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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Welcome Returns: Stella Chen and Matthew Lipman enter a new Ravinia stage with Chicago Symphony debuts
What could be more exciting for rising stars violinist Stella Chen and violist Matthew Lipman than performing again in front of a live audience after more than a year of a pandemic-forced hiatus? How about making their Ravinia Pavilion stage debuts together, performing for the first time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?
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Gotta Have My Pops: Steven Reineke lights a broad way for favorites in orchestral music
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.
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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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Itzhak Perlman: ‘His music starts in his heart and flows through his hands’
One 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.
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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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Tempo Nuovo: Leonard Slatkin sets up his next phrase
Slatkin stepped down as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2018, marking the end of a 39-year run as a music director in the United States—first in Saint Louis, then the National Symphony in Washington, DC, then Detroit, which has named him its Music Director Laureate. (He has also been Conductor Laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since the 1996 conclusion of his tenure.) His calendar has far more open weeks now, but he will return to Ravinia to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program of Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov on August 7.
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RAVINIA'S COMMAND ENCORE OF BERNSTEIN'S MASS WILL BE TAPED AS NATIONAL TV SPECIAL
Securing its reputation as the definitive production of Leonard Bernstein’s massive musical Mass, Ravinia’s July 20 command encore presentation, with 200 artists on stage, will be taped for a national television special to air in 2020. The television production team is led by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning executive producer Samuel J. Paul (Live from the Met, The Kennedy Center Presents, American Style), producer Bernhard Fleischer, and director Michael Beyer. Broadcast details will be forthcoming.
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Piano Roles: Today’s pianists build no ivory towers over chamber music
An argument can be made that today’s leading pianists lead more complete careers. They still perform abundant solo recitals and orchestral concertos like their forbears, but many also place a regular emphasis on collaborative chamber music. As evidence, look no further than four of the pianists featured this year at Ravinia—Daniil Trifonov, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Jon Kimura Parker, and Marta Aznavoorian.
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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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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.
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.”
The Other Adams: Samuel Adams's Music Blends Multifarious Influencers
in Artist News
Several concerts on the just-concluded 2017 Ravinia season were devoted to the music of John Adams in celebration of the American composer laureate’s 70th birthday year. But there is another Adams in town, John’s son Samuel Adams, who is beginning his third and final season as composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Along with co-composer-in-residence Elizabeth Ogonek, Adams is also co-curator of the CSO’s MusicNOW series, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season.
One orchestra to lead them all: The CSO takes on ‘LOTR’ trilogy
in Classical
What could make 10 hours of elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs even better? A live symphony orchestra, of course.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will perform the soundtrack to all three films in the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy on consecutive evenings August 18–20 at Ravinia, with the movies projected on screens in the Pavilion and on the lawn. The CSO had performed the individual films at Ravinia in previous years, but seeing the entire trilogy over three evenings will be a new experience in the Midwest.
Lionel Bringuier: A Nice Guy looks Forward to making the CSO Swell
in Classical, Artist News
Lionel Bringuier is only 30 years old, but he has a decade and a half of conducting experience that he will bring to the podium on July 11, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra begins its 82nd annual residency at the festival. “I grew up in Nice, and my parents loved music,” he says, recalling his formative years as the youngest of four children. “My whole family and I used to go to concerts together. I was always amazed at seeing an entire orchestra onstage.”
Televised 1966 Ravinia Special Is A Blast From The Past
In 1966, LBJ was president, miniskirts were quickly gaining popularity, and Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" became a hit. This was also the year that WBKB aired The Sound of Ravinia, an hour-long television special that showcased the many sides of Ravinia including classical, jazz, opera, pop, and folk music. It aired on Thursday, August 11, and contains footage from four separate concert dates.Rewind: July 25, 1936
July 25, 1936: George Gershwin's Sole Ravinia Performance
After the Chicago Symphony Orchestra took residence at Ravinia on July 3, 1936, perhaps the next great highlight of that summer came just a few weeks later. Thousands descended upon the freshly reinaugurated festival in hopes of seeing—but most certainly for the chance to hear—the inimitable pianist, composer, and songwriter George Gershwin.
On the Fly: Jorge Federico Osorio Made Highland Park the Home of His International Career
Jorge Federico Osorio is a classical artist with an international career. Born in Mexico, he could make his home anywhere. Yet after living in New York City for seven years, followed by London for another 11, he chose Highland Park, IL, to be the place where he and his wife, Sylvana, put down their roots and raised their two sons, Dario and Santiago.
Fiddling Around: Wynton Marsalis Trumpets Human Connections in His Violin Concerto for Nicola Benedetti
Legendary trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis has worn many musical hats across his remarkable career. Thus, the idea that Ravinia would co-commission a concerto from a guy who studied at Juilliard and performed Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto with his hometown New Orleans Philharmonic when he was a mere 14 years old is not so strange.