CHICAGO (CBS) — The Grant Park Music festival kicked off for the season in Millennium Park Wednesday night.
The summer classical music series at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion was to begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Robert Muczynski’s “Symphonic Dialogues,” Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4. Carlos Kalmar conducts, while concertmaster Jeremy Black is featured on the violin.
At 6:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, a vocal performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater is in store. Christopher Bell directs the chorus – featuring soprano Olivia Boen, mezzo-soprano Siena Licht-Miller, tenor John Matthew Myers, and bass-baritone Joseph Beutel.
The series at the Pritzker Pavilion continues through Aug. 19. Among the other highlights this season are performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” just after July 4th, Sergei Prokofiev’s Suite from “Romeo and Juliet,” an overture of Broadway classics, an acrobatic performance by Troupe Vertigo to Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” and other selections – and on the final night, Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Symphonic Dances.”
Performances are also set for other venues around the city – including Ping Tom Memorial Park in Chinatown, the South Shore Cultural Center, the Columbus Park Refectory in the South Austin neighborhood, the park of Jefferson Park, Unity Park in Logan Square, St. James Cathedral in River North, Marquette Park, and Lake Shore Park in Streeterville.
The full schedule can be found here.
The Grant Park Music Festival began as a creative response to the Great Depression during the 1930s – first organized by Mayor Anton Cermak and musicians’ union President James C. Petrillo. Classical concerts were a staple in Grant Park in the summer by 1935, and the Grant Park Orchestra was founded by the Chicago Park District in 1944.
The concerts were held at a temporary band shell near the Field Museum for the first 40 years of the classical concert series. The festival moved to the extant Petrillo Music Shell just north of Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park in 1978, and to Millennium Park in 2004.
Kalmar has been conductor of the Grant Park Orchestra since 2000, and Bell has been chorus director since 2002.