Following their chamber music Grammy nomination in 2016 with Trios from Our Homelands—comprising 20th-century piano trios from each member musician’s ancestral nations—the Lincoln Trio has brought that same focus to their current Chicagoland home on their latest album, Trios from the City of Big Shoulders, released three months ago.
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“The fact that everybody here is so talented and yet so nice and humble—there’s no ego here, no drama—it’s so refreshing to be in an environment like this,” said trumpeter Joey Archie. “You don’t find many places like this with high-quality people at all levels, from the faculty to the assistants. Everybody is so warm, and Ravinia Steans Music Institute definitely lives up to its motto, ‘Everything for the Artist.’ ”
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Every year Ravinia sends hundreds of musicians into Chicago Public Schools as well as classrooms in Highland Park, Waukegan, and North Chicago. What began in 1965 with the Women’s Board’s program of making lawn passes available to low-income music lovers has grown into Reach Teach Play, a year-round operation that reaches 75,000 children annually through a dozen distinct programs.
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Ben Folds does not talk in what he calls “snack-sized” sound bites. He speaks expansively about creativity, a mercurial process. We spoke about why waltzes are incredible, the pitfalls of writing a song about Rudy Giuliani’s disastrous Four Seasons Landscaping press conference, and why arts education is essential to our post-pandemic restart.
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On September 23, Ravinia hosts its first-ever event focused solely on the art of the DJ. For one of the final performances of the season, relax on the Lawn and enjoy some chill end-of-summer vibes. Get to know the three DJs lighting up the Carousel stage.
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“We initially had the idea of starting a summer chamber music festival in downtown Chicago. We partnered with Guarneri Hall, which was being built at the same time. Now, NEXUS is a group, a roster of artists from all around the world who are deeply passionate about chamber music and convene to present projects.”
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Our friends at The Negaunee Foundation know this, too, and have generously offered a “Pillars of Ravinia” challenge grant, matching dollar-for-dollar every $100–$500 donation to the festival’s 2021 Annual Fund, up to $100,000, from now until the summer season ends.
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If you Google “The Blind Boys of Alabama” you’ll easily find a million recounts of their astounding eighty-two-years-and-counting story. But…there’s a different way to learn about the Blind Boy’s story before they return to Ravinia on Sept 11. It won’t be from something you read. It’ll be from something that you hear. And most importantly, it’ll be straight from the source and something you’ll feel.
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“To me, dance with live music is really important,” says Jeffrey Haydon, who took over last September as Ravinia’s president and chief executive officer. “We are in a very visual society right now, and I think that is a way that people can connect even more with music: by seeing it visualized through dance.”
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For some 45 years, the now 70-year-old Weinberg and his big beat have been the sonic engine driving the powerful, pounding, chugging, and charging musical locomotive that is Springsteen’s E Street Band. Currently on a hiatus, as Springsteen and the E Streeters plan a possible return to the stage in 2022 for the first time since 2017, Weinberg still is keeping his musical train moving fast and furious down a rock and roll track.
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Lara Downes thinks we have reached the right moment for unfamiliar music presented in a new way.
Downes, the founder and curator of Rising Sun Music, has spent decades finding and preserving the music of Black composers from several continents and many centuries. The pianist has been adding to her already significant discography with monthly digital releases of four or five pieces from this repertoire since February, and the first full album, New Day Begun, appeared in July. Across the recordings, she has collaborated with musicians ranging from violinist Regina Carter and violist Jordan Bak to soprano Nicole Cabell and bass-baritone Davóne Tines to the PUBLIQuartet.
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“The Ravinia jazz program is one of the reasons I was actually able to go to school for jazz and develop a career. The stuff we learned and were exposed to all year long, having that match with my school curriculum, and the support from teachers were the reasons I was able to visualize what a career as a professional musician would look like,”
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Any musician will tell you to never follow a killer act. Upcoming Ravinia headliners The Roots (September 4) and John Legend (September 5 and 6) are definitely killer acts. But at their upcoming Ravinia appearances, both have opening acts that may make them feel a need to up their already next-level game—Musiq Soulchild and The War and Treaty.
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Drummers are typically seen as “driving” a band, whether in rock or jazz circles. How does that work when there are three? Three drummers offer unusual polyrhythmic possibilities that King Crimson is exploring to the fullest.
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Picture this—it’s August 26 and you’re on Ravinia’s Lawn enjoying your picnic spread before Lake Street Dive takes the stage when, suddenly, a sweet melody sung by a lovely, yet unfamiliar voice leaps out of the park’s speakers and stops you mid-bite. “Who’s that?” you wonder. It’s Allison Russell. And if you don’t already know this formidable Canadian singer, songwriter, banjoist, and clarinetist from her work with the roots band Po’ Girl, the folk-rock-gospel duo Birds of Chicago, or supergroup Our Native Daughters, meet your new favorite artist.
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Niko Moon doesn’t do sad songs.
It’s not as if he has anything against them necessarily. In fact, the music mastermind believes there is definitely a time and place for them, and there are plenty of great ones out there, especially within the history of country music. But in a world often finding itself dragging itself through a myriad of pain, Moon prefers to stick with music meant to make you feel good.
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The talented men of Collective Soul have taken many a stage and sang many a thought-provoking song. But in 2021, as the band with the mystical ways came out from under their pandemic slumber, they found that things didn’t feel quite the same.
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It seems implausible that a casual bet on a golf game could determine the trajectory of a young man’s life. But truth is stranger than fiction, as Wil Baptiste found out.
One half of the groundbreaking string duo Black Violin, 38-year-old Baptiste spent much of his life thinking a mix-up had determined his musical fate. Although he hadn’t played an instrument during his first decade of life, the adolescent started daydreaming about the saxophone. So he joined a summer music program, visions of John Coltrane bebopping in his head, but ended up in the string section. For years, he thought he’d just ended up in the wrong class by fate, but, as he told Ravinia Magazine during a recent phone chat, “Came to find out, it was orchestrated.”
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Approximately 100 Chicago Public Schools K–3rd grade classroom teachers and Ravinia Teaching Artists will participate in interactive music workshops at Ravinia and virtually on August 18, August 21, and September 11 as part of the festival’s annual Teacher Institute. Participants will learn various teaching methods to incorporate music into their classroom curriculum with sessions such as “Musical Creativity in the Classroom,” “Connections to Classical Music,” “Music and Literature,” and “Owning Social Emotional Learning and Music in your Classroom.”
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If bluegrass music is as American as apple pie, then Leftover Salmon and The Infamous Stringdusters are definitely apple pie à la mode. Over their respective careers, the two wildly innovative groups have topped old musical traditions with sweet, modern flavors, delivering blistering live performances and amassing fervent followings around the world. And to top it all off, they’re both picking August 20 at Ravinia to dish up hearty helpings of their tasty twangs.
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