Congratulations to Amy P. winner of the Ravinia Festival Time Out Holiday Giveaway package! Just to be sure that she received it before the holidays, we hand delivered it to her front door! There are still a few more days of Time Out Chicago 40 Days of Holiday Giveaways. We'll see you next season Amy!
Ravi Shankar has been introducing western audiences to traditional Indian ragas for eight decades. He has worked with such artists as George Harrison, John Contrane, and David Crosby; and is also the father of nine-time Grammy award winning jazz artist Norah Jones. Though a gap still persists between the sitar and western audiences, Shankar left a lasting impact on music wordwide.
Ravinia Festival is proud to support other local youth, education and arts programs in Highland Park through YEA! Highland Park. Congratulations to the 2012 Yea! Highland Park grant recipients:
Dave Brubeck, just one day short of his 92nd birthday, passed of heart failure this Wednesday while on route to a routine treatment with his cardiologist. Brubeck leaves quite a legacy on the jazz world. The works he penned helped to bring Jazz from the clubs into an accepted art form in academia. He also found himself at the forefront of integration, playing black clubs throughought the deep south in the 50's, a major point of pride for him. He is survived by his wife; four sons, and a daughter; grandons and a great granddaughter.
via Chicago Tribune
Perhaps no singer is more associated with Ravinia Festival than the seminal favorite Tony Bennett. The new documentary The Zen of Bennett, shot on the eve of his 85th birthday, became a Tribeca Film Festival sensation last spring and will be given a limited theatrical release this week, followed by exclusive streaming on Netflix beginning Nov. 12. Check out the trailer. A companion autobiography Life is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett also will be available in November.
Ravinia Festival has announced the creation of a new student orchestra at Catalyst Circle Rock Charter School in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The orchestra, for children 8 to 12 years old, is modeled on the “El Sistema” training system that forgoes theory lessons to have the students making music with their instruments on the very first day they receive them. 60 children who volunteered to be part of “The Circle Rockets,” will receive their instruments today, learn their first note and perform in their first concert. Under the banner “Sistema Ravinia”™ Ravinia’s student orchestras are part of the festival’s REACH*TEACH*PLAY® education programs.
Violinist Dami Kim, who earned a fully paid fellowship to participate last summer in Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute (RSMI), the festival’s summer conservatory for young professional musicians, has won first prize at the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hannover, one of the most important competitions in the world. Watch several videos of Kim performing at the competition.
The Chicago Public Schools Department of Arts Education, with the support of Ingenuity Inc. (of which Welz Kauffman is a board member) and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, has released its CPS Arts Abstract 2012-2015—a preview of the 2012 CPS Arts Education Plan that outlines the district’s five education priorities for the next four years with arts playing a role in a well-rounded education. It sets the standards for schools to systemically improve, expand and coordinate arts education for all CPS students.
Ravinia Festival, along with the Ravinia Student Advisory Board and the Ravinia Associates, has announced that Central High School in Burlington, IL, has been declared the winner of the festival’s second annual high school attendance contest for Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts. The attendance contest spanned the duration of the CSO summer residency at Ravinia, and any high school student who attended a concert simply showed a valid student I.D. at the Ravinia Box Office for free lawn admission and to receive a point for the high school they attend. Over 100 high schools participated in the teen attendance contest. The first runner-up was Evanston Township, followed by Highland Park, New Trier and Adlai E. Stevenson high schools.When we set out to create the Ravinia Festival Escape to the Music commercials in 2011 we never thought they would end up nominated for Emmys. Much to our pleasurable surprise, last night the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has nominated Ravinia for 2, count that TWO, Emmys for "Outstanding Achievement for Commercials – Single Spot." We can barely contain our excitement! Here are both of the commercials that we have been nominated for:
No matter how big a music superstar gets, even they won't turn down a collaboration with the characters of Sesame Street! The Count and Elmo were joined by Pat Monahan, Jimmy Stafford, and Scott Underwood of Train for a stroll down Sesame Street. The group stopped by Hoopers Store for some peaches, but are not sure how many...
School is just starting, and that means the festival’s free REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs are in full gear! We have expanded our Music Discovery program to reach 150 classrooms this year and over 4,300 K-3 kids who will develop their musical skills with resident teaching artists and interactive activities. Talented high school students will be auditioning soon for our Jazz Mentor program in which students are coached by Chicago’s finest jazz musicians. The Ravinia Lawndale Family Music School begins its free music classes in general music, voice, violin, guitar and piano for children and adults alike who reside in this underserved community. Ravinia’s latest program, Sistema Ravinia, which provides intensive after-school orchestral training at the grade-school level, is in full swing at William G. Hibbard Elementary, and Ravinia’s second installment at Circle Rock Elementary has just begun. Many artists in the BGH $10 CLASSICS series will also perform in schools through Ravinia’s Guest Artists in the Classroom program. Remember, your support of Ravinia makes these programs happen!
Just as in the legends of old—from Round Table to Templar—knights can withstand most any opposing force. So what’s a few cicadas or the clatter of a train? Nothing to America’s most headline-grabbing new orchestra, The Knights, according to Allan Kozinn in the New York Times. “The Knights have been the de facto house band of the free Naumburg Orchestral Concerts in Central Park for the last few summers, and they are clearly comfortable enough in that role to experiment with approaches to outdoor programming." Read the full article here. So they’ll be right at home when they close the 2012 Ravinia season with Yo-Yo Ma on Sept. 7, Itzhak Perlman on Sept. 8 and Dawn Upshaw on Sept. 9. In fact several past and present members are alumni of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, including the ensemble’s co-founders, Colin and Eric Jacobsen; and Kyle Armbrust; Nick Cords; and Max Mandel.
Daryl Hall, who returns to Ravinia in concert with longtime partner John Oates on Sept. 1, has created one of the most acclaimed webcasts by opening his doors to some of the biggest names in music—some with legendary pedigrees, others new to the biz. Hall was a pioneer in the webcast game, creating his free monthly show, Live From Daryl’s House, in 2007. Episodes available online include Hall performing with Smokey Robinson, Nick Lowe, K.T. Tunstall, Todd Rundgren, Matt Nathanson and Chicago's own Plain White T's. Pavilion tickets to the Ravinia concert are in very limited quantity, and lawn is recently SOLD OUT.
In its 50th anniversary year, the Women’s Board of Ravinia Festival hosted a gala benefit—starring Patti LuPone and Patricia Racette with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Conlon and Rob Fisher—that raised $900,000 for the festival and its REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs. Since its inception, the Women’s Board has become the biggest donor to the nonprofit festival, having given more than $25 million. The group also started Ravinia’s first educational programs and continues to spearhead new initiatives, such as Sistema Ravinia, which creates student orchestras in underserved schools. Listen to this public service announcement from Hubbard Radio (WTMX, WILV, WDRV) about Ravinia’s Women’s Board.
Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman takes very personally the festival’s mission to build new audiences for classical music. In this brief video, he explains that ticket price could be a roadblock for some. To this end, Kauffman has peppered the season with a variety of concerts in Ravinia’s intimate Bennett Gordon Hall that cost only $10 for a reserved seat. Though the price is low, the quality is high as the series presents artists who appear around the world at ticket prices up to 10 times higher.
Help Ravinia’s REACH*TEACH*PLAY education programs meet a goal of raising $15,000 by October 24. The funding will help Ravinia to provide music education and live performance opportunities in more than 60 underserved inner-city Chicago Public Schools and in dozens of communities that lack access to music resources. When you make a donation through this link, the Sun-Times Foundation will match it dollar-per-dollar until the goal is reached. Thanks for your support.
It was just under a month ago that Idina Menzel was joined by the legendary Marvin Hamlisch conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It saddens us deeply to hear that Marvin Hamlisch passed away yesterday at the age of 68. Hamlisch has appeared at the festival 7 times since 1991, and he was far from slowing down with positions held at Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Seattle Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and, starting next week, the Philadelphia Orchestra. Hamlisch was a prolific composer as well, working on such films as The Way We Were (which he won an Oscar), Sophie's Choice, Ordinary People, Ice Castles, and The Informant!. In his career Hamlisch has taken home just about every award an artist can, winning three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony, three Golden Globes and even a Pulitzer Prize for the landmark musical A Chorus Line. He is an irreplaceable talent, and will be greatly missed.
One of the biggest names in classical music today, violinist Joshua Bell, strings Ravinia’s praises in the current issue of Time Out Chicago. Bell performed Barber’s Violin Concerto and Ravel’s Tzigane with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night. “I love the outdoor festival feeling. When I’m on stage, it’s very gratifying to watch people on the lawns enjoying the music with a glass of wine. There’s less sense of people being there for status reasons, and the atmosphere is casual and fun. It reminds me that classical music is nowhere near being dead. That rumor had been going around for 200 years! It’s not going anywhere,” Bell told the magazine.
Each spring Ravinia mails about a half-million brochures announcing its upcoming season. Music-lovers hang on to these brochures all summer, and many collect them over the years. Now you have an opportunity to be on the cover of the real Ravinia brochure that will be mailed to your house next spring. Watch for Ravinia Festival’s new “Starmaker” photographer in the main plaza near the Martin Theatre. The picture he takes of you will go onto the brochure you receive, plus you will get a 5x7 copy to bring home that night as a souvenir. The price is $20. This is a fundraising project of the Women’s Board of Ravinia Festival.