Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 14

32 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 26, 2019 – MAY 9, 2020 In addition to illuminating the concert stage, many BGH Classics series artists become beacons to the students of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play education pro- grams, demystifying their music and helping a new generation engage with the arts in their everyday lives, from visiting Chicago and Lake County–area schools with the Guests Artists in the Classroom program to meeting Sistema Ravinia students on the BGH stage and sharing their experience with the full orchestra or in breakout sessions with different instrument groups. With each of his appearances at Ravinia in recent years, Sir James Galway and his wife, Lady Jeanne, have gifted their golden knowledge to Reach Teach Play, and in recognition of this devotion to education, this past spring Ravinia honored the flutist both at the Music Matters fundraiser and with its Edward Gordon Award. in close consultation with Sondheim, including several dynamic and diverse additions to the roster of composers, from Jon Batiste and Meredith Monk to Kevin Puts and Timo Andres, celebrating Sondheim not just as a brilliant musical theater lyricist, but as a se- rious composer. De Mare’s March 14 concert will mark the Midwest premiere of the new pieces. Then, on March 28, one of the greatest singers on stage today— baritone Quinn Kelsey, the world’s reigning star of Verdi’s Rigo- letto —returns to Ravinia for the first time in over a decade before what he considers his hometown crowd, having carefully coursed the current of his career at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. That career has included superlatives in many other Verdi roles: “Kelsey was stalwart and virile-voiced as Amonasro, Aida’s father,” the New York Times said of his most recent appearance at the Met, while in its earlier La traviata , “Kelsey made a fascinating antagonist. His big, slab-like baritone, with its easy power, projected Germont’s abso- lute determination to get his way, using any means possible,” said the Wall Street Journal . He also returns to the Lyric this fall in Luisa Miller , and his Ravinia recital debut comes on the heels of another turn as Giorgio Germont at the Met. Named not only one of the 50 most influential women in Mex- ico but also one of the 40 most creative Mexicans in the world by Forbes Mexico , pianist Daniela Liebman had then just entered her teens, and that same year she gave a special performance at Ravinia to inaugurate the expansion of Sistema Ravinia orchestra programs into Lake County–area schools, Ravinia’s neighborhood. She has since been featured by the Mexican editions of both GQ and Vanity Fair and proclaimed “already an advanced virtuoso” by New York’s WQXR. Last year, she marked two milestones, debuting with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico on the stage of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, “transforming herself in front of the piano, concen- trated, at times rapt, possessed, giving free rein to her virtuosity and mastery of technique” ( El Universal ), and releasing her debut album onWarner Classics, featuring Chopin’sThird Ballade and Schubert’s four D. 899 Impromptus, two highlights of her 2017 Ravinia-debut concert. Her first concerto recording is due out in 2020, featuring works by Ravel and Ponce, but first she will return to Ravinia on April 25 for another memorable evening of solo piano. On May 2, Ravinia will tap into the unparalleled talent of singer and dancer Evan Ruggiero, who Dance Magazine named among its “25 to Watch” this year, observing that his career began like a story straight out of A Chorus Line . Captivated by his sister’s dance class at age 5, Ruggiero thought, Hey, I can do that, and by the time an- other five years had passed, he was a member of the famed New Jersey Tap Ensemble, taking the Lincoln Center stage, among many others. Ruggiero was eagerly pursuing a theater career when he entered college, but at age 19, he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer in his right leg. After nine surgeries, he ultimately chose to have his leg amputated to save his life, but now, nearly a decade on from his diagnosis, he’s not only still dancing—inspired by the vivacious career of Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates, a frequent guest on The Ed Sullivan Show —but also lending his voice to lead theater roles, fulfilling that dream deferred, in 2017 playing the title character of the off-off-Broadway musical Bastard Jones , for which he earned both Drama Desk and Chita Rivera Award nominations and won a Clive Barnes Award. He’s even recently performed alongside Jason Mraz, and for his Ravinia debut, Ruggiero will team up with a jazz combo to perform favorites from the Great American Songbook. And to bridge the BGH Classics series into Ravinia’s summer season, Einav Yarden will return to the festival on May 9. A pianist with “a sense of purpose in every note [and] of immense majesty, tempered by gentleness and grace” ( Washington Post ), Yarden was a fellow at RSMI in 2001 and 2002 before she returned as a collabo- rating pianist from 2012 to 2017, and she recently released her third album for the Challenge Classics label, an all-Schumann disc that France’s Diapason hailed for its “fluidity and remarkable … integri- ty and idealism. Atmospheres are born in a blinding clarity as much as the articulation, the weight, the balances, and the answers from [both] hands become spellbinding.” She’s also earned top praise from Gramophone : “She balances the dramatic and the filigree to a nicety. Yarden clearly has much to say in this repertoire.” RSMI Piano and Strings, April 11 Daniela Liebman, April 25 Evan Ruggiero, May 2 Einav Yarden, May 9