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CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- One by one, the things people love about the Chicago-area in summer, have been falling victim to the coronavirus.
Ravina, the oldest music festival in the country, has been forced to cancel its 2020 season in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is the a first for the 116-year-old summerlong festival since the Great Depression. Ravinia Festival has operated continually since its 1904 opening except for 1932–1935, when the park was silenced.
The not-for-profit festival was to have presented more than 120 events from June 12 through Sept. 16, including the annual summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - but now they are all canceled. The festival’s summer conservatory, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, will also be closed this summer.
Since February, Ravinia has been working with its guest artist to determine how best to proceed, including opportunities to rebook these performers into future seasons.
Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman said with evolving warnings about social distancing, it was impossible to move ahead with season.
“Ravinia benefits from an informed and responsible Board of Trustees and engaged family of volunteers, and our lengthy and thorough discourse on this topic has brought us to the conclusion that it is impossible to move ahead with the season,” Kauffman said.
In addition to online concert footage and interviews in support of the May 15 national PBS broadcast premiere of Bernstein’s Mass filmed last summer, Kauffman emphasized that he and the Ravinia staff are developing ideas to give the festival a “from home” presence across social platforms, including “virtual” opportunities for lectures, master classes, and rehearsals for the Lake and Cook County elementary school students who participate in Reach Teach Play, as well as for the young professionals who won acceptance to RSMI this year.
“The lives of these young students have been thrown in total disarray, so it is important that Ravinia helps where it can to provide the structure of these virtual classrooms. Our programs give young people a means of expression and connection with each other and their own quarantined families. We teach them that music is their superpower, and what better time than now to have a superpower?” Kauffman said.
Anyone who purchased tickets can receive refunds, vouchers for future performances, or they can convert the purchases to donations.
More than a half-million people attend the festival each year.
“The crisis created by the COVID pandemic has impacted so much of our lives in dramatic ways. Ravinia will do its part in helping the nation recover,” said Ravinia Board Chairman Don Civgin, “and we will celebrate that recovery with music under the stars next summer.”