At the Ravinia Festival there is no separation between high and low culture

Whatever trains I missed in life, at least I saw Morgan Freeman in real life. He appeared to me on it Ravinia FestivalSince 1904 a grand and compelling summers outdoor music festival in the enchanting Highland Park in an hour’s spores north of Chicago.

He was, welcomed by thousands of Americans, on the stage of the large music pavilion for it Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a symphonic blue program with the actor as a guide through the history of the genre. For him, as a black boy from the Mississippi delta, he is a soul mate story of pain, hope and resilience, where the now 88-year-old actor as Executive Producer With soul and salvation his reputation to the union.

What a beautiful act at that age, and that with this orchestra. But it fits. Ravinia is the summer residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), that there is the great repertoire under Ravinia chef Marin as op and others in July and August, but also consistently and seriously crossover boundaries scanning, especially in the direction of pop and film music.

There is also real pop music, this year by Earth, Wind & Fire, Lenny Kravitz, Beck, James Taylor and Al Green. But in the light of the current big questions about the transforming place of culture in the world, Ravinia is primarily an interesting place to discover how and with what artistic return a top orchestra like that of Chicago in a transition age of mono to multiculture resists the beacons.

Disney

Last week it went on that route all the way. On Thursday, the orchestra, led by Edwin Outwater and with the Chinese star tianist, dedicated long as an artistic centerpiece a whole program to Disney film music from the old-hearted Snow White (1937) to more recent productions such as Mulan (1995), The Lion King (2010) and Frozen (2013). And a day later there was Freeman, whose presence turned out something different than I expected.

Live was and not the word. His contribution as a host turned out to be a kind of blues documentary with Freemans in advance comments on a large screen behind the orchestra. They acted as a connecting narrative for a set of blues classics by an excellent occasion that the orchestra arrangements of conductor Martin Gellner unfortunately completely drowned in some big band-like exclamation marks.

Freeman did appear on stage for the show to answer some childish questions about his favorite book and his favorite dish from Chicago.

But his voice was there. Those are blues-saga de wikipedialichés not overlooked no dog. As Freeman pronounces Blues, with the vast vaulted vowel in a hot evening sun, that is a world in a word. Schmier to Hartelust, hero, about how the people from the Mississippi delta sang off the pain in bitter times. How they were looking for a better life to Chicago and Detroit, where they became childbed for the Rock ‘n Roll to Rolling Stones pop music via rock’ n roll.

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Fentanylzombies

Americans are so incredibly good at what you should find on paper in pernay: the swinging problem, the flexible evidence. You would have wanted to hear the musicians bleed more, or hear connections with the American pain of today – that of the homeless, the illegal immigrants, the Fentanylzombies in California that I am broken of in May. In these hellish times that the blues are made for you will not get there with a few covers from Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. Ravinia is apparently not the stage for such a confrontational approach. This was Omroep Max about the counterculture of Grandfaders Time, a sentiment.

Also for a long time delivered a day earlier Heest Welt per linear meter. But it was good despite the somewhat blunt sound reinforcement, also because that beautiful orchestra could now be heard. What you could put on as an unwilling culture snob of that shine and glitter was the idiomatic connection of Hollywood in this classic sound robe with the classic-romantic European tradition.

You already knew how European emigrants such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner in Hollywood had continued the nineteenth century until far after closing time, but played by one of the world’s great pianists and with the symphonic arrangements of conductor Edwin Oudwater, this principal but cleverly created clichémuziez was rising in the Kasémuziezer Concertgebouw, and not even much worse.

Flair van Kitsch

In the solo pieces for piano you heard for a long time as the best barpianist in the world with the enchanting transparent flair of Kitsch at best all resistance in the lobby breaking, in the orchestra arrangements a widded Rachmaninoff. The real Rachmaninoff visited the Disney studio in his American years together with Vladimir Horowitz, and saw Mickey Mouse playing one of his preludes on the silver screen. For the movie Fantasia Disney used already in 1940 excerpts from Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps. The tires were that closely, incongruent cultures were intertwined on paper in a world that attached much less than the European to a compulsory distance between elevation and entertainment. The Americans in Highland Park can also be seen that they grew up without those everything hindering separation between high and low culture. Rarely did I see such a diverse, literally and figuratively colorful audience from young to old, ranging in degree of dressing from grunge to lovely overdressed.

When the gate of Highland Park opens at five o’clock, the classless mass floods the green grass with transport carts, chairs and tables, picnic baskets, tables, wine coolers and candlesticks. And what a professionals here. Lang and the blues are both ready for the train to Chicago, which has its own stop in front of the door, and after the long concert was certainly half filled with Chinese who came to hear their folk hero. In the past they even briefly briefly briefly in Ravinia not to let the public miss the train connection. I would have to speak of a shame. But I have seen Morgan Freeman in real life, I can die satisfied.

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