Ravinia 2021 - Issue 2

SHERVIN LAINEZ (COLLINS); YANN ORHAN (PEYROUX) 7:00 PM TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021 MADELEINE PEYROUX –Intermission– JUDY COLLINS PAVILION MUSIC TO OUR EARS (Re)Connecting at Ravinia Festival After a long and difficult year, the opening of Ravinia Festival not only symbolizes the beginning of summer to thousands of Chicago-area residents and a resurgence of the arts, it also gives us hope that the pandemic may be winding down. To say we’re glad to see you in person is putting it mildly. Many of you know us as the provider of Xfinity Internet, Video, Mobile, and other services, which keep you connected at home and on the go. But we’re also your friends, your neighbors, and your family members, and, like you, we relish the opportunity to once again experience arts and music in person surrounded by the trees, lights, and sounds of picnickers at Ravinia. Over the last year, when we couldn’t be together, Comcast was proud to help the communities we serve quickly adapt to a new “normal” and sustain through the pandemic by supporting everything from remote work, distance learning, at-home entertainment, internet workouts, and e-healthcare, to communicating with loved ones we couldn’t see in person. We also helped thousands of low-income area residents connect to the internet through our Internet Essentials program, so they could participate fully in a socially distanced world. We want to recognize and thank the thousands of technicians and other Comcast employees who care for our more than 53,000 miles of network lines that criss-cross the region and deliver our array of Xfinity and Comcast Business services to our customers. They helped society stay connected in uncertain, rapidly changing times by foreseeing and quickly adapting to the major increase in internet traffic that occurred when the pandemic began and most of us retreated into our homes. From classical music, jazz, and cabaret to rock, rhythm and blues, and ballet, this season’s schedule will be full of great performances, and, frankly, more poignant than ever. One of the most important things we do as a company is bring people closer to the moments that matter: That’s why Comcast is so proud this year, especially, to support the arts by sponsoring this important institution and helping reconnect the Ravinia community after being apart for so long. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you this summer! JUDY COLLINS Though world-famous as one of the architects of the folk revival of the 1950s and ’60s, Judy Collins began her life in music in front of a piano instead of behind a guitar. She began taking music lessons at age 5, for several years studying with famed conductor Antonia Bri- co, who believed Collins had the potential to become a concert pianist. By her mid- teens, however, she became enamored with the social conscience of folk music, and out of college began singing in clubs from Den- ver to Chicago to New York. In 1961 Collins signed with Elektra Records and released her debut album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow . Her albums featured music by such prom- inent songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Tom Pax- ton, though she also drew attention to Leon- ard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Randy New- man, particularly through In My Life (1966) and Wildflowers (1967), albums that were ar- ranged and conducted by musicologist Joshua Rifkin. Collins’s interpretation of Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” on the latter album not only won a Grammy Award but also has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her 1975 album Judith included a rendition of “Send in the Clowns” from Stephen Sond- heim’s musical A Little Night Music that won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Collins was also nominated for an Academy Award that year as co-director of Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman , a documentary about her former mentor. Recently, contemporary and classic artists Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen honored Collins’s legacy with the album Born to the Breed . Her own recent recordings in- clude Strangers Again (2015), featuring duets with the likes of Willie Nelson, Glen Hansard, Jeff Bridges, and Jackson Browne, and Winter Stories (2019), a number-one bluegrass album Jonas Fjeld and Chatham County Line. Col- lins is also working on a new solo collection, Beauty and Resistance . Judy Collins made her first appearance at Ravinia in 1970 and tonight returns for her 21st season at the festival. MADELEINE PEYROUX Born in Athens, GA, Madeleine Peyroux grew up in a house filled with music and from an early age embraced its soothing power, but it was her teenage years in Paris that turned the childhood notion into a life vocation. With a guitar in hand following the internation- al move, she took to busking like Edith Piaf almost immediately, skipping school to fre- quent the City of Lights’ Latin Quarter, keen to learn the street musicians’ way of life. At 16 Peyroux joined the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band and toured the streets of Europe, discovering Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday while picking up all the songs and all the gui- tar playing she could. In 1991 the band traveled to New York, where her talents caught the ear of Atlantic Records—though she initially de- clined a contract, by 1996 she found herself in a studio laying down her debut album Dream- land . Peyroux’s renditions of Holiday’s “Get- ting’ Some Fun Out of Life,” Smith’s “Lovesick Blues,” and Fats Waller’s “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” cemented her soulful voice and for a while put her back on global tours alongside the likes of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Cesaria Evo- ra. After a period of “hibernation,” Peyroux returned to playing streets and New York clubs, but 2003 connected her with Rounder Records and producer Larry Klein for a re- naissance. Careless Love (2004) sparked her mainstream return with covers of Bob Dylan, James P. Johnson, and Leonard Cohen, as well as the standout original “Don’t Wait Too Long.” Collaboration with Klein continued across Half the World Perfect (2006), Bare Bones (2009, a disc of originals), and The Blue Room (2013, a tribute to Ray Charles). After 2016’s Secular Hymns , recorded in an English church in collaboration with her touring trio, she reunited with Klein for 2019’s Anthem , featuring mostly new songs reflecting on con- temporary political conversation. Madeleine Peyroux first appeared at Ravinia in 2004 and tonight returns for her fourth festival season. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 24 – AUGUST 15, 2021 60 I I I ;