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.
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Photo: Kia Caldwell
Soprano Karen Slack creates opportunities to sing transformative tales
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.”
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Stopping By After Steans
Ravinia’s long-running summer training program for young professional musicians, the Steans Music Institute, has nurtured many careers— over 1,600 individual artists since 1988—at impressionable moments, and those who go on to bigger things often return in later years as part of main- stage programming. Among others, this summer violinist Augustin Hadelich will solo with the Chicago Symphony on July 25, more than 20 years after he spent a summer at the Steans Institute playing chamber music. And on July 18, the Viano Quartet will appear in the Martin Theatre, only four years after their virtual Steans experience during the pandemic year of 2020.
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The trumpet of Jason Palmer, 2003 RSMI Jazz alumnus and 2024 Ravinia on Tour ensemble member (photo: Jimmy Katz)
Ravinia Steans Music Institute Jazz Alumni hallmark the art of spontaneity
Although just 25 years old, pianist Luca Mendoza is one of only two all-time Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival “triple crown winners.” Chicago-native bassist Harish Raghavan has become a fixture on the New York jazz scene, fronting two recordings since moving in 2007. Though based on opposite coasts, they have a common thread that brings them together at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall on February 27 with saxophonist Veronica Leahy, trumpeter Jason Palmer, and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.—the quintet has alighted to that stage before, though not at the same time. They’re all alumni of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute (RSMI) Jazz Program from the past two decades.
Mendoza has never performed with any of the other artists on the lineup, but he is sure they will bond quickly. “We all know who each other is,” he said. “That’s sort of the beauty of jazz being a small world at a certain level. We all know each other’s music and playing, and there is a certain caliber of respect that we’re bringing to the table. So, there is no concern at all—just excitement.”
In keeping with the spontaneity that is a hallmark of the jazz genre, the musicians will arrive at Ravinia a day two or early to work out a program and run through it. “Everybody is submitting some music, and we’re going to see how it goes at rehearsal,” Raghavan said.
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photo: Patrick Gipson/Ravinia
The Steans Piano Trio Found and Renews Instant Kismet at Ravinia
Kismet has a way of striking at unexpected times, and that is exactly what happened when three fellows at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute (RSMI) happened to be put together with a violist to perform Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in 2015.
Though previously acquainted at the Curtis Institute of Music, they had never played together and had no particular interest in being part of a piano trio. Or so they thought.
All that changed when they began rehearsing together, and the young artists immediately found themselves captivated by the collaboration. Four years later, they decided to make the happenstance assemblage into a permanent group.
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Alexis Lombre Makes “Come Find Me” a Singular Musical Philosophy After Ravinia Successes
South Side–native pianist and vocalist Alexis Lombre is the latest outstanding artist to have come up through both Ravinia programs, and Backstage caught up with the now sometime Detroiter in the midst of work on her second solo album, which she’s dubbed an amalgamation of everything that she listens to and everything that she is. She’s been prepping the first single, “Come Find Me,” from the new collection of original tracks with a fellow Chicagoan, Grammy-winning guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, as producer, and Lombre has recently released a mini-documentary series on her YouTube channel to give fans a sneak peek at the creative process.
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