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Ravinia Festival®, North America’s oldest music festival, stands today as its most musically diverse, presenting over 100 different events throughout the summer. These concerts run the gamut from Yo-Yo Ma to John Legend to the annual summer residency of the nation’s finest orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Jeff Haydon is Ravinia’s President and CEO, bringing more than two decades of arts management and programming experience to the top job, as well as a lifelong love of music as both an avid audience member and musician. Haydon is dedicated to building on the “Ravinia experience,” including inspiring and enabling communities to engage with music through the festival’s Reach Teach Play programs. One of the world’s most accomplished conductors, Marin Alsop is Chief Conductor and Curator for multiple weeks of concerts with the CSO. The festival employs a full-time staff of about 55 year-round, but that number grows tenfold when summer arrives and seasonal jobs go to ushers, food service, phone center operators, and others who help the show to go on. Ravinia also runs its prestigious summer music conservatory, the Steans Music Institute, on its grounds. Each year, 60–70 talented young professional musicians from around the world are awarded fully paid fellowships to come work with an esteemed faculty and the headliners who frequent the festival. The 36-acre park, just north of Chicago, is nestled in a gently wooded area that makes it an enchanting place to experience music, whether in the 3,350-seat open-air Pavilion and the surrounding Lawn, or indoors in the 850-seat Martin Theatre or 450-seat Bennett Gordon Hall. Guests can bring their own picnics or enjoy food and drinks from the restaurants and bars in the park. Children up to age 15 and high-school and college students are admitted free to the Lawn for classical performances.

Lyric Opera of Chicago, founded in 1954, is one of the world's greatest opera companies. It is renowned internationally for its artistic excellence and financial strength. Over the past two decades the company has achieved unparalleled success in its ticket sales, averaging 100% attendance from 1988-2002. Lyric Opera is also distinguished for having operated in the black for 20 of the past 21 years.

We are more than an unforgettable night out, we also help organizations inspire better performance. We use the methods pioneered on our world-renowned stages to create meetings + events people don’t want to miss (or leave), content that connects because it’s funny and honest, and professional development programs that get people to change—because they get people. Through hundreds of engagements a year, we drive personal growth and organizational improvement. Interaction by interaction, we help people and companies get better at the things they do every day.