Breaking Barriers

“Celebrity Chef Tasting Bites” Food & Music Pairing

5:00 – 7:30 p.m. in the Tree Top Lounge

With a VIP ticket add-on, Breaking Barriers guests can tour culinary vignettes created by featured guest celebrity chefs. During the pre-concert event, tasting bites are offered at each chef’s station and screens around Tree Top share highlights from the chefs’ TV appearances and details about their cuisine’s musical pairings. The chefs will also give an informal introduction to their culinary journeys.

Featured Chefs

Performance: “Chef Sheherazade”

8:00 p.m. in the Pavilion

Marin Alsop taps into the global adventures offered by music and food in the headline concert of Breaking Barriers 2025. In Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, the bard of the CSO weaves princely ocean-borne tales from One Thousand and One Nights, then buzzing percussion makes festive welcomes on the sparkling shores of Gershwin’s Cuban Overture and Tim Corpus’s Great Lake Concerto. But recounting the adventures upon returning home is equally celebratory, shared through Reena Esmail’s RE|member.

Before the performance, Alsop and co-curator Molly Yeh, star of Food Network’s Girl Meets Farm and a Juilliard-trained percussionist, introduce Breaking Barriers 2025 from the stage. Each piece on the program will be prefaced by one of the night’s guest celebrity chefs describing the inspiration and musical connection of their culinary pairing.

Program

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, conductor and co-curator Molly Yeh, co-curator

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Sheherazade, op. 35 –Intermission– Reena Esmail: RE|Member Tim Corpus: Mvt. 3 of The Great Lake Concerto Vadim Karpinos and Ed Harrison, percussion George Gershwin: Cuban Overture

Concert Sponsors: Ellen Rudnick and Paul Earle; In Honor of Nancy Zadek from Craig and Linda Umans

Performance: “Winds & Strings Tapas”

1:30 p.m. in Bennett Gordon Hall

The rich variety of styles in food and classical music featured by Breaking Barriers 2025 extends to small bites from co-curators Marin Alsop and Food Network star Molly Yeh, introducing French and pan-American pieces with musicians from the CSO and more guests.

Debussy’s epic-poetic portrayals of Greek mythology’s Pan, Syrinx and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, highlight flute and other winds; the latter features Yeh herself on percussion in a chamber-ensemble arrangement of the piece. Copland’s Quiet City casts English horn and trumpet as brothers wrestling with bluesy melancholy, while Piazzolla’s Libertango has the strings energetically fusing jazz and the Argentine dance and Victoria Bond’s Bridges bounces with East-West fusions of folk and jazz tunes. At the center, Bernstein’s La Bonne Cuisine follows French cookbook recipes in humorous song.

Each ticket includes pre-concert small bites curated by Breaking Barriers guest chefs in the Stepan Lobby outside Bennett Gordon Hall. Build a box of these tapas to bring into the performance, where each chef will introduce their culinary creation before the musical work they drew inspiration from.

Program

Marin Alsop and Molly Yeh, hosts and co-curators Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ravinia’s Steans Institute Birds and Phoenix John Bruce Yeh and Teresa Reilly, clarinets; Wang Guowei, erhu; Yang Wei, pipa

Aaron Copland: Quiet City Scott Hostetler, English horn; Tage Larsen, trumpet; Strings Claude Debussy: Syrinx Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute Leonard Bernstein: La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano Kaylyn Taylor Baldwin, soprano; Kevin Murphy, piano Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (arr. Néstor Bayona) Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute; Scott Hostetler, oboe; John Bruce Yeh, clarinet; Susanna Gaunt, horn; Julia Coronelli, harp; Molly Yeh, percussion; Strings Victoria Bond: Bridges Birds and Phoenix Astor Piazzolla: Libertango Strings –No Intermission–

Performance: “Mendelssohn’s Italian”

5:00 p.m. in the Pavilion

Capping her three weeks at Ravinia, Marin Alsop seizes the richness of life experience. From Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, the CSO leafs through a diary of blue skies and bustling dances, and principal clarinetist Stephen Williamson retraces Copland’s jazz-filled pan-American journeys in his concerto. Together they unravel Elgar’s Enigma Variations: portraits of the friends he met along the way.

Before the performance, visit the restaurants and grab-and-go market in the Dining Pavilion for Italian specialties, including spaghetti and gelato. Bring the whole family and also visit the KidsLawn at the north corner of the Lawn for special activities to inspire the musical imagination of young minds.

Program

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, conductor

Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major, op. 90 (“Italian”) Aaron Copland: Clarinet Concerto
Stephen Williamson, clarinet Edward Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme, op. 36 (“Enigma”) –No Intermission–