here (or as Ravinia says, “summer is hear”), here are the top 10 questions so far:
Seth MacFarlane is jazzed.
Hollywood’s most prolific hyphenate (animator–director–writer–voice artist–actor–producer) is taking time this summer to indulge in another of his passions—
In looking back over my years at Ravinia, it is almost impossible to gather my thoughts in a linear fashion. The memories are so many; the musical experiences so rich, varied and exciting; the immense presence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra so monumental, that it is difficult to condense into words.
Since I became music director of the CSO’s residency in 2005, I have been struck by how many music lovers I have met around the country and even overseas, who have told me that they heard their first concerts at Ravinia.
I recently had one of those conversations that only occur between opera lovers and non-classical-music-loving friends. I mentioned having attended a performance of Debussy’s opera Pélleas et Mélisande with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an offering in their recent French festival. “An opera?” my friend asked, with a puzzled look. “Don’t operas have to be in Italian?”
“When you make a record on a major label, especially if you’re not a huge artist, you end up having to make demos. A lot of demos. When you record a song more than once, it loses something every time. I really loved getting to make a record where those moments—albeit less refined than if we’d worked them out—those moments sound like the songs still had control over us, as opposed to the other way around.”
There is something about growing up and living in the Midwest. There is something about the mentality of the people that live here, the passion in which they live their lives, and the consistent way in which they continue to plow on as the world around them changes and evolves.
There is something about the Plain White T’s that make them awfully like us.
To today’s audiences, who have heard nearly two centuries of music after the Symphonie fantastique received its premiere in 1830, Berlioz’s music sounds safe, melodious, beautiful, and brilliantly constructed, but nowhere near as jaw-droppingly shocking as it did to its first audience.
When Disney released Fantasia in 1940, it was so revolutionary in its scope, design, and use of technology that few knew what to make of it. Critics, often an impatient lot when confounded, mostly shunned it, as it fit no particular category. Was it a highfalutin cartoon, an animated anthology for longhairs, or a music-appreciation lesson for lovers of Mickey
Every Monday, Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman appears with announcer Mike Toomey on WGN’s “Ravinia Minute” segment which airs in the 9 a.m. hour every Monday on WGN-TV. Each week Welz highlights upcoming events at the festival and presents them in very creative fashion. Today, he took a stab at something new, costuming up as
Our newest Mixtape contains hit songs by artists appearing at Ravinia this summer, from such classics as Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” to newer hits like Kelsea Ballerini’s “Love Me Like You Mean It.” Almost all of the songs on this list have ranked highly on Billboard’s
![By Warner Brothers Pictures/Leon Schlesinger Productions (A public domain cartoon featuring this title card) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ba3d1efa09a7e572c0e3bf0/t/5ba460dd542c0ec8ec286b52/1436212194447/1000w/Blog-MerryMelodies.jpg "By Warner Brothers Pictures/Leon Schlesinger Productions (A public domain cartoon featuring this title card) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
The marriage of music and animation seems apt enough, since the essence of both is movement, and animation giants like Warner Brothers and Walt Disney issued their short theatrical cartoons under the series headings of “Merry Melodies” and “Silly Symphonies.” Often the music behind the cartoons consisted of sappy pop songs of the day or
When you love something as much as I love the sound of the harpsichord, it’s easy to slip into the invalid assumption that everyone else would love it too, if they were only familiar with it. But that notion took a knocking about five years ago when I was going to lunch in a car with several of my 20-something colleagues at Ravinia. I had just acquired the most spectacular-sounding recording of Bach’s Concerto for Four Harpsichords, and I put it in the car stereo to treat my coworkers to that glorious sound. But within 15 seconds of the start of
Superstar rocker and actor Lenny Kravitz will make his Ravinia debut on Thursday, September 3. Tickets will go on sale to the public beginning at 10 a.m. on Friday, July 10, at Ravinia.org. Kravitz won the
When I learned that James Levine would return to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia for the first time since the end of a fabled tenure as music director, it made me think back to the first—and only—time I ever met him.