Wednesdays at 6:30 pm
The Grant Park Music Festival is back, and so are WFMT’s live broadcasts!
WFMT is bringing you the very best that the Grant Park Music Festival has to offer this summer, giving you a front-row ticket to the Chicago summertime institution. With live broadcasts featuring scintillating solo performances, rousing choral opuses, and beloved orchestral landmarks, WFMT is your ticket to a whole summer’s worth of great music.
Barber Violin Concerto
Kalena Bovell leads the Grant Park Orchestra in the wistful lyricism of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with acclaimed violinist Will Hagen. Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst opens the concert with a bang, and actors from Lookingglass Theatre Company bring to life Peter Boyer’s innovative multimedia work Ellis Island: The Dream of America.
Independence Day Salute
Christopher Bell conducts the Grant Park Orchestra in this annual Chicago tradition. The family-friendly celebration includes patriotic favorites alongside Gershwin’s Three Preludes with principal clarinetist Dario Brignoli and Carlos Gardel’s Tango (Por Una Cabeza) with concertmaster Jeremy Black.
Sibelius Symphony No. 2
Conductor Laureate Carlos Kalmar returns for Sibelius’s majestic Symphony No. 2, an emblem of Finnish nationalism written at a time of cultural and linguistic suppression. Christopher Theofanidis’s Drum Circle makes its Chicago premiere, featuring the virtuosic musicians of Third Coast Percussion.
Ravel Piano Concerto
Conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson makes her Festival debut with William Grant Still’s celebratory Festive Overture, followed by Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto featuring star pianist Michelle Cann. Florence Price’s sweeping Symphony No. 3 concludes the program in its first Festival outing.
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3
Conductor Laureate Carlos Kalmar returns to the Festival with the technically brilliant pianist Olga Kern for Rachmaninoff’s highly virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3. The program also features Stravinsky’s mischievously charming ballet Game of Cards and Elgar’s sunny In the South.
