Ravinia unveiled its latest work of art on Saturday, the aquatic sculpture Chorus, created by WET, Inc. Nestled into the festival’s grand entrance, the fountain and light show, which can be programmed to music, makes for a thrilling reveal when patrons emerge from the train underpass while walking to the festival’s main gate.
We know what whole notes look like, and we can recognize the curly fanciness of the treble clef and the flags on eighth notes. But the question on the minds of so many music lovers as they exuded excitement over Ravinia’s Chicago premiere of Tan Dun’s Water Passion last week was just exactly how the exotic sounds created by the chorus are expressed in the score so that the piece can be performed by different ensembles in different venues around the world.
Sometimes the power of a film can sneak up on you and catch you by surprise. That was the experience I had when I saw James Cameron’s film Titanic—for the third time.
A long time ago, when I was working as a journalist in California, I came to Ravinia to do a feature interview with James Levine, who was Ravinia’s music director at that time, and in the course of the interview he said something that still haunts me today, as if somehow he sensed what would happen as a result of “social media”—which of course did not yet exist at that time.
Lionel Hampton made his final appearance at Ravinia 25 years ago, by which time he had long established himself as one of the greatest jazz bandleaders of the 20th century.
In 2013 Tan Dun traveled to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to conduct his Water Passion in the very space where J.S. Bach had introduced the Saint Matthew Passion nearly three centuries ago (most likely in 1727). The gesture underlined the kind of cross-cultural counterpoint that lies at the heart of the Chinese composer’s oratorio. The full title reads Water Passion after Saint Matthew, yet Tan also models his work on his reading of Bach’s monumental precedent; it might even be titled Water Passion after Saint Matthew after Bach—the second “after” being taken simultaneously in its dual senses of “according to” and “post-dating” (for a contemporary world).
Frankie—to my parents’ generation, that meant “Sinatra.” To my generation, it meant “Valli & the Four Seasons.” Although as with so many other things in life, I was a bit late in coming to this party.
The contradictions are stunning.
We are, as we’re constantly reminded, living our lives at supersonic speeds, racing in all directions. We express ourselves in 140-character tweets, fume when a computer file takes three seconds to download, and demand next-day delivery for our online orders (since shopping online is, of course, much faster than heading out to a brick-and-mortar retail store).
Yet we luxuriate in spending hours at a time on a single experience we deem worthwhile. Children, supposedly afflicted by skyrocketing rates of attention deficit disorder, devoured the very long Harry Potter books in marathon sittings. A weekend spent binge-watching multiple seasons of House of Cards or Downton Abbey is many people’s idea of heaven. Restaurants have long waiting lists of customers willing to sit for lengthy, multicourse, insanely expensive meals with menus (no substitutions allowed) set by a superstar chef.
We’re desperately in a hurry. Until we’re not.
Carlos Santana once told Welz Kauffman that he’d never play Ravinia. Nothing personal, he said, just that “my audience won’t come.”
The year was 2000, and Kauffman had just taken the reins at the legendary Highland Park music festival with a vision to build on the historic venue’s proud legacy of presenting a wide variety of great concerts.
“From the beginning Ravinia presented a mix of classical concerts and the cutting-edge acts of the time, whether it was Benny Goodman introducing a mixed-race band in the 1940s to Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa in the 1970s,” Kauffman said. “But as the classical programming continued to feature the brightest talents in the world, for about 30 years, we lost our way a bit on the nonclassical side, allowing it to get pretty dusty.”
All of us at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute are still in shock about the sudden death of David Baker last Saturday. David had led the RSMI Program for Jazz since its inception in 2000, so naturally he had developed a certain way he expected things to be done. When I became director of RSMI in 2010, I was in a constant whirlwind with all three of the programs, grasping for any bit of knowledge I could try to retain as I learned on the fly, so of course things didn’t run exactly as David was accustomed to, of course I dropped a few balls here and there. So when he showed up in my doorway
The Ravinia Festival is the highlight of my summers, bar NONE.
The place has such atmosphere and a feeling of joyful camaraderie you just don't get anywhere else. People sometimes feel inhibited at Lyric Opera or the Chicago Symphony. But, at Ravinia, everyone's inhibitions are released and true joy seeps out of every pore of the place.
On March 2 Ravinia announced its 2016 summer season, and in order to make sure everyone heard the good news, members of the communications team and CEO Welz Kauffman made the rounds at various media outlets both on radio and TV. Below you can view some clips from our appearances.
Interview with Mindy Moore, Director of Group Events at Ravinia Festival and Here’s Chicago’s January 2016 Chicago Hospitality Professional of the Month!
What do you love about planning events in Chicago?
Planning events is Chicago is the greatest. We have the most creative resources that are on the cutting edge and trendy with enough conservatism to get the messages across. We are centrally located, have the best hotels, best food and beverage and musical opportunities. Our close-knit community will always welcome the newcomers and take the time to teach and share our experience. Plus, they are all my friends!
Ravinia today announced what is expected to be the final live broadcast from the festival of the popular American Public Media radio show A Prairie Home Companion hosted by Garrison Keillor at 4:45 p.m. on Saturday, June 11.
In October, distinguished local historian and author Art Miller gave a lecture on the history of Ravinia Festival and surrounding areas. He spoke on the beginnings of the festival, the people and culture of the area and the architecture of the park buildings.
Armstrong was the first great international star I ever saw in person. The press coverage of his Ravinia debut not only endorsed my choice, but befitted a larger occasion as well. Jazz was still very new to Ravinia then, and it still seemed utterly contradictory to mention the two words in the same sentence. When Benny Goodman had appeared at Ravinia in August 1938, fresh from his triumph at Carnegie Hall earlier that year, the young crowds seemed to frighten the park management, even as the dollars they brought in wiped away an entire season’s deficit in two hours. But it would be 17 years before jazz would be invited back to Ravinia.
I was surprised when I encountered a 1957 ad for the “Ravinia” Webcor turntable with very little information about its connection to Ravinia. At first I thought maybe it was just a coincidence that it shared the name of America’s oldest music festival, but further digging uncovered another ad from 1954 that gets as close as possible to referencing the festival itself without explicitly doing so. It states, “… you have the unmistakable impression that a ‘live’ orchestra is performing in your presence. That’s why the experts call the Ravinia’s performance—‘living presence.’” Coincidence? I think not.
Read More
One month from today, Nicola Benedetti will be giving the world premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, co-commissioned for her by Ravinia and that ensemble, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. On the opening night of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 80th-anniversary residency at Ravinia, she will be performing the American premiere of the work with conductor Cristian Măcelaru (who, coincidentally, will be making his Ravinia debut).