Grant Park Music Festival Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Carlos Kalmar leads the Grant Park Orchestra at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion. Photo: Patrick Pyszka
“The Grant Park Music Festival announced its 2022 season, [heralding] the organization’s return to a 10-week season with full chorus and orchestra,” writes Hannah Edgar in Tuesday’s (1/11) Chicago Tribune. “The festival plans to present six world-premiere works this summer, the most of any season in recent memory…. If all goes according to plan, festivalgoers will finally hear the [pandemic-delayed] world premiere of Mischa Zupko’s ‘Blue Matter’ … and two festival commissions by piano luminary Billy Childs: his Violin Concerto No. 2 (played by Rachel Barton Pine) … and a new string quartet…. That’s in addition to a festival co-commission of a new flute concerto by Christopher Theofanidis, performed by Marina Piccinini … and new works … by Australian composer Carl Vine … John Harbison and Tebogo Monnakgotla…. The Grant Park Chorus … closes out the festival … with its traditional choral-orchestral blowout, this time of Haydn’s ‘Creation’ oratorio…. The chorus also performs in Judith Weir’s 1999 work ‘We Are Shadows.’ … Pianist Michelle Cann plays Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement on opening night…. Percussionist She-e Wu performs Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto under Metropolitan Opera Orchestra concertmaster David Chan’s baton…. Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Afendi Yusuf teams up with conductor Jonathon Heyward for Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.”
