7:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 2018
PAVILION
STEVE MARTIN and MARTIN SHORT
†
with
THE STEEP CANYON RANGERS and JEFF BABKO
†
An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life
†
Ravinia debut
STEVE MARTIN
Diversely successful as an actor, comedian, au-
thor, playwright, screenwriter, producer, and
musician, Steve Martin began his career in the
late
s as a writer for
e Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour
, winning his rst Emmy Award in
. By the mid-’ s, he was regularly bring-
ing his stand-up comedy to such TV series as
e Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
, HBO’s
On Location
, and
Saturday Night Live
, and he
became the rst comedian to sell out an arena
performance. Martin won Grammy Awards for
his comedy albums
Let’s Get Small
( ) and
A
Wild and Crazy Guy
( ), the latter becoming
a multi-platinum seller thanks to the populari-
ty of his rst musical single, “King Tut.” He also
received a Grammy nomination for his third
comedy album,
Comedy Is Not Pretty
(
).
Martin branched into lm with the
short
e Absent-Minded Waiter
, which he wrote and
starred in. He has since performed in more than
lms, including some of the most popular
movies in recent history, such as
Planes, Trains,
and Automobiles
,
Parenthood
, the
Father of the
Bride
and
Cheaper by the Dozen
franchises,
Baby
Mama
, and
It’s Complicated
. Martin also wrote
the screenplays for several of his most celebrat-
ed lms, including
e Jerk
,
Roxanne
,
LA Story
,
and
Shopgirl
. Altogether this work earned him
the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award, and in
he received the Ken-
nedy Center Honors. Martin’s love for the banjo
dates back to his late teens, and though it rst
surfaced in his stand-up routines, in
Mar-
tin released his rst music album,
e Crow:
New Songs for the Five-String Banjo
. A second
bluegrass album,
Rare Bird Alert
, took ight in
with guest vocals from the Dixie Chicks
and Paul McCartney, as well as two songs
co-written with the Steep Canyon Rangers. at
year, he won the International Bluegrass Music
Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award.
Martin then collaborated with songwriter Edie
Brickell on
Love Has Come for You
( ; Gram-
my winner for the title track) and
So Familiar
( ) before reuniting with the Steep Canyon
Rangers for
’s
e Long-Awaited Album
.
Steve Martin previously performed at Ravinia in
and
.
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2018
118