Grant Park Music Festival features Del Tredici, Rorem, Copland, and more
Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival will feature David Del Tredici’s Acrostic Song and Ned Rorem’s Seven Motets for the Church Year this summer, as well as works by Aaron Copland, Alberto Ginastera, Leonard Bernstein, and Benjamin Britten. The free outdoor classical music series will present concerts at Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavillion and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in downtown Chicago.
On June 28 and 30, Christopher Bell will conduct the Grant Park Chorus in a program featuring a cappella works by American composers that includes Del Tredici’s Acrostic Song and Rorem’s Seven Motets for the Church Year. Part of his larger work Final Alice, Del Tredici’s Acrostic Song is a setting of the concluding poem from the second of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books, Through the Looking Glass. The poem is an acrostic, in which the initial letters of the lines spell out the name of the real Alice (ALICE PLEASANCE LIDDELL), for whom the stories were written. Rorem’s Seven Motets for the Church Year is a modern setting of the texts from the Liber Usualis, the Catholic liturgical book of commonly-used Gregorian chants.
Celebrating U.S. Independence Day, the Grant Park Orchestra presents a concert on July 3 which includes music by American composer Aaron Copland, alongside other national favorites. The concert features Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and “Hoe Down” from Rodeo, both of which have come to represent a quintessential American sound. In a later concert on July 6, the orchestra will perform the Suite from Copland’s only full-length opera, The Tender Land.
Other highlights include the following events:
June 24-25: Latin Works for Orchestra
Alberto Ginastera: Glosses sobre temes de Pau Casals
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
Grant Park Orchestra; Carlos Kalmar, conductor
June 28/30: American a Cappella
David Del Tredici: Acrostic Song
Ned Rorem: Seven Motets for the Church Year
Harris Theater for Music and Dance
Grant Park Chorus; Christopher Bell, conductor
July 3: Independence Celebration
Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man
Copland: "Hoe Down" from Rodeo
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
Grant Park Orchestra; Christopher Bell, conductor
July 6: American and Russian Landscapes
Copland: The Tender Land: Suite
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
Grant Park Orchestra; Andrew Grams, guest conductor
July 22-23: Choral Masterpieces: Bernstein and Fauré
Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
Grant Park Orchestra & Chorus; Christopher Bell, conductor
August 3: Jennifer Koh Returns
Britten: Violin Concerto - Jennifer Koh, violin
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
Grant Park Orchestra; Carlos Kalmar, conductor
> To view scores of these works, click here.
> For more information about these performances, visit the Grant Park Music Festival’s website.
