Ravinia Festival - Performance and Other Venues

Performance and Other Venues

• The Pavilion, a 3,200-seat venue where the park's major music events and concerts, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances, are held. Patrons can see the shows in a traditional concert setting in an open-air theater with state-of-the-art sound, video and lighting equipment or choose to sit in the lawn area and listen to the music while picnicking.

• The Martin Theatre, an 850-seat indoor hall often used for chamber music, semi-staged opera performances, Martinis at the Martin cabaret series, and other intimate shows.

• Bennett Gordon Hall, the 450-seat home of the Steans Institute for Young Artists, Rising Stars series, also used for pre-concert discussions and preview concerts. The Steans Institute for Young Artists is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians. Three programs comprise the Institute's summer season: the program for jazz; the classical programs for piano and strings and for singers. In each of the programs, young artists study with an internationally renowned faculty of artist/teachers, participate in concerts given as part of Ravinia's summer programming and attend Ravinia concerts. Musicians from Ravinia's Steans Institute is a chamber ensemble whose members are selected each year from the most promising musicians to attend the Institute’s summer session at Ravinia. They perform on tour with program director Miriam Fried. The repertoire for each tour varies but always includes three or four works for piano and strings. The tour, designed to bring the musical richness of Ravinia to a wider audience, presents formal concerts as well as educational outreach programs for schools and community organizations. Musicians from Ravinia’s Steans Institute have appeared at such prestigious venues as Boston’s Gardner Museum, the Library of Congress, Miami’s Friends of Chamber Music series and New York’s Town Hall, in addition to performances each year on the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Stars series.