Description

Chicago’s hometown star violinist Rachel Barton Pine makes her first full-evening appearance at Ravinia in nearly a decade, following a heroic performance of Prokofiev’s First Concerto with the CSO on hours’ notice in 2021. “An exciting, boundary-defying performer” (Washington Post), Pine continues a thread from not only her guest appearance with pianist Lara Downes later that summer, but more than 20 years’ leading focus: the superlative artistry of Black composers and works in the popular canon influenced by Black music and musicians. The blues especially weave through the program, from the solo improvisational Blues Dialogues by Chicago native Dolores White (who passed in March 2023) to Ravel’s jazz-age Violin Sonata. Inna Faliks, “a pianist of the highest order, as dramatic or as subtle as a great stage actor” (WTTW), joins to highlight music by Still representing Black visual artists and spirituals as well as composer-pianist—and RSMI Jazz Program co-director—Billy Childs’s intimate tone-poem response to a fatal shooting by police, commissioned by Pine for her 2018 album Blues Dialogues.