RaviniaNews
All concerts for Ravinia’s 2024 season go on sale to the public on Wednesday, April 24, at 8:00 a.m. CDT, only on ravinia.org!
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photo: Patrick Gipson/Ravinia
Kismet has a way of striking at unexpected times, and that is exactly what happened when three fellows at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute (RSMI) happened to be put together with a violist to perform Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in 2015.
Though previously acquainted at the Curtis Institute of Music, they had never played together and had no particular interest in being part of a piano trio. Or so they thought.
All that changed when they began rehearsing together, and the young artists immediately found themselves captivated by the collaboration. Four years later, they decided to make the happenstance assemblage into a permanent group.
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World-renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain remembers exactly when he first made music with guitar legend John McLaughlin. It was September 1972 in the Bay Area, and Hussain had been jaw-droppingly gobsmacked the night prior by McLaughlin, shredding up a storm in concert with his jazz-fusion band. The following day, they were hanging out at the home of maestro Ali Akbar Khan when McLaughlin asked Hussain, “Would you play with me?”
Half a century after that first jam session, McLaughlin and Hussain have launched a golden-anniversary world tour. In a big surprise for their fans, Shakti—a band mostly known for its concerts and live recordings—also recently released This Moment, the first new studio album in 45 years. Another fun surprise: their September 3 concert at Ravinia includes an appearance by banjo sorcerer Béla Fleck, with whom Hussain recently renewed a trio collaboration including bassist Edgar Meyer for the album and upcoming tour As We Speak.
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Photo: Benjamin Allen
There is a moment of sheer infectious joy on Ravinia Steans Music Institute alum Tessa Lark’s most recent album, The Stradgrass Sessions. There are several, actually, but one that stands out comes at the end of “Hysedelje,” a fiddle tune composed by Lark that is more (blue)grass than Strad(ivarius). At the end, she emits a “whoop” that evokes her Richmond, KY, roots as the daughter of a bluegrass musician. “It was a spur of the moment,” she told Ravinia. “Culturally, it is something you might do after playing a fiddle tune.” She added with a laugh, “You can take the girl out of Kentucky—”
Lark was born to the breed. Her father plays with the gospel-bluegrass ensemble Narrow Road. Her mother played piano for almost a decade when Lark was growing up. Classical music made an impression on her via radio and Performance Today, the American Public Radio series reputedly the most listened-to classical music program in the country. “I adored the music from a very young age,” she said. “My parents were amazing about having unique styles piping through the house. I would gravitate to what I thought was good music. It didn’t matter what the style or genre was. I quickly fell in love with classical because of the depth of emotion.”
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Photo: Benjamin Ealovega
On September 5, James Ehnes will join the Chicago-based Music of the Baroque and Dame Jane Glover as soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. He has appeared four times previously at the Ravinia Festival, but this visit will be his first since 2013. “I love playing in the Pavilion at Ravinia, but I’ve never played in the Martin Theatre, so this is going to be something new, different, and exciting,” he said. The 47-year-old violinist appeared as a soloist with Glover at the Aspen Music Festival in 2021 in the Beethoven Violin Concerto. “I just found her music-making to be so natural and so enjoyable to play with, so I’m really looking forward to being with her again.”
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“Like father, like son.” That old, familiar saying seems especially apt when it comes to Jeffrey Kahane and his son, Gabriel. Although they lived on opposite coasts for two decades and have different kinds of careers—Jeffrey, 66, following the path of a more traditional classical pianist and Gabriel, 42, finding his way as an entrepreneurial, cross-genre singer-songwriter—both have devoted their lives to music.
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Rufus Wainwright has a voice best described as “cashmere wood”—soft, fine, and delicate, but with a solid, hardened edge. And his songwriting matches it: a mysterious mix of heartfelt, honest, and raw ballads and sturdy pop/rock ravers. He’s instinctively carved a space that only he inhabits.
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At one point in A Night at the Opera, Otis B. Driftwood, the slippery business manager portrayed by Groucho Marx, arrives at an opera house. “Is the opera over yet?” he asks a door attendant. When informed a few minutes remain in the opera, he becomes indignant. “Hey, you,” he chastises the hansom cab driver, “I told you to slow that nag down. On account of you, I nearly heard the opera. Now, once around the park and drive slowly.”
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For more than 50 years on PBS, Great Performances has provided an unparalleled showcase of the best in all genres of the performing arts, serving as America’s most prestigious and enduring broadcaster of cultural programming. On Monday, August 21, Great Performances will present Ravinia’s 2022 performance of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish symphony. The performance features the talent of Uniting voices (formerly Chicago Children’s Choir), Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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With the explosion of keyboard talent and multiplicity of major piano competitions today, winners all too easily blur into each other, and some names spring to the forefront and then quickly recede. But Yunchan Lim stands out.
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While Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 enjoyed its spotlight at the Chicago World’s Fair, her other Wanamaker Composition Contest-awarded orchestral score, Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, followed a different course. Never performed in her lifetime, it remained hidden for decades. The three-movement work, uncovered in 2009, traces the experience of a person enslaved from Africa. Melancholic and folk-like tunes across solo instruments lead to orchestral writing both majestic and ominous as well as a vibrant dance—a rare example of descriptive music in Price’s catalog, it is finally reaching a wider audience.
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With such bona fides of ability and adventurousness, Montero’s simpatico with Ravinia’s Breaking Barriers Festival is little surprise. She kicks off the series of events this year focused on women composers—anchored by three evening concerts—with a performance of her Latin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Friday, July 21.
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People love lists because they love to argue about who belongs on them. But here’s an assertion that shouldn’t be in dispute: Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon belong at the top of any list of 20th-century women singer-songwriters. (Looking for a debate? Ask a few friends which chanteuse they’d choose to complete a Mount Rushmore.)
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Less than six months after the death of Alma Schindler on December 11, 1964, the satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer wrote a song that he said was inspired by “the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.” Worth checking out on YouTube, his ballad “Alma” is highly entertaining but does little justice to a figure who has frustrated historians attempting an accurate portrait.
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Among the most famous of today’s ensembles is one whose name enthusiastically trumpets its country of origin—the Danish String Quartet, which is marking its 20th anniversary during the 2022–23 season. Early in its history, it was already being cited as one of the world’s top quartets, and that praise has only solidified as the group has matured, including its selection as the 2020 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America.
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Shulamit Ran, 73, has gained national and even international fame for her wide swath of solo, chamber, orchestral, choral, and operatic works, winning in 1991 the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the ultimate imprimatur of compositional excellence in the United States.
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It’s hardly a “diva moment,” even though that’s how she jokingly refers to herself. Yet if one uses “diva” in its original and laudatory definition—“a glamorous woman who is pre-eminent in her field”—then Headley is a diva of the highest degree. After all, she won a Tony Award for her show-stealing outing in the title role of Broadway’s Aida in 2000, then added a Grammy Award to her trophy case in 2010 for her gospel album Audience of One.
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There was a time when Miko Marks lived and dreamed alongside the Flint River in the Michigan home of her grandmother, wondering just where her God-given voice would eventually take her.
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When internationally celebrated conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell was a child in San Francisco, she practiced piano at home on a paper keyboard. The idea that Sorrell would someday become the mastermind behind Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s award-winning Baroque orchestra, wasn’t on anyone’s mind then; but her passion and ingenuity were already evident.
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To celebrate the rise of Sistema music education in the United States and help spur even more growth, the Ravinia Festival is teaming with Chicago Philharmonic to present the first-ever National Seminario from July 5 through 8. The event will bring together 130 students from 23 Sistema-style initiatives across the country and Canada to participate in intensive orchestral training and to present a culminating concert on the Pavilion stage as part of Ravinia’s Kids Concert Series.
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