Ravinia’s 2025 season may be slightly shorter than years’ past, but the lineup for this summer’s festival is packed with plenty of music across a wide swath of genres — and a weekend of celebrity chef-curated menus.
The lineup for the season, which runs June 5 to Aug. 31 due to the previously announced renovation project and already underway at the Highland Park venue, was announced Thursday.
Some highlights:
Pop/rock/Latin music/jazz fans have much to anticipate as highlights include concerts by Cynthia Erivo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, (Aug. 15), Lennie Kravitz (Aug. 21), Janelle Monáe and Grace Jones (June 7), The Roots (June 27), Chucho Valdés, Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval (July 9), Juanes (July 15), Maren Morris (Aug. 22) and John Legend (Aug. 23-24), among many more.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 89th summer residency at the festival offers a bold program beginning July 11 as Ravinia’s Chief Conductor Marin Alsop takes to the podium in a program featuring Carlos Simon’s “Amen,” piano virtuoso Bruce Liu, who joins the orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”
Grammy-winner Beck makes his Ravinia debut on July 23 in a program with the CSO in an evening of standards and rare selections from his music catalog, under the leadership of conductor Edwin Outwater.
Food meets classical music as part of the 2025 Breaking Barriers Festival at the park, as Alsop partners with Food Network star Molly Yeh in a program of French and pan-American pieces performed by CSO musicians and guests, including Debussy’s “Syrinx” and “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” with Yeh, herself a Juilliard-trained percussionist (and the daughter of CSO clarinetist John Bruce Yeh), in a chamber-ensemble arrangement on the latter by Néstor Bayona. The program is paired with Leonard Bernstein’s “La Bonne Cuisine,” a cycle of lighthearted songs set to recipes from a French cookbook. Ticketed guests will be able to build tapas boxes in Bennett Gordon Hall, with sample bites inspired by the music.
In addition, on July 25, Alsop and the CSO will take audiences on a global journey of music and food with a program featuring Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Sheherazade,” George Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture” and Tim Corpus’s “Great Lake Concerto.” A ticket add-on allows concertgoers to sample food inspired by the program and curated by celebrity chefs Maneet Chauhan, Jacqueline Eng, Sarah Grueneberg and Mika Leon at pre-concert tasting stations.
For the full season lineup and tickets, visit ravinia.org.