Ravinia – Clef Notes Chicagoland Journal for the Arts

Ravinia Cancels 2020 Festival Season Due to COVID-19 Concerns

May 7, 2020 David Henley Grant Park Music Festival, Ravinia

In response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Ravinia, the oldest music festival in the country, has been forced to cancel its 2020 season. Ravinia has operated continually since its 1904 opening except for 1932–1935, when the park was silenced by the Great Depression. The not-for-profit festival was to have presented more than 120 events from June 12 through September 16, including the annual summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The festival’s summer conservatory, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, will also be closed this summer.

Classical Music Music

Ravinia’s Acclaimed Bernstein Mass Performance to Receive Broadcast Premiere on “Great Performances”

April 28, 2020 Vickie Moore Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Great Performances, Leonard Bernstein, Marin Alsop, Ravinia

When Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman and Chief Conductor and Curator Marin Alsop presented Leonard Bernstein’s little-seen music theater masterwork Mass as the centerpiece of Ravinia’s 2018 celebration of the iconic conductor and composer’s centennial, the Chicago Tribune declared it one of the best concerts of 2018, and audiences clamored for a repeat performance. Ravinia obliged, reuniting more than 200 onstage artists—including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Vocality, a cast of “Street Singers,” and even the local high school marching band—for a single 2019 encore that Ravinia arranged to have filmed.