Marin Alsop and Molly Yeh team up to give a special flavor to Breaking Barriers

“If music be the food of love, play on,” wrote William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night. That might well be a cheer coming from audience members during Ravinia Festival’s Breaking Barriers festival this summer — if their mouths aren’t too full.

Now in its fourth year, Ravinia’s Breaking Barriers programming breaks new ground: three days of celebrating the ineffable, delectable intersection of food and music and women leaders of those realms. The July 25-27 weekend includes two pavilion concerts featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, sandwiching a chamber-ensemble concert with musicians from the CSO and Ravinia’s Steans Institute; each event is paired with coordinating culinary creations, from tasting dishes or small bites by eight guest celebrity chefs to special restaurant menus.

The events are curated by the internationally renowned Marin Alsop, chief conductor at Ravinia, and acclaimed food writer Molly Yeh, a Glenview native and star of the Food Network’s “Girl Meets Farm.”

It’s hard to imagine a better place for combining these two great joys in life than the beloved Highland Park venue, with its century-long history of combining food and music. “It’s so quintessentially American, this idea of sitting out on the lawn, listening to the music and watching the sky,” Alsop said. “When I came to Ravinia, it felt like coming home to that concept — but maybe on steroids, because some of the people really go wild with their picnics. That gusto was a big inspiration for pursuing this theme.

“As I was thinking about this season, well, I love cooking shows,” she said. “Although I’m a terrible cook, I’m a very good cooking-show watcher. And I’ve always thought that building a great [concert] program is very much like building a great menu. You have to have variety, but there has to be a theme of connection.”

An annual festival within the Festival, Breaking Barriers focuses on women leaders, starting with conductors in 2022 and composers in 2023. Last year, Alsop broadened the scope to explore the fascinating cross-section of music and astronomy. This year’s iteration seems likely to be the most popular yet, given its inspired culinary spin.

When Ravinia CEO Jeff Haydon contacted Yeh last summer to see if she was interested in helping to plan it, “I could not have said yes any sooner,” said Yeh, who, as the daughter of the CSO’s Assistant Principal Clarinet John Bruce Yeh, spent many summers at the festival. “Ravinia is my happy place. Some of the best and most formative parts of my summers as a kid were at Ravinia, and I would do anything to get back there more often.”

Her strong affinity for the institution contributed to making Yeh such a natural choice for the role of Breaking Barriers co-curator. She’s notched an impressive array of accomplishments in the realms of both food and music. Her extensive gastronomic experience doesn’t just include her TV show; she lives on a sugar beet and wheat farm in northern Minnesota and runs a bakery-cafe called Bernie’s. But she’s also a Juilliard-trained classical percussionist who’s performed with ensembles around the world. “She has the right brief, totally,” Alsop said.

Thanks to the many summer evenings spent here in her youth, it’s no wonder that Yeh has, in her words, “so many amazing memories of Ravinia from growing up: eating bologna Lunchables on the picnic blanket with my parents before concerts; my dad yelling at people around us if they started smoking [smoking was allowed at Ravinia back then]; getting yelled at for climbing on the sculptures — “sorry, they are just so climbable!” — eating the creamiest chocolate ice cream from the Carousel, and then changing into footie pajamas and passing out on the lawn before the concert was over.

“When I got a little older, I could truly appreciate the music,” she said. “I consider lying on the lawn and staring up at the stars while the CSO played a Mahler symphony to be one of the greatest life experiences of all time.”

“I’ve met Molly a couple times, at different concerts,” Alsop said. “Really, I’m mostly familiar with her from Food Network, because I love to watch her show. Until John told me, I didn’t really put two and two together. Then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be fun to bring her skills to the table?’ And also to have that connection to the Ravinia and Chicago Symphony family.”

“I’ve always loved the idea of a food and music festival, but it’s always felt like a difficult needle to thread,” Yeh said. But in a way, she’s been training for this gig her whole life. “When I lived in Brooklyn right after college, I would host live concerts in my apartment and make food for everyone. The concerts got rowdy, and I would cook zillions of dumplings.”

Years later, Yeh led an official food and music program in Aspen, Colorado, with pianist (and Urbana native) Conrad Tao. “He played a solo program, and in between each piece, I did a cooking demo,” she said. “It was great!”

Upon committing to the task of planning this Ravinia weekend, Alsop and Yeh divvied up their curatorial duties. The conductor selected the music for the weekend while the restaurateur recruited and worked with the participating chefs. “It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s do The Nutcracker and eat marzipan and sugar plums,’ ” Yeh said. “It was more like, ‘Here are these sounds and the stories behind them. How does a chef take them and reflect them in flavor and technique, in a way truly unique to them?’ I am on hand to answer any questions, bridging the gap between the languages of music and food.”

In selecting the various guest chefs, Yeh’s goal was to build a team whose members have diverse backgrounds and complementary skills. Several chefs have Chicago connections, which were a bonus. “Beverly Kim’s restaurant Anelya [in the Avondale neighborhood] absolutely changed my life when I ate there last year,“ Yeh said. ”And Maneet Chauhan, a Food Network friend, used to work in [Vermillion] here.”

Meanwhile, one other chef has a history that mirrors Yeh’s, she explains. “I thought, ‘Who could have a great connection with the music?’ An immediate answer: Jacqueline Eng, another former Juilliard percussionist-turned baker!”

Still, finding chefs with a background in classical music was by no means a prerequisite. “The great thing about music is: Everyone can have their own reaction or opinion about it,” Alsop said. “Just like people attending a concert, the chefs can be inspired by the music in any way, and it’s right. It’s not about what you should or shouldn’t feel; it’s all about your own personal experience.”

For her part, Alsop notes of her programming, “Food is a cultural journey, and I really wanted to have a broad overview. So many of us here in America are the product of immigrants; I wanted to reflect that in the music, to inspire the chefs to experiment.

“I tried to pick music that reflected the blending of different cultures into the American experience. In Sheherazade, of course, we have that Middle Eastern aspect. With Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, it’s the Cuban flavor seen through an American’s eye. [Composer] Reena Esmail is Indian-American. And then, I wanted to do something local to the area, so I added this movement from a percussion concerto by Tim Corpus, called The Great Lake Concerto, because he’s from the Chicago area.”

For an example of what diner-listeners might experience, Yeh offers this insight: “Grace Goudie’s dish [on July 26] is one I’m particularly excited about. Her map of going from Copland’s music to a zucchini ’nduja is so beautifully complex and original, yet it makes total sense.”

As Shakespeare pondered centuries ago, music, food and love are forever entwined. Of course, the Bard isn’t the only great thinker who mused about the unique highway to the heart paved by music and cuisine. “Good food is like music you can taste,” said Auguste Gusteau. (Well, OK, he’s an animated ghost chef from Pixar’s “Ratatouille.” Credit for that particular bit of wisdom goes to writer-director Brad Bird.)

And then there’s this maxim from Alsop: “Top-notch chefs and the Chicago Symphony — it doesn’t get much better than that.”