When saxophonist Wayne Shorter died last year at 89, the jazz world lost one of the most innovative and influential voices of his generation. Given Shorter’s wide-ranging reach and impact, it is hardly surprising that two upcoming concerts as part of Ravinia’s Fall/Spring Series in Bennett Gordon Hall will pay tribute to the recently departed jazz legend. The eight-member Ravinia Jazz Mentors will raise their hats to Shorter on March 16, and vocalist Kurt Elling and Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, who played with the saxophonist for 20 years, will devote much of their May 3 program to his music.
Read MoreComposers
A Florence Price prizewinning piece finally living in the light
in Classical, RaviniaNews
While Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 enjoyed its spotlight at the Chicago World’s Fair, her other Wanamaker Composition Contest-awarded orchestral score, Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, followed a different course. Never performed in her lifetime, it remained hidden for decades. The three-movement work, uncovered in 2009, traces the experience of a person enslaved from Africa. Melancholic and folk-like tunes across solo instruments lead to orchestral writing both majestic and ominous as well as a vibrant dance—a rare example of descriptive music in Price’s catalog, it is finally reaching a wider audience.
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Brain Storm: Gabriela Montero surges with moments of inspiration
With such bona fides of ability and adventurousness, Montero’s simpatico with Ravinia’s Breaking Barriers Festival is little surprise. She kicks off the series of events this year focused on women composers—anchored by three evening concerts—with a performance of her Latin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Friday, July 21.
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All the World’s His Stage: Regardless of Genre, Bernstein Put On a Show
in Classical, Artist News
America’s most important music figure was many things to many people: conductor, composer, pianist, educator, author, television personality, activist, international bon vivant. But if you asked Leonard Bernstein how he self-identified, he thought of himself as a composer.
Read MoreFor Artist and Audience, the ‘Cycle’ is the Gateway to Another World
in Classical
The contradictions are stunning.
We are, as we’re constantly reminded, living our lives at supersonic speeds, racing in all directions. We express ourselves in 140-character tweets, fume when a computer file takes three seconds to download, and demand next-day delivery for our online orders (since shopping online is, of course, much faster than heading out to a brick-and-mortar retail store).
Yet we luxuriate in spending hours at a time on a single experience we deem worthwhile. Children, supposedly afflicted by skyrocketing rates of attention deficit disorder, devoured the very long Harry Potter books in marathon sittings. A weekend spent binge-watching multiple seasons of House of Cards or Downton Abbey is many people’s idea of heaven. Restaurants have long waiting lists of customers willing to sit for lengthy, multicourse, insanely expensive meals with menus (no substitutions allowed) set by a superstar chef.
We’re desperately in a hurry. Until we’re not.