If the Doctor were a conductor and Moriarty played piano….

…then you'd have a pretty good approximation of our night at Ravinia this evening.

Now, I could leave my blog post at that and leave you all wondering….but i'm not (quite) that mean so i'll go on.

Tonight was our inaugural trip to Ravinia Park, home of the Ravinia Festival.  Now, for those of you determined to learn something from this blog, here's the skinny on Ravinny (the rest of you, look away now…):

In 1904, the A.C. Frost Company created Ravinia as an amusement park intended to lure riders to the fledgling Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad. The amusement park boasted a baseball diamond, electric fountain and refectory or casino building with dining rooms and a dance floor. The prairie-style Martin Theatre (then called Ravinia Theatre) is the only building on the grounds that dates back to that original construction. When the park's existence became jeopardized following the railroad's bankruptcy, local residents (for the most partChicago businessmen) formed a corporation in 1911 to purchase and operate the park. Music was a confirmed summer activity from then on, except for a brief hiatus during the Depression.^[2]

Over 100 years later, Ravinia Festival is the oldest outdoor music festival in North America and is lauded for presenting world-class music. The festival attracts about 600,000 listeners to some 120 to 150 events that span all genres from classical music to jazz to music theater over each three-month summer season from June to September.  It has been the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1936

For most attendees Ravinia is experienced on the 36 acre (150,000 m²) parkland and lawn. The unique setting allows for open seating and picnicking, where families and attendees can choose to use as much (or little) space as they need, with a powerful sound system broadcasting the live performance throughout the park. Most attendees choose to bring complete picnics and dinners to shows, with various lawn chairs, coolers full of food, blankets, candles, and lawn accessories in tow. Ravinia is one of the few concert venues in the country to allow full meals to be brought in and consumed at concerts, even allowing alcoholic beverages and bottles of wine. Accordingly, most grocery stores and specialty restaurants in and around the Highland Park area offer ready-to-eat "Ravinia picnics" for purchase.

The park is served by the Metra commuter railroad station Ravinia Park outside the front gate with special stops before and after concerts. Visitors get dropped off and picked up right at the front gate. 

https://www.ravinia.org

Yep - thats right.  Door to door service - the Metra across the street to the Metra stop at the front gate.  Spectacular.  No driving, no parking, no worries.  The concert was due to start at 8pm, so Mumsie and I got there around 6.30pm, to explore and to grab a bite to eat before the performance.  We didn't have a picnic all set up this time, but its so easy to do, especially as they will sell you the food there, the wine and plastic cups, plus rent you chairs, tables, the whole nine yards!!  You can rock on up with nothing more than a credit card and, a few minutes (and probably a couple hundred dollars later) be all kitted up, looking like a complete lawn-buffet baron with a pick-a-nic basket even Yogi would be proud of.

Pre-concert cocktail.
My work here is done.

The program for tonight was in 3 parts - Stravinsky's Firebird, Chopin Piano Concerto (insert your favorite number here) and Dvorak's New World Symphony.

It was simply spectacular.

Its been a while since I went to a classical concert and listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra do their thang, spurred on by one of the most charismatic conductors I've ever seen, was a joy to behold.

My observations and learnings from this evening:

• Conductors are just hot.  Seriously.  Especially those that are the (re)incarnation of The Tenth Doctor and exude exactly the same incredibly magnetic energy, sparkle and bounce as David Tennant used to have.  He even had the same hair for god's sake!!!  He actually made it a little hard to concentrate on the music at times - he was just too damned sexy for his own good!

• Its confirmed.  Moriarty is not dead.  He's moonlighting as a concert pianist.  And he plays a mean Chopin.  AND - the most impressive thing - he played the entire piece without a single sheet of music in front of him. 

• Watching Moriarty's hands fly up and down the keyboard on the big screen was mesmerizing.  I tried to calculate how many notes he actually plays in the course of a performance - I figured 5-6 fingers a "go" per second, over a 30-min piece of music = almost ten thousand individual key strokes!  What do you think - reckon he ever gets tempted to miss out a couple here and there?  

• The violinists in the third and final movements of Dvorak's New World Symphony get a right old workout.  I wonder if they have to go home afterwards and saw things frantically (bread, wood, frozen meat) to even up the workout for their left arm?

• I was delighted to discover that there is such a glorious invention as the "Lawncierge". All I need now is just to find 3 friends as louche and decadent as me. https://www.ravinia.org/page/lawncierge.   

• Mumsie used to play the violin!  The VIOLIN, I tell you!!  And, what's more, she was once "under the baton" (ahem) of Sir Benjamin Britton!  (Fortunately, she didn't attend Catholic or convent school, so I don't think that is a euphemism for anything else….). 

• Thats a lotta bright lights in the darkness.  I wonder if they have a problem with moth-bombing on stage?  What happens if a moth flies into a tuba?  Is it like when geese fly into the engines of planes? 

• I left with an almost irresistible urge to go eat some toast.*

So that was our night tonight at Ravinia - can't wait to go and do it all again next week!!

Ravinia pavilion

The scene on the lawn - these folk take their picnicking seriously! 

This is how you do it...

OMG.  Swoon-ville.  Even sexier in the flesh…. 

* unless you're a Brit who grew up in the 80's watching ads on the telly, this is probably going to make no sense whatsoever to you….