In addition to the commissions, you initiated several new programmatic series, various festivals and spectaculars, as well as the five-year music theater Sondheim Project.
It was hard to go from concert production for the CSO—which is stands and chairs and a podium, sometimes a piano, maybe choral risers—to a really fully staged Sweeney Todd with costumes, lighting, staging, things like that. I remember, for many members of the Ravinia Family, it was their first time seeing a Sondheim show …
Read MoreQuite a journey. One that brings us to Marin Alsop.
Marin and I got to know each other when she was running the Long Island Philharmonic in the ’80s, and our paths have crossed a lot ever since. I was always trying to engage her for the various places I worked, and what finally made that happen, in what turned out to be her New York Philharmonic debut, was the Completely Copland Festival in 1999. And a little under a year later when I arrived at Ravinia, we started working to bring her in on a regular basis. And then I was able to bring her back for our Bernstein celebration …
Read MoreWhat is the post-Ravinia future for Welz Kauffman? Will you be staying in the area? Do you see yourself being a regular here?
My husband Jon is doing some consulting work in Detroit; that might turn into a full-time position. Maybe we’ll move there. We also both have very strong ties to Tucson. But I do believe that it will be important for me—and for my successor—to have me gone. I’ll always be available on the phone if they find something funky in the file drawer. But one of the great things that Ravinia board chairs do is they get out of Dodge when they finish their three-year term. It’s giving space to their successor. I’m thinking that might be a good model …
Read MoreRavinia Festival is pleased to announce a new broadcast series in partnership with WFMT. The eight-program, limited-run series “New From the Ravinia Festival,” brings listeners new performances recorded at Ravinia — without an audience — this summer.
Read More“Life is great,” said Ramsey Lewis on an April afternoon, socially distanced in his Streeterville home in Chicago.
Our conversation was originally to be of the face-to-face variety, but with faces having become a focal point of health awareness, we instead took to the phone.
At 85, Lewis is now enjoying the freedom of retirement. He stepped away from touring nearly two years ago, leaving behind the roars of recognition he would hear when playing the first bars of “Hang On Sloopy.” No more audiences, no more applause. Why, I wondered.
Read MoreThese days people who are hunkered down at home are taking part in countless video conferences to connect with coworkers, classmates, friends, and family. Now, whether you’re attending a workout class, brainstorming with coworkers, or celebrating a friend’s birthday, you can use Ravinia Festival Zoom backgrounds to liven up your screen!
Read MoreSince 1904, thousands upon thousands of artists from all over the world and across several musical genres have taken Ravinia’s stage, but in order to experience most of these amazing performances, “you just had to be there.” So when we have occasion to set that maxim aside, it’s a rare treat.
This got us thinking about the few times we’ve been able to share recordings of Ravinia performances to a wider audience, from more than half a century ago to our upcoming telecast of 2019’s Mass performance.
Read MoreLike many others, we here at Ravinia are big fans of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts video series, and have included some names that are also set to be featured in our 2020 summer concert season.
Read MoreRavinia will be announcing its 2020 season on March 12, with public ticket sales opening across April 28 and 29. Keep reading to get more information about purchasing your 2020 Ravinia tickets.
Read MoreThere is a Ravinia connection to Botero, a documentary currently playing at the Wilmette Theatre. It is a multi-nominated profile of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. If his name doesn’t sound familiar, one of the octogenarian’s impressive, imaginative, and imposing sculptures most likely is to anyone who has picnicked on Ravinia Festival’s lawn. The Festival grounds’ Harriet and Harry Bernbaum Sculpture Walk includes Botero’s inflated form of the “Standing Woman.”
Read MoreThe playfulness of the phrase “klezmer attack” gives an excellent sense of the musicians who conceived it: the Copenhagen-based sextet Mames Babegenush. A tight-knit group, the six men built on bonds that reach back to their youth. With 15 years of concerts and five studio albums under their collective belt, Mames has developed passionate fans on several continents, thanks to their unique, joyful take on klezmer, the Eastern European Jewish folk-music tradition.
Read MoreLike all the world’s elite violin soloists, Anne Akiko Meyers brings supercharged skills and innate musicality to the instrument. What sets the San Diego native apart is her uncommon curiosity and openness and a kind of “Aw, shucks” groundedness. Her popular appeal led her to become Billboard’s top-selling traditional classical instrumental soloist in 2014, and it helps explain why many of her 37 albums have debuted at number one on the classical charts.
Read MoreKian Soltani, one of classical music’s rising stars, is in a committed new relationship and they are making beautiful music together. She has accompanied the 27-year-old cellist to some of the world’s most celebrated venues, including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall (where he made his acclaimed recital debut last spring), and now Ravinia, where he will be the featured soloist for the annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular.
Read MoreThe playing of even the best Chinese orchestras long lagged behind that of their counterparts in the West, but they are quickly catching up and attracting international attention, especially the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
Famed American conductor Leonard Slatkin, who celebrated his upcoming 75th birthday at Ravinia leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on August 7, has been traveling to Asia as a guest conductor for nearly four decades. He led three of mainland China’s orchestras in March and was particularly impressed with the Shanghai ensemble. “The level of [talent] in that orchestra in the three years since I conducted there last and this year was markedly higher,” Slatkin says. “It’s become a very important orchestra, and they play very well.”
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 MoreOne of the classical music world’s leading virtuosos receives a cinematic hug with the documentary “Itzhak” (2017). Billed as “a revealing scrapbook of his favorite stories, “Itzhak” moves through vignettes from his life, including his polio diagnosis at age 4, his breakthrough victory at the Leventritt Competition in 1964 and his five-decade marriage to Toby Friedlander, herself an accomplished violinist.
Read MoreStamos, growing up in Southern California, wasn’t as much into The Beatles as he was The Beach Boys, a lifelong love affair that began with an eight-track copy of Endless Summer. “It’s heart music,” he told Ravinia in a phone interview. “You just feel it. Their songs really got to me. ‘God Only Knows’ is a perfect song.”
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 MoreLast weekend, Paul McCartney gave fans in LA a treat they hadn’t been able to savor for more than 50 years—in the midst of his Dodger Stadium set, the onetime Beatle welcomed his former bandmate Ringo Starr onto the stage they last shared on August 28, 1966. The two knights jammed to their classics “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter” before Starr gave the audience his signature wish of “peace and love.”
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