The crowd roared and jumped to its feet the minute the 88-year-old country music legend walked onto the stage on Saturday night — and his ability to instantly connect to his audience is unwavering, with his guitar playing still seemingly effortless.
Stories by hedy weiss
Celebrating Bernstein’s Broadway Songbook at Ravinia
“Unboxing Bernstein: A Live Revue” served as a stirring reminder of Leonard Bernstein’s genius for mixing and matching musical genres.
At Ravinia, Cynthia Erivo’s Blazing Star Power and Rachel Barton Pine’s Last-Minute Prowess
It was quite a weekend at the Ravinia Festival. On Friday evening virtuoso violinist Rachel Barton Pine filled in for the indisposed Midori with just a few hours of advance notice, and aced Prokofiev’s fiendishly difficult “Violin Concerto No. 1.”
For CSO, It’s Time to Tango as Plans Through Holiday Season Are Announced
In addition to the series of Maestro Riccardo Muti’s concerts, the fall season will mark the arrival of violinist Hilary Hahn, visits by many guest conductors and artists, plus a vast and varied lineup under the Symphony Center Presents banner. Here’s what else to expect.
Chicago Opera Theater Announces Eclectic 2021-22 Season
Since its founding in 1973, Chicago Opera Theater has been making audacious choices in its programming and presentation. And in many ways the company displayed its formidable ingenuity and determination throughout the pandemic. Here’s a peek at its all-live season.
CSO Announces Return of Maestro Muti and Adventurous Plans for 2021-22 Season
Beginning in September, Maestro Riccardo Muti will lead the orchestra he has not seen since February 2020 in a three-week residency marking the official opening of the 2021-22 season in Orchestra Hall and the return of (hopefully full) live audiences.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Puts Elegant Spin on Season’s Third Live Concert
“Overture,” the final entry in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s springtime series of three different programs was performed live in Orchestra Hall on Thursday. Remaining performances are Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.
The Magic of ‘Strum,’ ‘Galanta’ and More in CSO’s Second Live Spring Concert
It was a magical evening at Symphony Center Thursday as a meticulously spaced and masked audience gathered for “Strum,” the aptly titled second of three different programs of springtime concerts from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Toots Its Golden Horns in Triumphant Return to Live Performance
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra walked onstage to perform their first concert before a live audience in more than 14 months, Thursday evening.
It’s Curtain Up and Light the Lights for the Lyric Opera and Joffrey Ballet
After 15 months of dark theaters and livestreamed performances, two of Chicago’s most famous performing arts companies announce they are returning to the stage for live performances — this time under one roof.
Rachmaninoff Yearns for His Homeland in Hershey Felder’s Music-Driven Riff on Russian Composer
In “Nicholas, Anna & Sergei,” Hershey Felder fully captures the “history, pride and melancholy of the Russians” with the fervor Sergei Rachmaninoff carried with him to the end. And he plays the composer’s sweeping music to magnificent effect.
Goodman Theatre Play Reflects on Life, Death, Love and ‘The Sound Inside’
The play by Adam Rapp will be streamed live through May 16
Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside” depicts the brief but harrowing relationship between Bella (Mary Beth Fisher), a lonely, middle-aged Yale professor and author who teaches a course in creative writing, and her intense, gifted, profoundly alienated freshman student, Christopher (John Drea).
Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Under the Trees’ Voices’ a Masterwork of the Pandemic Era
This world premiere, feverishly choreographed by Nicolas Blanc and performed by 15 of the company’s emotionally fiery dancers, is a work of such beauty and dynamic intensity that it can and should easily endure as part of the standard ballet rep for years to come.
CSO to Welcome Back a Limited Live Audience
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has just announced that beginning May 27, and running through June 13, the CSO will perform its first concerts for a live audience since March 2020.
A Staircase. A Parking Garage. Chicago Opera Shines on Unconventional Stages
With most traditional theater spaces off-limits and Zoom an increasingly annoying way to have to watch anything, two Chicago opera companies have demonstrated in radically different ways that “all the world is a stage” — or can be turned into one.
Maestro Riccardo Muti Coaches Young Musicians Via Zoom
This is not a review. It is primarily a note of appreciation to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director, who has not been able to conduct his beloved orchestra for a year but has helped guide the superb CSOtv series. This week, he also pursued one of his greatest passions via Zoom.
Porchlight’s ‘Rock & Roll Broadway’ Fundraiser Deserves a Main-Stage Future
True to its title, this lavish production traces the evolution of Broadway scores from the 1960s until now, and explores the many ways in which pop music (as well as modern life) has expanded and altered the sound of musical theater.
Hershey Felder Captures the Life of Giacomo Puccini With Grand Operatic Flair
How do you tell the story of a musical genius whose operas are among the most beloved works in the Italian opera canon? If you are Hershey Felder, you create something unabashedly in the grand opera style that also manages to be hugely accessible for audiences still distanced from live performance by COVID-19.
‘The Catastrophist’: A Brilliant Play Bound to Go Viral
Lauren Gunderson’s new 75-minute play about her husband, acclaimed virologist Nathan Daniel Wolfe, is a riveting one-man meditation about life and death and the nature of viruses. It’s now being streamed by Northlight Theatre.
CSO’s Irresistible Streaming Series Pays Homage to Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Programs framed by Bach and Beethoven are streaming now as part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s virtual series, CSOtv. Here’s a look at Episode #13 and #14.
Chicago Opera Theater’s Scorching ‘Taking Up Serpents’ Captures America’s Pentecostal Fervor
While most of this country’s major opera companies are suffering the painful slings and arrows of the pandemic scourge, Chicago Opera Theater continues to soldier on. And its latest production is another example of its musical, theatrical and thematic daring.
Pandemic Exorcisms as Finessed by the Joffrey Ballet and Cabinet of Curiosity
Two thrillingly dramatic works — one by way of dance and another by way of radio theater — now serve as vivid evocations marking the one-year “anniversary” of the pandemic, and all the physical and psychological dislocations it has engendered.
Lyric Opera’s New Music Director Has Prepared a Virtual Vocal Antipasto
“Sole e Amore,” Enrique Mazzola’s newest project, will include two dozen songs by seven of the most beloved Italian opera composers of the 19th century, performed by 11 members of the Ryan Opera Center, Lyric’s renowned artist development program.
Hershey Felder Creates a Grand Celebration of Sholem Aleichem and a Seductive Fiddler
Streaming through Sunday, “Before Fiddler” is the latest of the many remarkable feats of musical storytelling from Hershey Felder, the multitalented writer, actor, pianist and producer renowned for his solo shows about composers.
‘Red Folder’ Spins a Story of Self-Healing
Any description of Rajiv Joseph’s mini-play — the newest entry in Steppenwolf Theatre’s NOW series of virtual programming that runs about 11 minutes — might make it sound like just a quick virtual doodle. But it is much more than that.
New CSOtv Episodes an Ideal Tonic for Locked-Down World
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s CSOtv Sessions series is, without question, the finest virtual music treasure created in response to the COVID-19 plague year. Those who have yet to revel in its delights are encouraged to catch its two newest entries: Episodes #11 and #12.
