“Around that same time, I found letters on Twitter and on an Instagram account called Sondheim’s Letters. Just everyone—including stars like Lin-Manuel [Miranda] and Trey Parker from South Park and the Jonathan Larson estate—all of them are posting these letters Sondheim had written to them, encouraging them, or vouching for them when they needed a grant.
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Repertory Riffs: Wayne Marshall Keys Up the Opportunity to Play
in Artist News, Classical
What is fascinating about Wayne Marshall is that despite his beginnings in more orthodox rep, this British-born, British-trained artist has primarily made his name as a supreme interpreter of American music. Ravinia will hear him on August 3 in a suite from Porgy as well as in the music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. “For me,” Marshall explains, “your American music is just as important as any Beethoven, or Haydn, or Mozart, or Brahms, or whatever. It’s the same to me. It’s not to be taken lightly. Porgy and Bess is a phenomenally difficult score. Yes, Gershwin wrote some light stuff, but some very serious stuff as well. And the music is not easy.”
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Chanticleer Returns on the Cusp of a Clear Day
in Artist News, Classical
Chanticleer just finished recording a new album, which is scheduled for release in 2023 with a collection of works commissioned by the group in the last 10–15 years that it had not previously recorded. “The Chanticleer [music] library is extensive,” Music Director Tim Keeler said. “Finding those nuggets of continuity across the centuries is really exciting, and one of the great ways to do that is to contrast early music with contemporary music.”
For its Ravinia program, Chanticleer is performing two works by early Franco-Flemish composers, while the rest of the evening features modern and contemporary works. Two of those pieces will be featured on the new recording: Zhou Tian’s “Strange how we can walk (in L.A.)” from Trade Winds, which Chanticleer commissioned in 2019, and Blow, blow thou winter wind, a setting of a Shakespearean poem by George Walker, the 1996 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
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Reach Teach Play's "REACH" Brings Music to Thousands this Summer
Over 75,000 community members are served through Ravinia's Reach Teach Play Programs each year, ensuring that music education remains accessible to all. Our programs are designed to educate, foster diverse audience involvement, and provide the population with equitable access to live music experiences in their communities and at Ravinia. Programs that extend Ravinia’s REACH programs bring the joy of music to thousands throughout the Chicago area through programs like Classical Invitations, Ravinia Nights, Kids Lawn, Words & Music, and Opportunity Lawn Pass. Learn more about the programs that are in full swing throughout the entire summer!
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New Outdoor Display Showcases Women Conductors
This year, our Breaking Barriers festival highlights women on the podium and as an extension of the theme, at Ravinia’s main entrance, and you will notice a new outdoor exhibit of over 100 notable women conductors.
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Time Sync: Michael Daugherty machines a concerto for conductors
In 1993, Michael Daugherty completed Metropolis Symphony, an ode to Superman and the comic books of the 1950s and ’60s that the Iowa native had avidly read as a child. At the time, audiences were often leery of new music, and that connection to pop culture helped make them more willing to give it a try. And what they discovered was a compositional departure that was both fun and musically sophisticated.
When famed conductor Mariss Jansons, then music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, wanted to honor his two resident conductors there, he asked Daugherty to write a work that they could lead together. While there are a few other pieces with similar structures, Daugherty took a highly distinctive approach to this challenge. The result was Time Machine for three conductors and orchestra. “It was one of the hardest pieces I’ve had to write, without question,” he said.
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The Conductor’s Score: Marin Alsop leads a crescendo of Taki Fellows
in RaviniaNews
“The old boys’ network has existed for centuries,” says Marin Alsop in The Conductor, the recent film-festival and now streaming documentary about her life and work as the first female music director of a major American orchestra (the Baltimore Symphony).
“We need to create the old girls’ network, so that we can really be there for each other and support each other.”
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Specific Gravity: Janai Brugger models the role of presence in floating higher
in Artist News, Classical
Many Chicago music lovers will remember their first encounter with Janai Brugger. This writer’s was in 2006 when the young soprano, an area native, made her professional debut at Chicago Opera Theater as a member of the young artist program. She sang the tiny role of the First Witch in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. When Brugger stepped forward to deliver her few phrases, there was a palpable energy in the house. Her sound was extraordinary; round and supple, with an ethereal quality that instantly commanded the space. It was one of those rare moments when an emerging artist leaves the listener thinking “That’s the one. That singer is going places.”
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Easy Street: All Roads Lead to Living in Little Big Town
Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet, and Jimi Westbrook have essentially grown up together since becoming a country music foursome back in 1998. So, when the pandemic hit in 2020 and they found themselves stuck in their respective homes, it felt like their world had fallen off its proper axis.
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The Women's Board Celebrates 50 Years of Festival Friendship and Support
It was the summer of 1972. Several ambitious members of the nascent Ravinia Women’s Board had an idea. They had been gifted copies of an attractive poster and a small cookbook containing favorite recipes from members of the CSO and guest artists. If the women could resurrect an abandoned ticket booth from the maintenance lot, they thought they could sell the items and help the Festival’s Sustaining Fund through a particularly challenging period.
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Ladies and Gentlemen … The Beatles! Exhibit at Ravinia Music Box
in Park News, RaviniaNews
Curated by the GRAMMY Museum and Fab Four Exhibits, Ladies and Gentlemen … The Beatles! brings us back to the early ’60s when rock and roll was re-energized—some say saved—by four lads from Liverpool. This exhibit covers the period from early 1964 through mid-1966—the years Beatlemania ran rampant in America. During this time the band affected nearly every aspect of pop culture, including fashion, art, advertising, media, and, of course, music. On display are many Beatles-related pop culture artifacts from the period, as well as correspondence, instruments, posters, photographs, interviews, and interactive displays.
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Unified Sound: Jessie Montgomery makes musical conversation more than notes
Jessie Montgomery is enjoying the kind of moment in the spotlight that every rising composer dreams of. The 40-year-old Brooklyn native began a three-year stint last fall as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In April, the ensemble presented the world premiere of Hymn for Everyone, the first of its three commissioned works by her. In addition to her work as a composer, Montgomery is also a violinist, activist, and educator. She will draw on all four career facets, especially the last, from June 27 through July 1, when she serves as composer-in-residence at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, one of the most sought-after summer training programs in the country.
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Maestro Jonathan Rush and Acclaimed Duo Black Violin Join Sistema Ravinia Students in a Workshop
Sistema Ravinia students participated in a workshop with rising conductor Jonathan Rush and prominent violin- and viola-playing hip-hop duo Black Violin at Ravinia Festival on June 18.
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A Very High Sort of Strings
in Classical, Artist News
The Emerson Quartet announced in August 2021 that it will disband in 2023 after 47 years on the road, performing its final concert in October that year in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. As part of what has become a kind of an extended farewell tour, the group will make its culminating appearance at the Ravinia Festival on June 28.
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Bluegrass Happening
in Artist News
Béla Fleck has not performed at Ravinia in 20 years. To put this in personal terms, this writer’s son was in fourth grade at the time; this fall, he is getting married. But absence does make the heart grow fonder. “For sure, I love Ravinia,” Fleck said. “This should be a blast, with my dearest friends in bluegrass playing with me.”
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The Gospel According to Jazz
in Artist News
“Legends of Jazz: Honoring Ramsey Lewis” features an impressive slate of singers and musicians who are admirers of, and have been influenced by, the innovative, internationally acclaimed, Chicago-born American jazz legend. Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Marquis Hill explained how the Lewis tribute program originally was conceptualized: “I was meeting with my creative team, and I wanted to do some kind of program to feature a small group of musicians. And in our discussions, Ramsey’s name came up. His influence on jazz and music in general is etched in the history books. This tribute seemed natural.”
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Sonic Boomers
in Opinion
When younger segments of the population take umbrage with the Baby Boomer generation, as is fashionable nowadays (often with a dismissive “OK, Boomer”), they’re neglecting that their opinions’ traction in the national dialogue is owed to the Boomers, who have always been the “bulge in the python,” demographically speaking. It wasn’t until the disproportionately large Boomer generation became adolescents, with unprecedented spending power, that marketing managers in every facet of popular culture began heeding the tastes and whims of teenagers. As Cher sang in the 1967 hit “The Beat Goes On,” “Teeny-bopper is our newborn king!”
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Ravinia Days Was In Full Swing At Ravinia Festival!
Reach Teach Play kindergarten through 3rd-grade students from its Music Discovery Program came together to celebrate and showcase live music and dance performances for their friends, family, and educators.
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Join Us For BMO Rooftop Nights!
in Park News, RaviniaNews
Enjoy rooftop views, local brews, and live radio broadcasts on select nights at the BMO Rooftop. This summer, we’re excited to be showcasing three local breweries: ERIS Brewery and Cider House, Funkytown Brewery, and Moor’s Brewing Co.!
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Ravinia presents Chicago artists on its stages this 2022 summer season
This summer, Ravinia is proud to present many of the Chicago area’s most promising and rising musicians on its Carousel Stage, located on the North Lawn as well as on the Pavilion stage.
Get to know some of this summer’s local acts before you see them live:
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