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Since 2000, jazz players from across the nation have been hand-picked by the RSMI Program for Jazz faculty
to spend a week together performing in and composing for ensembles of varying instrumentation. The
Bridges
competition challenged composers to expand on that with music for jazz trio and classical string quartet.
T
hat night
will also mark the
rst summer entry in celebrating
the th anniversary of Ravin-
ia’s Steans Music Institute, the festival’s
summer conservatory that connects
some of the best young professional
musicians from around the world with
an esteemed faculty for concerts, master
classes, and more learning opportunities
onsite in the John D. Harza Building
and from its Bennett Gordon Hall
stage. “For decades, our musical leaders
and supporters dreamed of having a
college-level conservatory right here
at Ravinia, and they made it happen in
. It’s become a major source of pride
for Ravinia, and an important oppor-
tunity for performers,” said Ravinia
President and CEO Welz Kau man.
It was in the spirit of the intense and
aspirational goals of RSMI’s ambitious
programs for jazz and classical mu-
sicians—as well as the bold musical
vision of Leonard Bernstein, whom
Ravinia has just gotten underway
celebrating with an expansive multiyear
tribute—that
Bridges
, an international
jazz and classical fusion composition
competition, was born. It o ered an
imaginative challenge for artists ages
– (the same age range as the –
performers invited to RSMI each year)
to compose original works speci cally
for a string quartet and a jazz trio. “ e
Bridges
competition was conceived to
help give young professionals a place on
the map—if not the world stage—which
is precisely what RSMI has been grant-
ing singers and instrumentalists for the
past three decades,” Kau man said.
In addition to a commemoration of
the anniversary, the
Bridges
competition
and concert is a tribute to the late David
Baker, the highly lauded jazz composer/
performer and distinguished professor
at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of
Music who had served as the director
of the RSMI Program for Jazz since its
inception in
. e winners of the
competition share equally in the David
Baker Prize.
e present directors of the RSMI
Program for Jazz served as adjudicators,
receiving submissions—works were
required to be minutes long and
never previously performed—between
November and February and spending
the next month selecting the winners,
who were announced in March: Sam
Blakeslee, Zach Bornheimer, and Gene
Kni c. “We picked three works that
celebrate RSMI, will entertain our
audiences, and will live on beyond this
th anniversary year,” said pianist and
co-director Billy Childs, who is known
for inventive, hybrid projects and who
this year won his h career Grammy
Award with the album
Rebirth
.
In addition to receiving the ,
David Baker Prize, each composer will
have his work premiered on June in
Ravinia’s Martin eatre, on a program
that also features works from each of the
three judges. Childs will be represented
by his
Into the Light
, and bassist Rufus
Reid by his
Beguiled
; saxophonist Na-
than Davis, who passed away in April,
will be honored in a performance of his
Matryoshka Blues
.
A
ccording to Reid,
who
began composing just about
a decade ago at age , the
Bridges
competition sits at the forefront
of an emerging classical–jazz fusion
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 1 – JUNE 17, 2018
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