BOOD! 2006 (Box Office Opening Day)

Ravinia's annual box office opening day attracted more than 1,000 visitors. This popular day brought out families, bicycle riders, and even dogs! This special event offered customers the one-time opportunity to purchase tickets at a 20% discount. Extra seats for performances that had sold out reserved seating were also available for purchase only on Saturday. If you weren't able to take advantage of the discount prices that were offered on this past weekend, there's still the opportunity for reduced price tickets on the first day of each month when special "2 for 1" ticketing options are released for certain events via email. Sign up using the myRAVINIA feature of www.ravinia.org.




WFMT morning host Lisa Flynn joined Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman in previewing the season in a live broadcast from 9:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. Also featured were telephone interviews with Ramsey Lewis, Artistic Director of Jazz at Ravinia; Robert Greenberg, guest lecturer; and Garrick Ohlsson, guest artist. Garrick Ohlsson discussed his preparation for performing all of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas this summer. He said it was a lot of work preparing each piece for performance, there were some that he has never performed in public! The broadcast also included excerpts from the end-of-term performance at the Ravinia Lawndale Music Conservatory located on Chicago's West side. Another highlight of the morning was Welz Kauffman's own piano performance of three of 13 new works, Ravinia commissions which are part of the "One Score, One Chicago" tribute to Robert Schumann's Scenes from Childhood.




Although many customers utilized the convenience of online ticket purchasing, which hit an all-time high this year, the energy and excitement of box office opening day 2006 was apparent to all involved in this once-a-year event!

Having been involved with music organizations and festivals in New York City for the past five years, I was excited to see such anticipation of a performance season. The diverse musical offerings of the 2006 Ravinia Festival can satisfy the most discerning of artistic tastes, and offer the opportunity to discover new music from around the globe!




The box office is now open for telephone orders on Monday-Friday from 10am until 5pm at (847) 266-5100, and for walk-up sales on Monday-Saturday from 10am until 6pm and Sunday from 1pm until 6pm.

-Justin Brown, Communications Associate

A Visit From Mzilikazi Khumalo

This past week, we had a visit from South African composer and teacher Mzilikazi Khumalo, the composer of Princess Magogo and this season's uShaka. More than a musician, he's a true statesman and was eager for culture exchange with the Chicago community. He held a workshop for Chicago Public Schools choral directors on Saturday and gave a brief talk at the South African Freedom Day celebration on Friday. He was as warm and insightful as I remembered from his 2004 trip when Ravinia presented the American premiere of his Princess Magogo, the world's first Zulu opera.

Some things I learned:

• Princess Magogo was the great-granddaughter of the great Zulu King Shaka in real life
• The "u" in "uShaka" is a Zulu point of grammar. When you are speaking about someone instead of directly to them, you would place the u in front of his or her name. So if I were writing in Zulu instead of English, I would be talking about uMzilikazi.
• Khumalo considers uShaka an epic cantata, and he created it to help set the record straight on the controversial but crucially important king who unified the Zulu tribes into one nation. Shaka has largely been painted as cruel and blood-thirsty, but Khumalo asserts that any deaths attributed to Shaka actually occurred during war.
• Western-style opera has developed a large and devoted following in South Africa. Movies, not so much.

---Nick Pullia, Director of Communications