Ravinia Festival News

The 2010 Summer Music Theatre Festival at the Theatre and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University kicks off in June with an overview.

Ravinia Festival's 2010 season opens offering up great variety and more than 50 artist debuts beginning on opening night at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 3, with pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii in the Martin Theatre. Blind since birth and a 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold-medal winner, 22-year-old Tsujii will present works by Chopin, Schuman and Lizst as well as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravinia's 2010 One Score, One Chicago selection. Inspired by the Chicago Public Library's One Book, One Chicago, Ravinia's One Score promotes the enjoyment of classical music and creates a cultural touchstone to enable people at different levels of understanding classical music to engage in community-wide discussion of a single masterwork.

Ravinia Festival regrets that the 'Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy,' concert, originally scheduled for Aug. 1, will no longer be part of the 2010 season due to a venue scheduling conflict. There will be no concert at Ravinia on the evening of Aug. 1.

In celebration of its 25th season, Chicago-based contemporary dance theatre ensemble Hedwig Dances will present a concert of original works by world-renowned artists on Northwestern University's Evanston campus.

Marin Theatre Company Presents WOODY GUTHRIE'S AMERICAN SONG 5/27-6/20

In honor of Margaret Wise Brown's 100th Birthday, GPR Records (Glen Roven, Peter Fitzgerald, Richard Cohen, artistic directors) will release a live recording of the concert based on Brown's two best selling children's books Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.

The Laguna Playhouse will end its run of the critically acclaimed first movement of Hershey Felder's 'Composer Sonata,' Beethoven, As I Knew Him on May 23.

Ravinia Festival celebrates its patrons with Customer Appreciation Day on Saturday, May 22, during a day filled with discounts and the chance to purchase added seating to some sold-out pavilion concerts, as well as promotions and samples from some of Ravinia's supporters.

Tony Award winners Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin will perform their concert 'An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin' at the Mayo Center on October 1.

After a fast online sell-out of the Aug. 21 show, rock band Counting Crows will return for a second concert at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 24. Pavilion tickets for the show are $65, and lawn tickets are $27.

Writers' Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce the second extension of Oh Coward!, words and music by Noel Coward, devised by Roderick Cook. The production, which began its run in November 2009 is directed by Jim Corti, with musical direction by Doug Peck. The production has been extended through April 18, 2010, at Writers' Theatre, 664 Vernon Avenue in Glencoe.

The award-winning and multi-talented Patti LuPone makes her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut, Saturday, May 15, at 8 p.m. In her concert 'Matters of the Heart,' LuPone takes the audience on a tour of the crimes, affairs and mysteries of the heart, and explores love in its various iterations in performances of more than two dozen songs.

Ravinia Festival celebrates its patrons with Customer Appreciation Day on Saturday, May 22, during a day filled with discounts and the chance to purchase added seating to some sold-out pavilion concerts, as well as promotions and samples from some of Ravinia's supporters.

In honor of Margaret Wise Brown's 100th Birthday, GPR Records (Glen Roven, Peter Fitzgerald, Richard Cohen, artistic directors) will release a live recording of the concert based on Brown's two best selling children's books Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.

In honor of Margaret Wise Brown's 100th Birthday, The InterSchool Orchestra of New York (ISO) (www.isorch.org) in association with GPR Records (Glen Roven, Peter Fitzgerald, Richard Cohen, artistic directors) have announced a live concert based on Brown's two best selling children's books Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.

In honor of Margaret Wise Brown's 100th Birthday, The InterSchool Orchestra of New York (ISO) (www.isorch.org) in association with GPR Records (Glen Roven, Peter Fitzgerald, Richard Cohen, artistic directors) have announced a live concert based on Brown's two best selling children's books Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.

The award-winning and multi-talented Patti LuPone makes her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut, Saturday, May 15, at 8 p.m. In her concert 'Matters of the Heart,' LuPone takes the audience on a tour of the crimes, affairs and mysteries of the heart, and explores love in its various iterations in performances of more than two dozen songs.

Ravinia Festival President and CEO Welz Kauffman has been selected to lead a team of Illinois decision-makers-including leaders from the Illinois State Board of Education, The Polk Brothers Foundation and the University of Illinois-at a multi-state Education Leadership Institute convened by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Illinois team joins four others-led by the Oregon Arts Commission; Washington States Arts Commission; New Hampshire State Council on the Arts; and the Ohio Arts Council-at the NEA Institute in Chicago on July 26-28. The goal is to create strategies to strengthen arts education. The Illinois team will explore the role of the arts in developing 21st-century skills.

Marin Theatre Company Presents WOODY GUTHRIE'S AMERICAN SONG 5/27-6/20

Writers' Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce that A Minister's Wife, Writers' Theatre's musical adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Candida, will be produced by Lincoln Center Theater in the 2010-11 season. The original musical was conceived and directed by Michael Halberstam, adapted by Austin Pendleton with music by Joshua Schmidt and lyrics by Jan Tranen. The Lincoln Center production will be directed by Halberstam. Performances begin on Thursday, April 7, 2011 and opens on Thursday, May 5, 2011 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street, New York City).