It’s pops night, which means fun is on the menu! Even the word itself conjures up blissful thoughts of relaxed musical evenings with friends and lots of irrepressible toe-tapping.
Read MoreClassical
Between the notes, Midori shares living memories and honest music
Out of a constant need to renew and update itself, the classical-music world is always looking for the new, and, 35 years ago, no budding star burned brighter than Midori.
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Jonathan Rush Shares His Artistic Mission With Sistema Ravinia's Young Musicians
Jonathan Rush is one of the world's most exciting young conductors and the students of Sistema Ravinia were instantly inspired and moved by his craft and dedication. They saw that being the best wasn’t far from their reach, which is exactly what Rush wanted to accomplish when meeting these students.
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Generational Voice: Julia Bullock puts passion to resonance with thoughtful singing
American soprano Julia Bullock is not your standard-issue, rising young operatic diva.
The sound of Bullock’s voice—rich and warm with a smoky undercurrent and glints of steel—is inimitable. She could easily spend her career traveling the world singing standard operatic repertoire. Since graduating from Juilliard in 2015, however, she has put her voice in service to programs that go far beyond the classical repertoire’s usual boundaries.
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WFMT to Broadcast Chicago Symphony Orchestra Opening Night Live
Ravinia is partnering with Chicago’s classical radio station WFMT to present a special live broadcast of the opening concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s residency at the festival on July 9 – a program led by Ravinia Chief Conductor and Curator Marin Alsop and featuring pianist Jorge Federico Osorio. This performance will mark the first major post-pandemic classical music event in the Chicago area presented before a large audience.
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Ballot Initiative: Revisiting American Suffrage, Stacy Garrop Raises Suppressed Voices
in Classical
Composer Stacy Garrop spends little time in the proverbial ivory tower. Some of her recent compositions have focused on contemporary topics ranging from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (My Dearest Ruth) to the fraught balance between human beings and planet earth (Terra Nostra). But last year’s endless churn of dire headlines nearly swamped one of her newest works, The Battle for the Ballot. A 17-minute piece for narrator and orchestra, it will have its Midwest premiere at Ravinia July 10 with Marin Alsop conducting the Chicago Symphony.
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Artist Spotlight: Jorge Federico Osorio
in Classical, Artist News
Turning the Keys: Pianist Garrick Ohlsson pushes the pedal on Ravinia’s summer with an old friend and a new sound
Garrick Ohlsson’s audience on July 12 will be the last of his four nights at Ravinia this summer, as well as his 40th overall between the festival’s stages, but in one way they will also be his first, anywhere. That Ravinia audience will be the first to hear him conclude a series begun over a year ago—thanks to the pandemic.
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WFMT, Ravinia Announce "New From the Ravinia Festival" Broadcast Series
Ravinia 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.
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Highland Park High School Marching Band Ready to Kick Some Mass
For Highland Park High School Marching Band director Josh Chodoroff and members of the marching band, their participation in Ravinia’s encore performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass on Saturday, July 20, has to be the very best “This one time, at band camp” story.
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JENNIFER HUDSON MAKES CSO DEBUT IN GALA, RAISING $1.1M FOR MUSIC EDUCATION
The annual Gala Benefit Evening hosted by Ravinia’s Women’s Board to support the festival and its Reach Teach Play education programs grossed more than $1.1 million, making it one of the most successful in the 53-year history of the event. Chicago’s own Oscar- and Grammy-winning Jennifer Hudson made her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, headlining the only concert fundraiser Ravinia puts on for itself. George Hanson, who had served as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein, conducted the CSO for the July 14 concert. Nearly 800 guests attended the black-tie-optional gala, which proceeded with cocktails on Ravinia’s famous Lawn after the concert.
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All the World’s His Stage: Regardless of Genre, Bernstein Put On a Show
in Classical, Artist News
America’s most important music figure was many things to many people: conductor, composer, pianist, educator, author, television personality, activist, international bon vivant. But if you asked Leonard Bernstein how he self-identified, he thought of himself as a composer.
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The Existential Question: Marin Alsop is here for more seriously popular Bernstein
The floodtide of events with which Ravinia celebrated Bernstein’s 100th birthday in 2018 was only the beginning. The grand celebration continues for a second festival summer with nearly a dozen Bernstein-themed programs curated by the American conductor Marin Alsop, Bernstein’s final (and only female) protégé and one of the world’s most prominent champions of his music.
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Ravinia Welcomes Home Asst. Conductor George Stelluto
George Stelluto, music director of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, makes his summer home at Ravinia, where he serves as assistant conductor, understudying the repertoire to be performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and ready to leap to the podium at a moment’s notice should an emergency arise.
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Ways to a Means: Composers needed clever commitments to keep themselves in coin
in Classical
Since Elizabeth’s time, composers have found diverse ways to finance their careers, and a consideration of some of the composers whose music will be performed at Ravinia this summer shows how cleverly their solutions evolved over the years.
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RUMBLINGS OF A NEW WEST SIDE STORY
More than a century after his birth, Leonard Bernstein remains a pop culture phenomenon. Hot off the success of A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper will direct and star in a biopic about multi-hyphenate who many consider the most important musician in American history. At the same time, America’s most successful filmmaker is remaking the treasured 1962 Best Picture Oscar winner West Side Story. Someone with Spielberg’s track record of blockbusters is in a position to pick only the best.
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JAZZ PIANIST DAN TEPFER FINDS CODING A MUSICAL INSPIRATION
Jazz pianist and composer Dan Tepfer is releasing his album Natural Machines tomorrow, May 17, with a twist. On this album, Tepfer plays a unique digital player piano called the Disklavier, which takes the music he plays on the piano, runs it through a computer program he wrote, and plays it back over the instrument.
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Tuning Up: Musicians and conservatories break the cycle of performance injuries
Melissa White and Elena Urioste got through the beginnings of their professional violin careers without thinking much about their bodies. If they had performance-related pain, they ignored it as long as they could.
Then, in 2009, they separately found yoga.
Read MoreHarmony in Motion: Peter Sellars and Grant Gershon get closer to Him through The Tears of Saint Peter
in Classical, Artist News
“John was looking for a texture for The Gospel According to the Other Mary,” explains Sellars, “and he was going through medieval music and Renaissance music kind of like Igor Stravinsky, looking for music where there’s a very detailed and elaborate harmonic language. John came across Lasso and became so excited. He told both Grant and me to look at Orlando de Lasso.”
Read MoreIntense, Beautiful, Devoted: Classical music has long felt the Bern(stein) to speak in political tones
There was a stunning moment in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s “Celebrating 100 Years of Bernstein” gala this season. Kate Baldwin, on a brief hiatus from her Tony Award–nominated run in Broadway’s revival of Hello Dolly!, took the stage and delivered an ineffably moving rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s Vietnam-era protest song “So Pretty.” This affecting piece, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, was first heard in 1968 at the Broadway for Peace fundraiser co-hosted by Bernstein and Paul Newman. It was performed then by Barbra Streisand with the composer himself at the piano. The song tells of a land far away with golden temples and pretty people with shining hair—who we are told “must die for peace.” The text concludes with “But they’re so pretty, so pretty. / I don’t understand.”