Review: On Thursday and Saturday nights, May 2 and 4, the fare was exotic classicism, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” spotlighting both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut of conductor Elim Chan and the bewitching solos of associate concertmaster Stephanie Jeong. On Friday night and Sunday afternoon, all eyes were on the big screen suspended over the orchestra for a showing of director Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi charmer “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” with the CSO providing John Williams’ indispensable musical score live.
Read the full story »Cellist Yo-Yo Ma draws a flood of enthusiasts for solo Bach marathon that ends with a romp
Review: The scene on the perimeter of Millennium Park in the early evening of June 20 looked a lot more like Lollapalooza than the turnout for a prodigious cello recital. The gathering throng was lined up for blocks, down Michigan Avenue and around the corner and up the Monroe Street hill – 20,000 enthusiasts patiently waiting to filter through security for a rare event, maybe the opportunity of a lifetime: to hear Yo-Yo Ma play J.S. Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello in a non-stop, two-and-a-half-hour immersion.
Secret’s out: North Shore Chamber Festival brings high-impact encounters to Northbrook
Review: The North Shore Chamber Music Festival is the Chicago-area classical scene’s best-kept secret. Anything but a run-of-the-mill suburban musical offering, it offers the kind of top-level talent typically heard downtown or in other major music centers. How is this possible in Northbrook? Thank local residents Vadim Gluzman, an internationally known violin soloist, and his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe, who founded the festival in 2011.
American Players Theatre, set for its 40th year, cues the Bard, Tennessee and August Wilson
Preview: American Players Theatre, nestled in the woodland hills near Spring Green, Wis., about 30 miles west of Madison, rolls out its 40th summer June 15 with Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Shaw’s “The Man of Destiny,” to be followed by seven more productions during a season that runs into early November. Says artistic director Brenda DeVita, now in her sixth year: “Our job is not to preserve, but to create. We are always changing.”
In glittering anniversary year, Grant Park Fest mixes Beethoven with usual unusual suspects
Preview: It’s a big-numbered year for the Grant Park Music Festival, which opens June 12 at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Not only does 2019 mark the free festival’s 85th anniversary, but it’s also the 15th summer for the Pritzker Pavilion and the 20th season at the festival helm for conductor Carlos Kalmar. Not surprisingly, Kalmar wanted to do grand things. The result measures up. The word for this celebratory season is Big.
Simone Young makes her CSO podium debut: Was this the stick that led a thousand firsts?
Review: Australian native Simone Young was the first woman to be appointed resident conductor of Opera Australia (1986), first to conduct the Vienna State Opera (1993) and the Vienna Philharmonic (2005) – as well as the first female conductor to record a complete cycle of Bruckner symphonies (2012) and a complete Wagner “Ring” cycle (2016). Her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on June 6 at Orchestra Hall left a mixed impression.
Lyric’s Ryan Center singers, Civic Orchestra produce plenty of sparkle on a shared stage
Review: Spirits were high and the audience could hardly have been more receptive when singers from the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Center for professional training collaborated with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in an evening of opera arias and scenes June 5 at Orchestra Hall. The concert conducted by Michael Christie sampled a nicely varied mix of four operas from the 18th-20th centuries.
Role Playing: Maurice Jones wasn’t shooting
for CST’s Hamlet – but it simply was to be
Interview: Maurice Jones, who plays the title role in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s current production of “Hamlet,” apparently made quite an impression at his audition. Actually, he overshot just a bit. He was trying out for the supporting part of Laertes. Jones had never played Hamlet, but when the actor who originally won the job had to back out, CST artistic director Barbara Gaines, who also directs this show, asked Jones if he’d be game to step up – and take on one of the greatest and most challenging roles in theater.
‘Miracle,’ a musical memory of the 2016 Cubs, drives nostalgia to deep center – back, back…
Review: “Miracle,” a new musical about the 2016 Chicago Cubs at the Royal George Theatre with music and lyrics by Michael Mahler and book by Jason Brett, extends its charming lure especially to that subset of devout Cubs fans who remember exactly where they were at 11:47 p.m. (Chicago time) Nov. 2, 2016, when the North Siders won their first World Series in 108 years. It’s a luxurious dip into unbridled nostalgia. ★★★
Partnering of Chicago Symphony and Joffrey shows promise despite limits in staging ballet
Review: With exquisite music and lovely dancers, the idea of engaging in some cross-cultural pollination between the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet made perfect sense. But without an ideal dance floor, theatrical lighting or entrance-exit options, the Symphony Center experiment, which included the world premiere of Stephanie Martinez’s “Bliss!” set to music of Stravinsky, didn’t quite work.
‘Winter’s Tale’ at Goodman: Clearing the high dramatic hurdle, crashing on rustic comedy
Review: Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” which begins with an outrageous and apparently unprovoked display of jealousy by a king toward his beloved wife and their best friend, works in its most problematic moments with rare plausibility and conviction thanks to director Robert Falls and an impeccably gauged performance by Dan Donohue. Yet the Goodman Theatre production also goes off the rails where the going seems easiest – in broad comedy. ★★★
‘Killing Game’ at Red Orchid: They’re dropping like flies in a wacky plague on all their houses
Review: Eugène Ionesco’s “Killing Game” won’t solve life’s Big Riddle – why we’re here at all – for you. But this imaginative production directed by Dado will provide you with acidly brilliant company at A Red Orchid Theatre, where 13 skilled actors play many, many roles – because otherwise their parts would have been exceedingly brief. The citizens are dropping dead in dizzying succession, and in often ridiculous fashion, of an unknown cause. ★★★★
With Orchestra Hall again open for business, Uchida and Kissin electrify capacity houses
Review: The piano was at center stage, and all seemed right with the world in the happy, normal – actually, quite thrilling – aftermath of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s protracted strike. Many an anticipated concert got wiped out by the strike, but the timing favored two pianists who happen to be favorites at Orchestra Hall: Mitsuko Uchida, who gave a memorable performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor with the CSO under Riccardo Muti (May 9-11), and Evgeny Kissin, who offered a typically thoughtful, brilliant and roaringly received recital May 12.
‘West Side Story’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago:
New love and old hatred stirred at high heat
Review: By now, Lyric Opera of Chicago can claim an impressive string of spring musicals, hugely popular explorations of classic Americana that appear like shining exclamation marks at the end of regular opera seasons. The latest, “West Side Story,” well may be the finest. Indeed, you might be hard pressed ever to find a more profoundly satisfying account of this exquisite music-drama, which shares with its model, Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” both its bittersweet hope and its timeless tragedy. ★★★★★
Chicago Symphony, its fabled sound blazing, gets wild welcome in return to Orchestra Hall
Review: O say, can you see – the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is back, its seven-week strike over, music on the stands and music director Riccardo Muti once more presiding from the podium. To a whooping, standing-O reception, the CSO roared back into action at Orchestra Hall on May 2 with a performance that made clear the orchestra, in a twinkling, was all the way back: a full-fledged do-over. And lest anyone miss the point that, even at the three-quarter mark of the season, this was in spirit a restart, Muti began with a flick of his baton for a drumroll and struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
‘Hamlet’ at Chicago Shakespeare: In honoring Bard’s language, an actor hones ambivalence
Review: The much that is good about Chicago Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is very good indeed, starting with Maurice Jones’ rigorously thought-through and yet convincingly spontaneous performance as the melancholy Prince of Denmark. But unevenness among the rest of the principal roles takes a toll on this enterprise under company artistic director Barbara Gaines. ★★★★
‘Moby-Dick’ at Chicago Opera Theater: Condensing the scope, cranking up the power
Review: When Jake Heggies’ opera “Moby-Dick” had its world premiere in Dallas in 2010, everything about it was gargantuan and cutting edge technically, with enormous set pieces, elements flying in and out, lighting sufficient to evoke boat-swallowing storms at sea, and whale-size computer graphics. But a new and nifty mid-size design concept, seen at Chicago Opera Theater at the Harris atop Millennium Park, was just as thrilling, even more intense, as it zoomed in on the swirling human action and lurking danger in the vast surround. ★★★★
‘A Number’ at Writers: Haunted by the past, dad seeks ideal son in future perfect of DNA
Review: Salter’s little boy was perfect. Beautiful. In his father’s eyes, the child Bernard was everything a man could wish for. Then, something happened. What, exactly, is the conundrum at the core of Caryl Churchill’s intriguing futuristic play “A Number,” in which William Brown and Nate Burger now occupy the stage at Writers Theatre. ★★★★
CSO strike ends with 5-year contract accord; musicians accept phased change in pensions
Report: The striking musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra voted April 27 to approve a new five-year contract that compromises on pensions and projects wage increases totaling 13.25 percent. The agreement was reached April 26, the day Mayor Rahm Emanuel stepped into a contentious dispute between the musicians and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association that had led to the strike March 11. Under the new agreement, the pension plan will be frozen after the 2022-23 season and transition thereafter to a model that shifts the future investment burden to the musicians themselves. Unanimous approval by the musicians came hours before the Association board of trustees also voted to approve the contract.
Joffrey Ballet shifts its gaze ‘Across the Pond’ with two world premieres on contemporary bill
Review: To conclude a whirlwind season of grand-scale narrative works that included Christopher Wheeldon’s Degas-inspired riff on “Swan Lake” and his Chicago World’s Fair-driven take on “The Nutcracker,” as well as the world premiere of Yuri Possokhov’s cinematic version of “Anna Karenina,” the Joffrey Ballet’s artistic director, Ashley Wheater, decided to shift gears in a most intriguing way. The result is “Across the Pond,” the umbrella title for a fascinating mixed bill showcasing three contemporary British choreographers,
‘Hannah and Martin’ at Shattered Globe: Fireworks of mind and heart as the Reich rises
Review: In a Chicago theater season that has produced a generous share of first-rate work, there’s been little that might top the brilliance and torment generated by Christina Gorman and Lawrence Grimm in Kate Fodor’s “Hannah and Martin” at Shattered Globe Theatre. It’s a story as mesmerizing as it is heated and exotic, this historical – and historically sound – romantic affair and intellectual tussle between two of the most influential philosophers of the last century: Martin Heidegger, a Nazi sympathizer, and the Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt, ★★★★★
‘The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey’: Charismatic gay boy, sundry friends, one actor
Review: What’s so seductively marvelous about Joe Foust’s one-man turn through James Lecesne’s bittersweet play “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” currently in production at American Blues Theater, is not simply the actor’s ability to sustain a complicated narrative alone on the stage. What’s absolutely magical is Foust’s blink-of-an-eye transformations from one fully formed character into another, each new persona as distinctive, empathic and credible as the last. ★★★★
Chicago Symphony throw-down is private: musicians and trustees only; all others beat it
Commentary: The strike by musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, now entering its second month, has brought into focus some realities about high-level orchestras in our time, the nature of work stoppages such as this one and the framework of negotiations between musicians and management. Perhaps the first point to be made is the inappropriateness of outsiders to presume to judge how an impasse in negotiations should be resolved.
‘For Colored Girls’ at Court: Getting through hard lives with a distant promise of rainbows
Review: You have half a dozen more chances to see Ntozake Shange’s stunning play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” before it closes April 14 at Court Theatre. That is, assuming a seat opens up; the remainder of the run is sold out. No surprise there. “For Colored Girls” is a theatrical experience of authentic soul and rare beauty. ★★★★★
Lutenist O’Dette, Newberry Consort to revisit forgotten world of French Renaissance music
Review: Musically, the French Renaissance was a bountiful era that surely would never be forgotten. Yet curiously and regrettably, says the celebrated lute virtuoso and Renaissance expert Paul O’Dette, the music of 16th-century France has pretty much tumbled into oblivion. Which only makes the more alluring O’Dette’s appearance April 5-7 with the Newberry Consort for a program devoted to – what else? — la musique française à l’époque de la Renaissance.
‘Sweat’ at Goodman: When the jobs go away, even best friends can lose sight of forever
Review: The tragic grandeur of Lynn Nottage’s play “Sweat,” now indispensably on display at Goodman Theatre, resides in its complex truths. All in one remarkable tumble, it is a play about the vulnerability of the labor class, the crassness of their overlords, the fragility of friendships, the partitions of tribalism and the volatile bond between mothers and sons. ★★★★★
Chicago Symphony contract talks to resume; events canceled by strike extended to April 9
April 3 Update: The musicians of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra had expected to play Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony on March 26 at Orchestra Hall. Instead, with the Chicago Symphony on strike, the visiting musicians took to the streets — one could almost say the barricades — in solidarity with their Chicago colleagues. Brass players from the two orchestras played briefly on the sidewalk in front of Orchestra Hall amid signs proclaiming their unity.
In a grand night of singing, Lyric Opera fetes Renée Fleming – with help from starry friends
Review: Her colleagues sang tributes, the next generation of opera stars chipped in with the exuberance of youth and the audience rocked the house on soprano Renée Fleming’s night – a very vocal celebration of that superstar’s multifaceted 25-year association with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The concert March 23 at the Lyric Opera House acknowledged the many ways the singer has contributed to the company as vocal star, consultant and mentor over the last quarter-century.
Lyric Opera’s small-scaled ‘American Dream’ reflects supersized bid to stretch the art form
Commentary: The pool of grand opera subscribers may be slowly shrinking nationally, but one can’t help feeling optimistic about Lyric Opera of Chicago’s long-term prospects as the company continues to refine and redefine itself. The Opera’s nimble branch – Lyric Unlimited – attracted two crowds of 1,100 each to the Harris Theater on March 15 and 17 for its latest chamber opera presentation, “An American Dream.” A loudly enthusiastic audience was the latest evidence of the hard work that Lyric has put into its own expanded vision.
‘Herland’ at Redtwist: Three senior ladies give new meaning to garage band’s sacred domain
Review: As shaggy dog stories go, Grace McLeod’s “Herland,” now rollicking about in the very small space of Redtwist Theatre, is funny from start almost to finish. The show derives its nearly nonstop energy and substantial appeal from three middle-aged actresses and a convincingly vulnerable young actress playing in a you-are-there garage set. Right at the finish line, however, “Herland” makes a sudden shift from high comedy to self-conscious morality tale and concludes in an awkward effort to make its point. ★★★
Starry cast will honor soprano Renée Fleming as Lyric notes 25th anniversary of her debut
Preview: Megastar soprano Renée Fleming, affectionately known in the opera world as “the diva next door,” remembers very well her debut 25 years ago at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the title role of Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah.” But that event is only the touchstone of Lyric’s glittering 25th anniversary concert March 23, which really celebrates a quarter-century of close partnership between the opera company and Fleming as singer, consultant and mentor.
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