Ravinia is one of Chicago's summer music venues. It's the summer home of the Chicago Symphony and also presents many concerts of other music genres - John Legend is coming, and Lenny Kravitz and Earth Wind and Fire, just to name a few. It's a beautiful outdoor venue, though the main concert area is a sheltered theater with the sides open to the park.
It was somewhat primitive when I first moved to the Chicago area in 1975. It's now upgraded and expanded, with a more performance areas, upscale restaurants, and learning programs for promising young musicians and elementary school children. The current music director is Marin Alsop, who has been adventurous in programming. This summer she is leading the Breaking Barriers Festival this year focusing on women leaders in food and (classical) music. She has programmed music by women composers (who do not get nearly as much exposure as men) and has been really innovative with concerts this summer.
On Tuesday, my husband and I attended "Chefs and Bites," at one of the smaller theaters at the park. Six women chefs were features. Each of them had created a "small bite," kind of like tapas. Before the concert everyone got a tray with six small compartments. We walked around to each of the chef stations and picked up a "bite." And a water bottle! The directions were to take our bites into the concert hall, listen to the chef introduction before each musical piece explaining the choice of music and flavors, and then eat the correct bites while listening to the music. (Did everyone follow these directions? No.)
It was such an interesting idea. The bites of food were interesting and tasty. There was a "most decadent brownie" with buckwheat, mascarpone, tahini, grape compote, and black sesame caramel, for example. as well as a gazpacho with heirloom tomatoes, and a jasmine and red bean rainbow brownie.
You can see the program below. Quiet City is a beautiful atmospheric piece for solo trumpet and english horn with strings. Syrinx is another beautiful, evocative piece, for solo flute, only flute, no accompaniment. La Bonne Cuisine was, I think, quite funny, but it would have really helped to have the words in the program. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is another beautiful, impressionistic work (again featuring flute). Bridges was interesting and the Libertango was engaging and fun.
I had a very good time at this event, but while the food was tasty, I didn't feel any connection between the paired bites and compositions. Oh well. It was still fun and it's always great to hear the Chicago Symphony musicians.
I love the concept of this. I admit that I would be one of those who would probably not follow the rules, not when there is food in front of me. arjeha
ReplyDeleteLOL! No one got yelled at for not following directions though.
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