Levitt Pavilions Competitors

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.

As America's National Park for the Performing Arts, Wolf Trap plays a valuable leadership role in both the local and national performing arts communities. Through a wide range of artistic and education programs, Wolf Trap enhances our nation's cultural life and ensures that the arts remain accessible and affordable to the broadest possible audience. A typical season at Wolf Trap includes something for everyone with performances ranging from pop, country, folk, and blues to orchestra, dance, theater, and opera, as well as innovative performance art and multimedia presentations.

The Nashville Symphony is one of the most active recording orchestras in the U.S., with 29 releases on Naxos, the world’s largest independent classical label. Encompassing a wide range of repertoire, from Beethoven to Bernstein to Joan Tower, these recordings have earned a total of 13 GRAMMY® Awards and 24 nominations. Award-winning recordings include Tower’s Made in America, Stephen Paulus’ Three Places of Enlightenment and Michael Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony and Tales of Hemingway. Released in 2015, the orchestra’s recording of Ben Folds’ Piano Concerto debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical and Classical Crossover charts, and stayed in the Classical Crossover Top 20 in the first year of its release. Education and community engagement have been at the core of the Nashville Symphony’s mission since its founding. Each year the organization reaches 80,000 children and adults with more than 20 free or low-cost programs, including Young People’s Concerts for K-12 students; sectional lessons with band and orchestra students; and free Community Concerts. In 2016, the Nashville Symphony launched Accelerando, a forward-thinking initiative designed to prepare young musicians from underrepresented ethnic communities for collegiate study and professional orchestra careers. Participating students receive individual instrument instruction, performance opportunities, and guidance on applying to colleges and conservatories. Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the orchestra’s home since 2006, is widely considered one of the world’s finest acoustical venues. Named in honor of former music director Kenneth Schermerhorn and located in the heart of Nashville’s booming downtown, the building boasts distinctive neo-Classical architecture incorporating motifs and design elements that pay homage to the history, culture and people of Middle Tennessee.