Grace Jones and Janelle Monáe

Grace Jones–the trailblazing icon of music, fashion, and film–takes the Ravinia stage for the first time this summer, delivering a mesmerizing performance that defies genre and expectation. Throughout her career, the multi-talented artist has woven music across styles, bringing together disco, new wave post-punk, art pop, industrial, reggae, and gospel, creating “a tight sound that is distinctly hers” (Vice). Rolling Stone celebrates her remarkable influence, writing, “So many performers are said to be larger than life, but the show biz cliché has never been truer than it is for Grace Jones.”

Jones is joined by Janelle Monáe–a trailblazer in her own right, making her own Ravinia debut–whose innovative spark has led to success in music and film, with ten Grammy nominations and performances in Glass Onion, Harriet, and Hidden Figures. NPR described her 2015 protest song “Hell You Talmbout” as “visceral” and “blistering,” highlighting its powerful message against racial violence, and Rolling Stone praised her 2013 album The Electric Lady, highlighting Monáe’s “sheer force of freakadelic will and a radical feminist’s sense of self-exploration.” 

QUEEN! at the Carousel Stage at 4:30 p.m.
Queen! is a cornerstone of Chicago’s vibrant house music scene and a pioneering LGBTQ+ dance party, celebrating over 13 years of unrelenting energy and inclusivity. Hosted every Sunday at the legendary Chicago club smartbar, Queen! is one of the nation’s longest-running weekly events of its kind, renowned for its rotating lineup of house music icons alongside captivating performances by kings, queens, and artists across the spectrum.

Join smartbar sweethearts and musical contortionists Derrick Carter and Michael Serafini for the rawest Chicago house music, served up by the pros. And the Queen! hosts are as stellar and stunning as ever: the renowned but never-replicated Lucy Stoole and Nico are poised to take center stage, stealing the show, per usual.

Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s top DJs, with innovative productions, flawless technical skills, and an effortlessly joyful attitude of rocking a crowd, Carter has infiltrated the spectrum of dance music. From spinning disco and funk records at family reunions at age 9 to becoming one of the key players of Chicago’s house music wave in the ’90s, he freely travels outside standard club tastes, incorporating old-school disco, soul, jazz, new wave, and whatever else catches his fancy. Serafini got his start in Chicago nightlife in the ’80s working for Berlin nightclub as a video jockey and remixer, then began deejaying regularly in the early ’90s, soon taking position at one of Chicago house’s most famous institutions, Gramaphone Records. As his experience grew, so did his reputation, later landing a residency at Boom Boom Room, then the city’s longest-running house night. In 2007, Serafini took over ownership of Gramaphone Records, which he still operates today.