WFMT to present a live broadcast of the CSO’s opening night at Ravinia

WMFT-FM will present a live broadcast of “Turn Up the Joy: Beethoven 9 Expanded,” the opening-night concert July 14 of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s summer residency at the Ravinia Festival. The concert, which begins at 8 p.m., can be heard over the air at 98.7 or streamed online at wfmt.com/listen. 

Marin Alsop, Ravinia’s chief conductor, leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with guest vocalists (soprano Janai Brugger, mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon, tenor Paul Appleby, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green), the Adrian Dunn Singers and the Senn High School Choir.

The program opens with See Me, an a cappella choral work by Chicago-born composer Reena Esmail, and then continues without a break into Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Jazz and African drumming interludes, performed by Ayodele Drum & Dance and the Jim Gailloreto Trio, will link its first and second movements, so the whole piece proceeds without interruption. “It’s kind of a radical idea, but we’re trying to connect everything in a way that brings a cultural and timely resonance to what’s going on and creates a journey piece,” Alsop said.

The fourth movement, originally set to German text by Friedrich Schiller, features a new English-language adaptation by U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. It echoes Schiller’s call for equality and freedom in contemporary terms. Carnegie Hall commissioned Smith’s adaptation for its “Global Ode to Joy,” part of the Beethoven 250th celebration in 2020.