A night at Ravinia
For those of you non-Chicagoans, Ravinia (http://www.ravinia.org/) is an up-scale concert venue in Highland Park , IL, a northern suburb of Chicago. The place is unique relative to other outdoors venues in that it caters to an older, more up-scale crowd than does your typical outdoor music venue. For example, yesterday I went to see Yo-Yo Ma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_yo_ma), a classical cellist whose fan-base ranges from classical music lovers to old folks to Asians. For those of you PC people, please note that Yo-Yo Ma attracts a large Asian fan base and I felt it necessary to point this out as Ravinia’s typical crowd is middle aged/old white people, and therefore last night’s large influx of people of Asian heritage was unique.
Anyways, besides the crowd, the place is unique in that the staff literally let’s you bring in whatever you want to. Where as other Chicago area music venues such as Alpine Valley and the New World Music Theater pat you down upon entry and charge you $9 for a beer, Ravinia encourages its patrons to bring in blankets, coolers, chairs, etc; and doesn’t regulate how and where you use them as long as you are courteous to your fellow concert goers.
Additionally, the venue is not really setup so that its patrons can actually “see” the artist performing. Instead the place is blanketed with speakers and a few projection screens, so that the general focus is on “listening” to the music. I’m not saying that this type of setup is ideal for every show, but it’s definitely a nice change of pace from those shows in which the artist concentrates more on their light show and onstage antics than the music they are playing.
Finally, the place is incredibly easy to get to. The Metra runs frequent semi-express trains from Northwestern station downtown right to the venue; and when I say “right to the venue”, I mean literally right there – to the gate. If you’re a commuter, their are shuttle buses over to the Purple line in Evanston as well as Shuttle buses to the other nearby Metra stations. There is a parking lot as well, although it was sold out by the time I arrived, an hour before the concert started.
In sum, Ravinia is a great place to go with your family, a date, etc. Despite the byob setup, it is NOT a place to go with your guy friends and “get hammered”, although it would be a decent spot to check out acts like the Steve Miller Band, who played their earlier this summer, or Buddy Guy, a legendary Chicago blues musician.
My recommendation: Check out the summer line-up far in advance and plan a night or two at Ravinia. It may be a bit of an effort to plan, but the low cost, high value activity is definitely worth it once or twice a summer
