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Jennifer W. Steans
Chairman
Welz Kauffman
President & CEO
Fried, along with such Ravinia favorites as James Conlon and
Thomas Hampson, will be among the leaders of RSMI’s live-
wire master classes, which are free and open to the public.
Earlier this year, the music world lost another towering
figure who was also music teacher to an entire nation—and
beyond. Conductor José Antonio Abreu invented the El
Sistema method of music education as social involvement to
keep kids off the mean streets of his native Venezuela. His
method of putting instruments in the hands of young people
ignited passions around the world. Ravinia follows El Sistema
in one of its own Reach*Teach*Play education programs,
which now serve more than 85,000 people each year in Cook
and Lake Counties. We’re ecstatic that the students in our own
Sistema Ravinia orchestras will have the opportunity to witness
Dudamel, the chief proponent and global ambassador for El
Sistema, at Ravinia this summer.
Of course, none of Ravinia’s mission—onstage or off—could
be achieved without the generous support of our individual
donors and corporate sponsors. Special shout outs go to
Northwestern Medicine for naming the Grand Entrance to our
park and to Allstate for returning for a second year as Lead
Reach*Teach*Play Sponsor. Ticket sales generate just over half
of the money it takes for Ravinia to help music enrich so many
lives. The balance is donated by supporters of the not-for-profit
festival. Leading that charge are the all-volunteer boards that
oversee America’s oldest and most programmatically diverse
music festival, and so we thank the Ravinia Board of Trustees,
Life Trustees, Associates Board, and our largest funder, the
Women’s Board, whose annual gala benefit this year stars
Audra McDonald with the CSO.
A special thank-you goes to our hometown, which is
gearing up for its 150th anniversary. When you visit Ravinia,
you also are visiting Highland Park, a proud city of 30,000
people and such local attractions as two shopping districts
with a variety of casual and fine dining restaurants, landscaped
parks designed by the legendary Jens Jensen, and homes
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Ravinia and Highland
Park have grown up together. After investing more than $30
million over the past decade in improvements in and around
the park, our most recent growth is the major rejuvenation
of our Dining Pavilion, featuring the new Tree Top and
Lawn Bar restaurants. We are very proud to be a part of this
community, which we support in myriad ways, from hiring
local teens for their first jobs to donating five percent of our
gross ticket sales—more than a million dollars each year—to
the city. We bring around 600,000 guests to the community
each summer, and national studies show that for every dollar
spent at a cultural institution, $7 is spent in the surrounding
neighborhood. Please support the businesses of Highland Park
and be courteous to our residential neighbors, especially when
arriving and leaving concerts.
Finally, we thank
you
, the Ravinia concertgoer. We hope
you, too, get a kick out of the 2018 season. We appreciate your
support.
MISSION STATEMENT OF THE
RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION
Ravinia is an internationally renowned, not-for-profit music
festival that presents outstanding performances by the world’s
greatest artists. Ravinia’s principal objectives are
• to present performances of a full range of classical music in
its open-air Pavilion and enclosed recital halls, by the world’s
greatest composers and musicians, along with a variety of
other kinds of light classical, jazz and popular music;
• to maintain a beautiful park that is welcoming to all and
attractive to families in which the music experience is
enhanced by a beautiful environment and excellent dining
opportunities;
• to enable gifted young performers to study under great
teachers and perform in concert settings; and
• to develop broader and more diverse audiences for classical
music through education and outreach programs and by
maintaining affordable ticket prices.
JULY 9 – JULY 22, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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