Grant Park Music Festival (formerly Grant Park Concerts) is an annual ten-week classical music concert series held in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It features the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Grant Park Chorus along with featured guest performers and conductors. The Festival has earned non-profit organization status. It claims to be the nation's only free, outdoor classical music series. The Grant Park Music Festival has been a Chicago tradition since 1931 when Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak suggested free concerts to lift spirits of Chicagoans during the Great Depression. The tradition of symphonic Grant Park Music Festival concerts began in 1935.
The Festival is housed in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park section of Grant Park in the Loop community area of Chicago. The 2004 season, during which the Festival moved to the Pritzker Pavilion, was the 70th season for the Festival. On occasion, the Festival has been held at the Harris Theater instead of the Pritzker Pavilion. Formerly, the Grant Park Music Festival was held at the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park. The Festival began when the music shell was located in its original location and moved when it was relocated.
Over time the Festival has had various financial supporters, three primary locations and one name change. The Festival has at times been nationally broadcast and has consistently enjoyed the efforts of many of the worlds leading classical musicians. Recently, the Festival organizers have agreed to release some of the concerts to the public via compact disk recordings.
Read more about Grant Park Music Festival: Funding, History, Performances, Reception
Famous quotes containing the words grant, park, music and/or festival:
“Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what love did seek;”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public igominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The train was crammed, the heat stifling. We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have fed and slept, life will regain its looks, and the American instruments will make music in the merry cafe described by our friend Lange. And then, sometime later, we die.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)