Ravinia Festival
Ravinia Festival
In the summertime the best place to find all the Chicago locals at Ravinia Park, it has been the home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ever since 1906. It was built to be an up-scale amusement park, but turned into a summer haven for the symphony and guests. This extravaganza is called the Ravinia Festival, and includes not only symphony concerts, but also performances with guest soloists. Jazz, blues and rock performers are but a few of the areas represented by the performing guests of the symphony.
This 36-acre parkland includes and open-air amphitheater, landscaped parkland, concession stands and a concert pavilion with a music education building. A longstanding Chicagoland tradition is picnicking in the park before concerts. Make plans to see some of it, and take a charter bus to see everything along the way. Perhaps even make a few special stops going or retuning. There will be a crowd; the festival now draws around 600,000 people.
The festival closes its summertime events in early September, but hibernation is not what is going on. They are busy right now setting up next years list of entertainers, and schedule of events. What we do know now, are a few notables already on the guest list of performers for next year's event.
And they are conductors and soloists, including Music Director James Conlon, Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin, Itzhak Perlman, Audra McDonald and Yefim Bronfman and such rising stars as soprano Anna Christy and pianists Andreas Haefliger, Shai Wosner and Jakub Cizmarovic. And you won't want to miss it!
Ticket prices:
CSO 10-Use Lawn Punch Pass
$70.00 until January 2006
$80.00 after January 2006
