Ravinia Opportunities: Building A Better Future

It was a note struck more than a decade ago that is still ringing loud today. Building on the Women’s Board’s Opportunity Lawn Pass program, Artistic Director of Jazz at Ravinia, Ramsey Lewis, suggested that Ravinia could help fill the void left by the demise of music education in budget-strapped schools, and since then Education and Community Partnerships have been a primary mission of the festival.

It’s fitting that it all began with jazz, a music known for its riffing, improvising and evolving because our efforts in the schools and community have done just that. Even as we’ve grown into different grade levels, opened a free public conservatory of our own, and created learning opportunities in our park, performance of live music remains at the forefront of Ravinia’s ECP efforts.

The Jazz Scholars who work with Ravinia’s music-professional mentors, enjoy rare opportunities to perform in school and out and have even opened for Ramsey Lewis himself, and younger kids even get the chance to perform works they created in our Martin Theatre.

Of course, not everyone we reach and teach is destined to play. Enjoyment of live music is a big part of the program. Ravinia makes a variety of resources available to learners of all ages to experience musical performance at Ravinia and even in the neighborhoods, such as Lawndale, where we present free community concerts.

We give free passes to college students to hear Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts and other classical programs. We allow children 5 and under to attend CSO shows for free.

We afford special pricing to select concerts for young people who play or sing in a school ensemble. We present children’s concerts where our youngest listeners learn what concert-going is all about.

We present concerts by groups like Midwest Young Artists, the Chicago Youth Symphony and Chicago Children’s Choir, so those emerging talents not only have an outlet for their performances, but so that their contemporaries can relate to seeing people their age on stage.

In short, we do what can to develop both the artists and audiences of tomorrow.

Welz Kauffman
President/CEO