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Classical Fri Aug 07 2015
Pulling Strings: For Classical Music in Chicago, You Got a Guy - August 2015
Before the main music season kicks off in the next two months (and it will be a good one), here are three ways to spend the remaining dog days.
CAIC: Lieder Lounge
Ahead of its 4-day Collaborative Works Festival in September, the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago is teaming up with Lyric Opera's Ryan Opera Center for a summer installment of its popular Lieder Lounge series. Ryan Center members Lindsay Metzger (mezzo-soprano), Anthony Clark Evans (baritone), and Mario Marra (piano) will present a recital of songs including pieces by Gerald Finzi. Get a closeup concert experience in one of the best small venues in the city - and that Fazioli piano isn't too shabby, either. Tickets are $35/general, $30/seniors, $15/students. Saturday, August 15, 7:00pm. Pianoforte, 1335 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.
Rush Hour Concerts
The final month of the Rush Hour Concerts Summer Series includes a roster of favorite artists and big name composers. The Avalon Quartet (August 11) performs Beethoven's monumental Grosse Fugue, a work that Alex Ross calls "a musicological Holy Grail." Third Coast Percussion (August 18) rolls up its truckload of instruments and contemporary repertoire with works by Glenn Kotche (Wilco), August Read Thomas, and TCP's own David Skidmore. The series concludes with Richard Wagner's Siegfried Idyll (August 25), a single work for chamber orchestra performed by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera Orchestra, and Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Admission is free. Tuesdays through August. St. James Cathedral, 65 E. Huron, Chicago.
Grant Park Music Festival
GPMF enters its concluding weeks of 2015 with some epic musical epics, bro. Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) appears to be a generic depiction on the surface, but it's totally about the composer. Heldenleben is paired with Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Overture to The Secret of Suzanne and Paul Schoenfeld's Four Parables for Piano and Orchestra (August 14 and 15). James Ehnes performs Beethoven's Violin Concerto in a one-night-only show (August 19) that includes the North American premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Adventures. The season wraps with Edward Elgar's rarely performed oratorio, The Kingdom, with the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus joined by a cast of internationally renowned soloists. Admission is free. Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago.
About the author: Elliot Mandel is a freelance photographer specializing in classical concerts and you should hire him for your next show. He is also a sometime writer and an enthusiastically amateur cellist.
