Artist News
On September 23, Ravinia hosts its first-ever event focused solely on the art of the DJ. For one of the final performances of the season, relax on the Lawn and enjoy some chill end-of-summer vibes. Get to know the three DJs lighting up the Carousel stage.
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“We initially had the idea of starting a summer chamber music festival in downtown Chicago. We partnered with Guarneri Hall, which was being built at the same time. Now, NEXUS is a group, a roster of artists from all around the world who are deeply passionate about chamber music and convene to present projects.”
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If you Google “The Blind Boys of Alabama” you’ll easily find a million recounts of their astounding eighty-two-years-and-counting story. But…there’s a different way to learn about the Blind Boy’s story before they return to Ravinia on Sept 11. It won’t be from something you read. It’ll be from something that you hear. And most importantly, it’ll be straight from the source and something you’ll feel.
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“To me, dance with live music is really important,” says Jeffrey Haydon, who took over last September as Ravinia’s president and chief executive officer. “We are in a very visual society right now, and I think that is a way that people can connect even more with music: by seeing it visualized through dance.”
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For some 45 years, the now 70-year-old Weinberg and his big beat have been the sonic engine driving the powerful, pounding, chugging, and charging musical locomotive that is Springsteen’s E Street Band. Currently on a hiatus, as Springsteen and the E Streeters plan a possible return to the stage in 2022 for the first time since 2017, Weinberg still is keeping his musical train moving fast and furious down a rock and roll track.
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Lara Downes thinks we have reached the right moment for unfamiliar music presented in a new way.
Downes, the founder and curator of Rising Sun Music, has spent decades finding and preserving the music of Black composers from several continents and many centuries. The pianist has been adding to her already significant discography with monthly digital releases of four or five pieces from this repertoire since February, and the first full album, New Day Begun, appeared in July. Across the recordings, she has collaborated with musicians ranging from violinist Regina Carter and violist Jordan Bak to soprano Nicole Cabell and bass-baritone Davóne Tines to the PUBLIQuartet.
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Any musician will tell you to never follow a killer act. Upcoming Ravinia headliners The Roots (September 4) and John Legend (September 5 and 6) are definitely killer acts. But at their upcoming Ravinia appearances, both have opening acts that may make them feel a need to up their already next-level game—Musiq Soulchild and The War and Treaty.
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Drummers are typically seen as “driving” a band, whether in rock or jazz circles. How does that work when there are three? Three drummers offer unusual polyrhythmic possibilities that King Crimson is exploring to the fullest.
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Picture this—it’s August 26 and you’re on Ravinia’s Lawn enjoying your picnic spread before Lake Street Dive takes the stage when, suddenly, a sweet melody sung by a lovely, yet unfamiliar voice leaps out of the park’s speakers and stops you mid-bite. “Who’s that?” you wonder. It’s Allison Russell. And if you don’t already know this formidable Canadian singer, songwriter, banjoist, and clarinetist from her work with the roots band Po’ Girl, the folk-rock-gospel duo Birds of Chicago, or supergroup Our Native Daughters, meet your new favorite artist.
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Niko Moon doesn’t do sad songs.
It’s not as if he has anything against them necessarily. In fact, the music mastermind believes there is definitely a time and place for them, and there are plenty of great ones out there, especially within the history of country music. But in a world often finding itself dragging itself through a myriad of pain, Moon prefers to stick with music meant to make you feel good.
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The talented men of Collective Soul have taken many a stage and sang many a thought-provoking song. But in 2021, as the band with the mystical ways came out from under their pandemic slumber, they found that things didn’t feel quite the same.
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It seems implausible that a casual bet on a golf game could determine the trajectory of a young man’s life. But truth is stranger than fiction, as Wil Baptiste found out.
One half of the groundbreaking string duo Black Violin, 38-year-old Baptiste spent much of his life thinking a mix-up had determined his musical fate. Although he hadn’t played an instrument during his first decade of life, the adolescent started daydreaming about the saxophone. So he joined a summer music program, visions of John Coltrane bebopping in his head, but ended up in the string section. For years, he thought he’d just ended up in the wrong class by fate, but, as he told Ravinia Magazine during a recent phone chat, “Came to find out, it was orchestrated.”
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If bluegrass music is as American as apple pie, then Leftover Salmon and The Infamous Stringdusters are definitely apple pie à la mode. Over their respective careers, the two wildly innovative groups have topped old musical traditions with sweet, modern flavors, delivering blistering live performances and amassing fervent followings around the world. And to top it all off, they’re both picking August 20 at Ravinia to dish up hearty helpings of their tasty twangs.
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“My life in opera has been very nonstandard,” admits bass-baritone Davóne Tines in attempting to describe a unique and groundbreaking career. In his credits, there are leading roles in world premieres such as Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing, John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West, and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, as well as collaborations with director Peter Sellars, and then there’s a series of pioneering works-in-progress that Tines himself is helping bring into being.
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One way to garner extra ears is to lure listeners with cover songs. So Lake Street Dive recorded Fun Machine, an EP featuring their takes on beloved pop tunes, including “Faith” by George Michael and “Rich Girl” by Daryl Hall and John Oates. The strategy proved to be their tipping point into much broader success, thanks in particular to their acoustic, bluesy cover of “I Want You Back.”
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John Hiatt’s diversely rich, respected, and rowdy vocation has been a series of perfectly turned phrases with some perfectly good guitar. And now he’s adding some insightful, lingering “leftover feelings.”
Hiatt’s may not be a name you immediately recognize, but he’s always been there. “I like to sneak up from behind,” Hiatt says slyly. You’ve certainly heard many of the songs he’s written during an acclaimed career that includes nine Grammy nominations and the highest praise from peers and fans alike.
Read MoreThere’s a certain irony to the title of singer-songwriter Brett Dennen’s latest long player, See the World, considering that the bulk of it was penned when the entire globe was closed. However, upon closer examination of the project that brings him to Ravinia’s newly established and delightfully intimate Carousel Stage on Wednesday, August 4, not every moment is quite so literal in the nomadic or exploratory sense, starting with the classic-in-the-making title track.
Read MoreWhat 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?
Read MoreYacht rock—it’s a term that has been used and reused, a term that has been somewhat understood but frequently confused, a term that brings with it a slew of different feelings from those who essentially find shelter within it from the reality of the present time. And it’s a form of music that Yacht Rock Revue has built an impressive career on.
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For Grammy-winning, internationally renowned jazz impresario—and Chicago native—Kurt Elling, Ravinia Festival’s famed “music under the stars” have aligned into his lucky stars.
Elling (a former divinity student) baptizes Ravinia’s new, intimate, outdoor Carousel Stage on the North Lawn with jazz guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. The two will debut new music from their daring new album SuperBlue, which drops in September.
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