Chicago over the weekend was beautiful: the city, the weather, the music. I had a great time visiting family and just sitting around outside at the myriad of events and festivals that seem to be happening all over the place. My brother tells me the place isn't quite like this during the winter, for obvious reasons, when it gets freezing cold and the place turns into "the windy city." In the summer, perhaps Chicagoans are so excited to not be cooped up inside that they end up doing everything outdoors. Here in LA, when summer approaches, it's not nearly so much of a change, so our summer festivals aren't quite so... enthusiastic.
For example, they do a public fireworks display twice weekly at Navy Pier, from Memorial to Labor Day. At Millennium Park in the heart of downtown Chicago they built the Pritzker Pavilion. It's an enormous, Frank Gehry-designed, undulating sheet-metal band shell where over 30 completely free classical music concerts are played to an open air lawn theatre for 11,000 people. And Ravinia, oh the Ravinia Festival. Set in a gorgeous - and I do mean GORGEOUS - park with an enormous lawn for picnicking and listening to the concert, plus the main concert pavilion where you can see and hear the orchestra brilliantly while still being outside, it gives the Hollywood Bowl a run for its money on the pleasantness of the experience.
On Saturday night, we went to the Grant Park Music Festival's concert at Pritzker Pavilion. It was "Flamenco Night", so they played Spanish inspired music, and dancer Carmen Cortes danced flamenco to guitar. OK so this concert wasn't entirely conducive to the way the amphitheatre is set up - 4,000 fixed seats, plus space for 7,000 on the lawn, according to the web site - and those of us on the lawn couldn't see much of anything. The Grant Park Festival Orchestra did, though, play Bizet's Carmen Suite No. 1, which sounded great. I can only imagine how fantastic the other concerts this summer would have sounded, with repertoire like Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 or Poulenc's Gloria. Most of all I was just in awe of the experience, surrounded by the gorgeous Chicago skyline, hearing music in flip flops. And the freeness! Free music, with a ton of people and a great, casual atmosphere.
Ravinia was great, both for the concert and the experience. Friday night, it was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. They had a special $25 promotion for all available seats inside the main Pavilion, and our seats were very close - Row R - so close that I could barely tell whether there was amplification for some of the bigger orchestral pieces. The three Ravel pieces in the second half of the program - La Valse, a suite from Daphnis & Chloe (basically the entire ending section of the ballet music), and Bolero - were brilliantly played. It's partly Ravel's music, which so grandly displays all the different colors of the orchestra, and thrillingly goes back and forth between quiet moments and huge swells. Bolero was quite a bit of fun, a piece of music that builds slowly over its 15 minute-ish duration and culminates with a huge, wild splash. And Eschenbach conducted it by glaring at the various sections of the orchestra; as things got louder, he took to sternly stabbing his baton in the general direction of instruments that were to come in. It sure looked like an interesting way to conduct - I might be scared of him if I was a player, but the orchestra members looked nonplussed. Nevertheless, all of the Ravel was rousing, and the audience duly gave a standing ovation at the end.
I wasn't as enthralled by the first two pieces on the program, though pianist Tzimon Barto was pretty great in both of them. Marc-Andre Dalbavie's Music for Piano and Orchestra was a discordant contemporary piece that would probably have been fine had it not been the first piece on the program in an outdoor summer festival, where it was competing with an audience settling down in comfy warm weather plus the noise of chirping cicadas (cicadas that, it should be noted, only appear every 17 or so years). In an article in the program book, they asked James Conlon, Ravinia's music director, whether he takes into account the outdoor atmosphere when selecting program, and he said "no." But I think in this case, the piece would have benefited more by being in a place where we could better focus on it. The Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto, played second, was a dazzling virtuoso show piece for Barto, who rattled it off with ease and style.
(More Ravinia photos: 1- The entry way to the festival, taken on the way out. 2- The big lawn. 3- Cool sculptures on the lawn. 4- Christoph Eschenbach, conductor, and Tzimon Barto, piano. 5- The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, after Bolero.)
I can't help but compare Ravinia to the Hollywood Bowl. The grounds and the facilities at Ravinia are much more pleasant and well kept than the Bowl's hard concrete amphitheatre. They've built this enormous new 'dining pavilion' at Ravinia, which features a super fancy restaurant, cafes and nice restrooms. And the experience inside the covered but open-air Pavilion is wonderfully intimate for the 3200 seats inside. Out on Ravinia's lawn, you can spread out an entire picnic. Or put a blanket on the grass and lay down to hear the music. Can't do that on the Bowl's cramped, hard benches - not comfortably anyway. On the other hand, at the Bowl, every seat including the cheap ones can see the stage. The stage is not visible from the lawn at Ravinia, and normal prices for the concert pavilion can be $30 to $75 depending (not unreasonable, certainly, but more than the Bowl's $5 or $12 seats).
Why, with Southern California's beautiful weather, don't we have more comfortable outdoor venues? The Bowl is great, don't get me wrong, but I'd love a major outdoor venue with a lawn like Ravinia's (or for that matter, like Wolf Trap near DC, or the Saratoga PAC in New York, or Tanglewood in Massachusetts) where you can hear a major concert under the stars. Not only that, but at Wolf Trap and SPAC, it's a full theater facility backstage, so they can do full dance shows and events with stage sets - theater outdoors. The Bowl is limited in staging any of those, and I would love an outdoor dance festival in SoCal.
Another place I visited while in Chicago was Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's studios (though I forgot to bring my camera with me that morning. Drats. That photo of the interior is by Drew Endicott, courtesy the HSDC web site.) A former boss just started working there, and she invited me for a tour of the studios. They have a really great space: their own building, with four large studios plus a special tap studio, and downstairs also a big area for the administrative offices. The dancers in the company are employed on a 52-week contract with 6 weeks vacation (rarer than you'd think - even big ballet companies like ABT and SF Ballet do not offer their dancers a 52 week contract). The main company was on break when I visited, but I did get to watch HSDC II, the younger training company, take morning ballet class. There were also a few main company members there, taking "keep in shape" class, as well as dancers from the general public looking for a rigorous class. Class was a lot of fun to watch; as a non-dancer watching them do contemporary work, one sometimes forgets how much classical ballet provides as a foundation for their movement. I couldn't tell too much about individual dancers from watching their class, but even the younger company looked pretty strong. When the main company returns, they will be preparing several new pieces, one of them choreographed by a company member (very cool sounding), and also Nacho Duato's Rassemblement. Compania Nacional de Danza 2 performed this in Los Angeles in May, and I LOVED this piece! The main and junior companies tour all over the place (I saw tour cases lying around from their recent Munich tour), and will be in Southern California February 28 to March 1 at three different venues in Palm Springs and the San Diego area. Day trip?*
So that was the arts side of my trip to Chicago. I wish I had had more time to get into the theater scene since there are such great theater companies in Chicago, or visit the art museums. Ah well. Next time. I did very much enjoy visiting with family and meeting Mr. Prince, pictured up above. That mohawk, by the way, doesn't come down. Even when you wet his hair, it goes back up when his hair dries.
And yes, on the plane ride, I did finish Harry Potter. :-)
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