Marin Alsop looks ahead to this summer at Ravinia

Besides Riccardo Muti, few conductors have spent more time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in recent years than Marin Alsop. 

In 2018 and ’19, she served as curator of the Ravinia Festival’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, including a 14-concert tribute in the first season with the CSO, the summer event’s longtime orchestra-in-residence.

Then, in February 2020, she was named as the festival’s first-ever chief conductor and curator. (Ravinia just announced that her contract has been extended to 2025.) She was supposed to begin her duties that year, but the COVID-19 shutdown postponed her debut in the position to 2021, when she led seven programs with the CSO.

“Getting to know the orchestra, working intensely for so many weeks in a row and in such a wide range of repertoire and soloists, I think it was really special,” Alsop said of her first year in new role. “I have to say that I fell in love with the orchestra in a new, much deeper way. From my perspective, it was a real joy.”

Alsop, chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, will be able to draw on that familiarity Feb. 10 and 12, when she joins the CSO for Orchestra Hall concerts featuring Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1, Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Czech pianist Lukáš Vondráček and Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

Last summer at Ravinia, Vondráček made his debut with the Chicago Symphony in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Alsop also led such works as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, James P. Johnson’s Harlem Symphony and Stacy Garrop’s The Battle for the Ballot.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 strictures prevented the programming of any blockbusters like Bernstein’s Mass. Alsop oversaw Ravinia’s first presentation of that epic cross-disciplinary piece in 2018, leading 275 singers and musicians in all. An encore performance in 2019, again with Alsop, was filmed for public television’s “Great Performances.”

“Because of the COVID restrictions and the new interest, thank god, in more diverse repertoire and more diverse composers being represented, we were able to explore music that they [Ravinia] haven’t programmed before,” she said. “So on many levels, it ended up being interesting for the musicians. It was more chamber-orchestra repertoire so they were featured more. I think it worked in a very positive way.”

The Ravinia Festival will announce on Feb. 10 the lineup of concerts that Alsop and the Chicago Symphony will present in 2022 (see below); so for this interview, conducted last month, she could not yet reveal any details of what she has planned. But she did acknowledge that the offerings will be less restricted by coronavirus protocols than in 2021. “I think we will be able to do bigger repertoire, and we will be able to have choruses, so we are definitely looking at all of that,” Alsop said.

Does that mean there will be some large-scale works? “I think there will be at least one concert you could term larger scale,” she said, “but I think there will be more than one, to be honest,” she said. “You know, I have that conductor disease: bigger is always better.”

Alsop, who originally signed a two-year contract as Ravinia’s curator and chief conductor, looks forward to continuing in the role through 2025.

“My feeling is: keep doing something as long as it is working,” she said. “And when it stops working, everyone moves on.”

A contract extension and a new festival

Along with a three-year contract extension for Marin Alsop as chief conductor and curator, the Ravinia Festival has announced her 2022 programs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as the new Breaking Barriers Festival. ’

Curated by Alsop, the annual festival will showcase diverse artists and leaders at the forefront of classical music. This year’s event, set for July 29–31, will focus on women conductors. Among the topics to be addressed will be the role of mentors, and the legacy of  arts pioneers such as Margaret Hillis, founder and director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus; composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, Alsop’s primary mentor, and Alsop herself and the 20th anniversary of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship (which was named to honor Alsop and benefactor Tomio Taki).

“Marin Alsop’s leadership and mentorship continue to inspire a diverse range of artists to shape the future of classical music,” said Jeff Haydon, president and CEO of Ravinia. “Ravinia is thrilled to extend Marin’s partnership and to expand her leadership of our presentations by establishing the annual Breaking Barriers Festival. We’re also eager to have her connect again with our education programs, Reach Teach Play.”

In a statement, Alsop said, “I’m thrilled to continue this creative partnership with the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the visionary management and board of the Ravinia Festival. Gender equality and representation in music are areas I’ve focused on during my entire career, and it’s gratifying to work with partners who support and champion positive change in our industry.”

The inaugural Breaking Barriers Festival consists of two CSO concerts led by Alsop, former Taki Alsop fellows Jeri Lynne Johnson and Laura Jackson, and newly named 2022 fellow Anna Duczmal-Mróz; screenings of the documentary “The Conductor,” about Alsop; the symposium “Forging Paths for Women Conductors”; an exhibit about the history of women conductors in Chicago, and a performance of a new work by Jessie Montgomery, adapted from Because, a Mo Willems’ book about a young girl who becomes a conductor.

In addition to Breaking Barriers, which concludes Alsop’s 2022 residency, her first two weeks with the CSO this summer will showcase:

● July 15: pianist Stewart Goodyear in works by Julia Perry, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
● July 16: a jazz/classical program featuring pianist and composer Marcus Roberts in his own music, spirituals and Dvořák’s New World Symphony.
● July 17: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) and Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony.
● July 22: Brahms’ German Requiem featuring the Chicago Symphony Chorus, soprano 
Yeree Suh and baritone Matthias Goerne, paired with the CSO premiere of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion.
● July 24: Ravinia’s annual gala starring Tony Award-winning singer Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”) in his CSO debut.

Breaking Barriers: Women on the Podium, July 29-31
● July 29: A panel of women business leaders precedes an 8 p.m. CSO concert, conducted by Alsop, Anna Duczmal-Mróz, Laura Jackson and Jeri Lynne Johnson, of Jessie Montgomery’s Source Code, Michael Daugherty’s Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite (assembled by Alsop).
● July 30: At 11 a.m. the symposium “Forging Paths for Women Conductors,” with Alsop; Cheryl Frazes Hill, Chicago Symphony Chorus associate director, and conductors Anna Duczmal-Mróz and Jeri Lynne Johnson, and moderated by critic-lecturer Wynne Delacoma. At 5:30 p.m., a screening of the documentary “The Conductor” about Alsop, and a CSO concert, conducted by Alsop, of Golijov’s Rose of the Winds and Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 (Kaddish), with musicians from the Silk Road Ensemble, soprano Janai Brugger and narrator Jaye Ladymore.
● July 31: At 1 p.m., a family concert with the Chicago Sinfonietta, conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson, in Jessie Montgomery’s Because, based on the book by Mo Willems, and other works to be announced. An additional screening of “The Conductor” (time TBA) and a concert at 7:30 p.m. with jazz bassist-composer Esperanza Spalding.

The rest of the CSO programming at Ravinia 2022 will be announced on March 24.