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 Plutos cheek,
And made Hell grant what love did seek;”
—John Milton (16081674)
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and dont talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)
“What is our life? a play of passion;
Our mirth the music of division;
Our mothers wombs the tiring-houses be
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?1618)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to lady but babyMan innocent rhyme; for scorn, hornMa hard rhyme; for school, foolMa babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)