Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass members hornist Blair Hamrick, trumpeters Peter Everson and Rodney Marsalis, trombonist Greg Freeman, and tuba player Manny Shuford (Photo: Kyle Dunleavy/Ravinia)

Ravinia Em-brass-es Expanded School Partnerships with Reach Teach Play

December 17, 2024 in Reach Teach Play, Music Education

All 600 students turned out December 9 for a presentation by the Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass during just the second all-school assembly in the Neal Math and Science Academy’s still-new building in North Chicago. Band Director Nathan Massa couldn’t have been happier at every step.

That appearance, and another for the band and choir students at the nearby North Chicago Community High School, came a day after Marsalis’s group performed as part of the Ravinia’s Winter Weekend and took place under the auspices of the Highland Park organization’s Reach Teach Play education and community engagement program.

Ravinia’s Winter Weekend Wreaths Festive Music with Holiday Mirth

November 18, 2024 in Park News, Promos / Events

Although Ravinia has been best known for more than a century as a destination for live music bathed in summer’s warm weather and leisure time, the Highland Park venue also offers visitors entertainment for the holiday season as well as in fall and spring.

During its Dec. 6–8 Winter Weekend, Ravinia is presenting three musical lineups, including two directly centered on the yuletide; a specially curated menu and seasonal goodies in two of its onsite eateries; and a pop-up shop with holiday gifts.

Project Trio Brings Bach ‘Outside-the-Box’ Music-Making to Students

November 08, 2024 in Classical, Music Education, Ravinia Magazine, Reach Teach Play, The Artists

Classical chamber music, rock and roll, and hip-hop might seem as separate as oil and water, but for Project Trio, these are the ingredients to an ever-evolving, high-energy setlist that keeps their audiences perpetually on the edge of their seats.

On Saturday, November 9, innovative chamber group Project Trio will bring their genre-bending music to Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall—but their first Ravinia performances have been sharing their passion for improvisation and composition with hundreds of students across Chicagoland. This past week, the trio conducted three workshops and two in-school performances in collaboration with Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play education programs, showing students that improvisation and classical music can go hand-in-hand.

In ‘Letters to Jackie,’ Ryan Townsend Strand taps universal emotional responses

November 07, 2024 in Classical, Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

To tenor Ryan Townsend Strand, in 2020, the thousands of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and the events of the horrific September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks seemed too recent, and the wounds too raw, to confront directly through his musical art. So he turned to another shocking moment in the nation’s history as a proxy to begin to come to terms with the grief the two incidents provoked—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In collaboration with pianist Karina Kontorovitch, Strand oversaw the creation of Letters to Jackie, a program consisting of 14 song settings of letters of condolence and support written to Jacqueline Kennedy following her husband’s death. The two musicians premiered Letters to Jackie in November 2023 at Chicago’s Epiphany Center for the Arts, marking the 60th anniversary of the assassination. Ravinia will host the second Chicago-area performance November 16 as part of the Fall Series in Bennett Gordon Hall.

‘Letters to Jackie’ Album Release Highlights Ryan Townsend Strand’s Songcraft

October 28, 2024 in Classical, The Artists

Just days before making his Ravinia debut on November 16 with a solo concert in Bennett Gordon Hall, the 2021 American Prize–winning tenor Ryan Townsend Strand makes his solo recording debut with music from his signature song project Letters to Jackie. The specially commissioned songs from composers across generations—Augusta Read Thomas, Jen Shyu, Will Liverman, Tom Cipullo, Libby Larsen, Nicholas Cline, Adore Alexander, Skyler Butenshon, Matthew Recio, Timothy C. Takach, and Erik Pearson—set to letters to Jacqueline Kennedy after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. The album, Dear Mrs. Kennedy, is being released by Sono Luminus on November 8; the Ravinia concert performance also features songs by B.E. Boykin, Aaron Helgeson, and LJ White written for Letters to Jackie.

Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play Celebrates 30 Years of Jazz Mentorship

October 21, 2024 in Music Education, Reach Teach Play

For 30 years, Ravinia Festival’s Reach Teach Play program has transformed the lives of young musicians through its Jazz Mentor Program. The initiative offers pre-professional training to two dozen or so talented Chicago Public High School student musicians each year—forming an ensemble known as the Ravinia Jazz Scholars—while also annually reaching 1,000 students in Chicago Public Schools through workshops led by Chicago’s top jazz musicians: the Ravinia Jazz Mentors.

In 2023, an exciting initiative was introduced: “Want to Play Jazz? A Workshop for Young Women,” founded by trombonist Audrey Morrison. “About a year and a half ago, Reach Teach Play Director Christine Taylor Conda asked, ‘Why aren’t more female musicians auditioning for the Jazz Mentor program?’ ” Morrison recalled. “This led to the creation of the women’s workshop, to encourage young female musicians to pursue jazz, a traditionally male-dominated field.”

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit chart the winds of verse to reach their roots

August 21, 2024 in Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

“The beautiful thing about songs, as opposed to movies and books, is that they’re not filed based on what’s true and what’s not,” says Jason Isbell, arguably America’s best living troubadour. “First of all, everything is based on a true story, or else we wouldn’t even have a language for telling stories.”

And with that simple declaration, it’s obvious: Here’s an artist who’s done serious internal work—a lot of deep thinking and intense feeling—and then emerged from that process with some profound insights.

Not convinced? Isbell elaborated on his perspective two months ago in a conversation with the Los Angeles Daily News: “You go into a bookstore, and you’ve got fiction over here, nonfiction over there. But songs don’t work that way. And I feel like, as a songwriter, you’re allowed to tell as much or as little of the truth as you want, as long as you’re attempting to be honest throughout.”

Andrew McNicol’s *Yonder Blue*—featuring Joffrey dancers Jeraldine Mendoza, Dylan Gutierrez, and ensemble members—closes the company’s September 13 program at Ravinia. (Photo: Cheryl Mann)

With the Joffrey Ballet, it all comes back to home

August 21, 2024 in Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

For its latest appearance at Ravinia, Joffrey is presenting two programs on the Pavilion stage—an evening performance September 13 with live music and, reprising a tradition from the past, a morning presentation September 14 as part of the festival’s Kids Concert Series.

Joffrey’s first Ravinia visit took place in 1972, long before it was based in Chicago, and at that time it became something of a perennial presence, appearing in weeklong residencies each year through 1979. But subsequent returns were more sporadic: a series of multidate stands occupied the calendars of 1997 through 2000, and performances dropped off after 2008.

Wheater is glad now to be back on a more regular basis. He believes Joffrey’s Ravinia appearances are an ideal complement to its main season at the Lyric Opera House, attracting audiences who typically don’t go downtown to see the company or who eschew formal theater-going experiences altogether.

On This Date 15 Years Ago

August 18, 2024 in Classical, History, Ravinia Magazine

It’s no slight understatement to observe that the whole of Illinois left no stone—or stovepipe hat—unturned to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of the 16th President of the United States. Naturally, a great many Illinoisan academics and leaders came together under the interdisciplinary Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, including Ravinia’s team. Then president and CEO of the festival, Welz Kauffman brought a clear vision: “Lincoln is a figure of change. To celebrate Lincoln in a year that brought America its first Black president is more than serendipity; it’s reinforcement of the belief that our celebration should look toward the future. That means new work.”

Conductor Anthony Parnther hits high marks between stage and studio

July 24, 2024 in Ravinia Magazine, RaviniaNews, The Artists

Most conductors follow the classic symphonic and operatic repertory, some focus on a specialty like choral music or orchestral pops. But Anthony Parnther is a kind of conducting Renaissance man, who has cut a wide swath across the musical landscape, from helming the San Bernadino Symphony Orchestra to working with vocal sensations like Rihanna, Common, and Jon Batiste to leading myriad film soundtracks. “Disney in the morning, Dvořák in the evening,” the busy conductor said breezily.

Music & Lyrics &

July 23, 2024 in Classical, Ravinia Magazine, Steans Music Institute

Vocalists at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute get intensive coaching in their repertoire every summer. But in recent years, some audiences are getting a chance to learn extra background too. The Steans Institute will present three “curated” concerts this summer, on which the resident vocalists perform groups of songs that share some kind of theme while a faculty member explains the connections.

The Indigo Girls read up on revival and meet you where you are

July 22, 2024 in Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

A pair. A duo. A twosome. That’s how everybody thinks about Emily Saliers and Amy Ray: They just naturally go together.

Indeed, it points out the obvious to note they’ve notched nearly four decades of success as singer-songwriters, thanks to their incredible collaborative chemistry. Not for nothing, one of their most memorable songs is “Power of Two” (even if those lyrics are about a romantic rather than an artistic union).

But here’s the thing about the Indigo Girls—their ineffable alchemy cannot be easily explained. As two individuals who craft magic together, they exemplify the arithmetic-defying adage: Their whole is greater than the sum of their parts.

Timeless Tales with Apollo’s Fire

July 22, 2024 in Classical, The Artists

To Jeannette Sorrell—groundbreaking artistic director, conductor, and harpsichordist of the esteemed baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire—“Vivaldi was a master of storytelling.” The group returns to where it began its now decade-spanning relationship with Ravinia on August 15, bringing a new edition of their internationally acclaimed program Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Rediscovered to the summery center of its second home in Chicago.

Gustavo Dudamel forwards a vision of community in symphony

July 21, 2024 in Classical, Music Education, Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

Gustavo Dudamel, 43, has gone on to become a conducting superstar with crossover into movies and pop music and has led the Los Angeles Philharmonic—already respected under previous music director Esa Pekka-Salonen—to greater heights.

“The ascendancy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is the salient event in American orchestral life of the past 25 years,” wrote Alex Ross, the influential music critic for the New Yorker, in 2017.

In February 2023, in what was seen a huge coup for the orchestra, the New York Philharmonic appointed him as its next music director, a position that—notably—Bernstein held from 1958 through 1969. He begins his duties in 2026. “What I see is an amazing orchestra in New York and a lot of potential for developing something important,” he told the New York Times at the time. “It’s like opening a new door and building a new house. It’s a beautiful time.”

In his addition to his skills as podium leader, Dudamel might be best known as an educator, and it is in both those capacities that he will be seen August 6 when he brings the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela to the Ravinia Festival. Typical of the maestro’s diverse programming with his constant emphasis on the now, the program will consist of John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine along with Antonio Estévez’s Mediodía en el Llano, Alberto Ginastera’s suite of four orchestral dances from Estancia, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

Soprano Karen Slack creates opportunities to sing transformative tales

July 08, 2024 in Classical, Music Education, Ravinia Magazine, Steans Music Institute, The Artists

Success, as the saying goes, happens when opportunity meets preparation. It’s an old saw that has proven itself time and again, especially in the performing arts. But wonderful things also happen when successful people create their own opportunities.

Which brings us to Karen Slack.

The Philadelphia-born soprano, a 2008 alumna of the Steans Music Institute at Ravinia, is a familiar presence on operatic stages throughout the United States and abroad, where her luscious, lyrico-spinto instrument has graced the music of Verdi, through Wagner, to Gershwin, Heggie, and beyond. Slack has possibly made her most notable impact, however, in her support of contemporary music. On August 1, Ravinia audiences can experience the latest of Slack’s commissioning projects with the world premiere of African Queens, a program of new vocal compositions from Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson, who have grown together in recent years to become the creative collective “The Blacknificent Seven.”

Aural Orrery

July 08, 2024 in Classical, Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

Now there’s a new work of genius to elevate into this class: The Moons Symphony, composed by Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Yes, that’s Moons, plural. We earthlings have just one that typically captures our attention; unsurprisingly, that’s what initially fascinated Falkenberg. La Luna proved to be her “gateway drug” into a dazzlingly ambitious project mingling astronomy with music.

Music Celebrating Matters

July 07, 2024 in Music Education, Reach Teach Play, Ravinia Magazine

Ravinia celebrated another successful edition of its annual Music Matters fundraiser on Saturday, May 11, expertly hosted by the Ravinia Associates Board.

The Mary Lou Williams Renaissance Written in the Stars

June 28, 2024 in Classical, History, Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

While Mary Lou Williams has not attained anywhere near the level of recognition as Duke Ellington—at least not yet—she deserves to be considered right alongside the famed composer and bandleader in the symphonic jazz realm.

The composition that cemented Williams’s place in the symphonic jazz realm is Zodiac Suite: 12 short works, each inspired by an astrological sign and performing artists born under it—such as saxophonist Ben Webster and vocalist Billie Holiday for Aries—each possessing its own style and character. “I think it is one way in which people are moving beyond Ellington to consider what other aspects of classical jazz or symphonic jazz are out there. I think it will become a standard piece,” says Tammy Kernodle, a distinguished professor of music at Miami University in Ohio who wrote a 2004 biography of the jazz pianist, arranger, and composer.

Ravinia audiences will have a chance to judge for themselves, when the Aaron Diehl Trio and the New York–based chamber orchestra The Knights, present excerpts from the Zodiac Suite as part of a June 29 program that also includes works by 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Norah Jones Captures Visions Whenever the Groove Catches

June 20, 2024 in Ravinia Magazine, The Artists

Earlier this year, Norah Jones achieved yet another milestone in her estimable more-than-20-year career: She replaced herself at the top of Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart.

Her most recent album, Visions, debuted at No. 1. At No. 2 was her astonishing 2002 debut, Come Away With Me, which, as of this writing, has charted for 378 weeks, 335 of them in the top spot. The following week, the two albums switched positions, with Come Away With Me returning to No. 1.

Found Tradition: Jessica Altarriba Soars with the Freedom and Freshness of Orchestra

June 19, 2024 in Classical, Music Education, Ravinia Magazine, Reach Teach Play

A year after graduating from the University of Arts in Havana in 2018, Jessica Altarriba left Cuba for Spain, planning to pursue her dream of a conducting career in a country where she spoke the language and was confident she would feel comfortable.

But COVID-19 soon hit, and things didn’t quite work out. Looking for a change, she applied for a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship but was turned down for lack of experience. But famed conductor Marin Alsop, the program’s founder, saw what she described as “huge potential,” so she reached out and urged Altarriba to begin master’s studies under her tutelage at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

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