Most seasons, you can acutely feel every inch of Ravinia’s 12 miles from Chicago’s northernmost border. For a festival that’s the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, its programming tends to be detached from the city’s musical fabric. Ravinia, after all, is large enough to spin its own orbit.
The pandemic changed all that. With international travel still scuttled and lingering uncertainties all around, Ravinia’s new leadership —president and CEO Jeffrey P. Haydon and chief conductor and curator Marin Alsop — decided to tap artists from the festival’s own backyard for its 2021 season.
Necessity, meet your kid, Invention.
During the festival run from July 1 to Sept. 24, expect familiar faces like violinist Rachel Barton Pine and cellist Ifetayo Ali-Landing (Sept. 7, in chamber works by Chicago Black Renaissance composers, such as Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and Nora Holt); the Chicago Sinfonietta and music director Mei-Ann Chen (Sept. 8); and the Lincoln Trio (Sept. 21, premiering an as-of-yet unnamed new work by the essential Wheaton-based composer Shawn E. Okpebholo). The Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago and local upstarts Nexus Chamber Music make their Ravinia debuts on July 11 and Sept. 9, respectively; the Nexus players join forces with soprano Kristina Bachrach for the premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s “Upon Wings of Words,” setting Emily Dickinson poems. Even Joffrey Ballet returns to Ravinia for the first time since 2008, with a program of contemporary works in the Pavilion (Sept. 17).
That’s not to say that Ravinia will be without its usual crowd-netting slate of superstars. Far from it: Returning artists include Kurt Elling (July 12, alongside guitarist Charlie Hunter, making his Ravinia debut); Midori (July 16, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1); Alan Cumming (July 20, in a cabaret night alongside NPR host and Pink Martini’s Ari Shapiro); the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis (July 25); Misha and Cipa Dichter (July 25 and 26, in the former’s 75th Ravinia appearance); Pinchas Zukerman as conductor and soloist (in a chamber program with his self-titled Trio July 28 and leading a CSO program July 29); Apollo’s Fire (Aug. 3, in a Venice-themed baroque program); and Joshua Bell (in an Aug. 12 duo program alongside soprano Larisa Martínez, whom Bell married last year, and an Aug. 13 CSO concert including Beethoven’s Violin Concerto).
Former Ravinia music director James Conlon even makes a welcome return to the podium on Aug. 6, leading the CSO debut of violinist William Hagen in an all-Mozart program.
Like its southerly neighbor, the Grant Park Music Festival, the 2021 Ravinia season retains much of the festival’s usual scaffolding: The CSO will play its full six-week residency — Ravinia president Haydon has said onstage forces at the Pavilion are currently capped at about 50 musicians — and recitals by young Steans Music Institute fellows will fill out the season programming.
But, of course, this is a summer unlike any other. A Ravinia spokesperson says the festival will remain responsive to public health guidelines — the 2021 season press release cites experts at Northwestern Medicine, a program sponsor, as helping inform festival protocol — and will regularly update its website with more information for audiences. (At press time, Ravinia officials declined to speculate how many patrons would be admitted in each seating area when concerts open to the general public on July 5.) Seats in the Pavilion, which usually accommodates 3,350, will be sold in physically distanced bundles of two or four; South Lawn spots will be spread out in marked “pods” of two to six people; and general-admission North Lawn spots will sell on a first-come, first-serve basis. Indoor concerts in Bennett Gordon Hall and the Martin Theatre are completely off the table, and will remain that way.
With such a high-stakes summer ahead, Ravinia’s subtler changes are easily overlooked. Even so, its new leadership seems to be carving out a different vision for the tony music festival. The first few concerts of the main season will be closed to the general public, instead inviting frontline professionals (preselected by Ravinia’s community partners) to indulge on the Highland Park festival grounds. The festivities begin with a solo recital by pianist Garrick Ohlsson on July 1 (the first in a four-part Brahms series celebrating his 40th anniversary at Ravinia), continue with a chamber concert by Steans Music Institute (RSMI) faculty on July 2, then culminate in an all-out bash on July 3, including the Chicago Jazz Orchestra Sextet, Shemekia Copeland, and the South Shore Drill Team, to name a few.
Post-2020, Ravinia also seems to be grappling with its accessibility issues, particularly for public transportation–reliant and cash-strapped concertgoers. One small, but meaningful change: Starting this year, a ticket to the festival doubles as a Metra pass, allowing concertgoers to ride the rails at no additional charge. Ravinia will also livestream all 17 RSMI recitals for free on its YouTube channel, giving crowd-leery audiences an avenue to engage with the festival.
In fact, Ravinia will stream two of its most engrossing programs weeks before its gates open. Last year, RSMI held its third annual Bridges composition competition, which solicits “third stream” works combining jazz and classical idioms. Because of the pandemic, the winning works’ premieres have been bumped to June 4, performed by RSMI alumni Greg Ward (saxophone), Glenn Zaleski (piano), Dan Chmielinski (bass), Kenneth Salters (drummer), and the Avalon String Quartet. Then, on June 11, 15 RSMI jazz fellows unveil new charts written during their one-week intensive, overseen by faculty mentors Billy Childs, Steve Wilson and Rufus Reid.
As for other highlights? Keep your eyes on this season’s debut artists. Soprano Julia Bullock makes an eagerly awaited Ravinia appearance soloing on Klaus Simon’s economical Mahler 4 arrangement for chamber orchestra (July 22), as do meteorically rising conductors Jonathan Taylor Rush (July 10, co-leading a “Celebrating America” program) and Yue Bao (Aug. 8, conducting the CSO debuts of violinist Stella Chen and violist Matthew Lipmanin Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante). Not to be missed is bass-baritone Davóne Tines’s self-crafted recital program on Aug. 31, which weaves Mass settings by Bach and Caroline Shaw with spiritual arrangements (including his own) and works by Margaret Bonds, Tyshawn Sorey and Julius Eastman.
It may not be the most premiere-laden summer, or the most star-studded, but it’s exhilarating, and it’s Chicago. As the summer will no doubt show, there is much to grieve, but also much to celebrate.
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
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