2025 Festival: Women Leaders in Food and Music
Ravinia and Chief Conductor Marin Alsop recognized the intersections of women leaders in music and in space during Breaking Barriers Festival 2024, from shared inspirations to shared challenges. The United Nations recently highlighted for World Space Week that women’s representation in aerospace has been around 20% for at least 30 years, and only 11% of astronauts so far have been women. Though numbers rise to around 30% in research fields and graduate studies, they have changed little in at least a decade.
Surrounding the premiere of The Moons Symphony Suite by Amanda Lee Falkenberg alongside a performance of Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets, Ravinia collaborated with The Chicago Network, New Music USA, Northwestern University’s CIERA, and the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship on panel and roundtable discussions with major leading figures based internationally and locally, as well as workshops for emerging women composers and conductors.
Women Leaders in Music and Space
Explore the fascinating worlds of the outer Solar System through music and science with The Moons Symphony composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg; Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop, who led the work’s acclaimed recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2022; and Vicky Kalogera, Director of Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) in a discussion with Adler Planetarium CEO Michelle Larson.
Innovation of Science and Music
Modeled after New Music USA’s impactful “Table For 10” events, scientific leaders, musical conductors and composers, and guests are brought together at roundtables for lively brunch conversations beginning with provided prompts.
Building on the successful series of concerts and symposiums focused on women conductors, Breaking Barriers Festival 2023 celebrated women composers — classical and jazz artists as well as singer-songwriters.
Surrounding three evening concerts were panel and roundtable discussions, a workshop pairing composers and conductors, and more events presented in collaboration with New Music USA and The Chicago Network.
Creatives as Entrepreneurs
Led by Women of the World founder Jude Kelly, Marin Alsop, Fortune Brands Innovations VP Leigh Avsec, composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Randolph Entertainment co-founder Sona Wang discuss how creative women in the arts and corporate America have broken barriers to become successful entrepreneurs.
Amplifying Women’s Voices in Classical Music
Composers Clarice Assad and Gabriela Ortiz, Marin Alsop, and D-Composed founder Kori Coleman engage with moderator New Music USA President & CEO Vanessa Reed to assess the underrepresentation of women and BIPOC composers in the orchestral repertory and steps to ensure that concert programming reflects the multitude of voices writing music today.
Leading with Purpose
Marin Alsop and Women of the World founder Jude Kelly share guiding wisdom from their experience breaking barriers to their own growth and for other women to serve in pivotal leadership roles, and, in conversation with WTTW-WFMT President & CEO Sandra Cordova Micek, discuss the next steps ahead.
Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop inaugurated the Breaking Barriers Festival in 2022 to continually celebrate underrepresented and diverse artists and leaders in music, and their achievements in advancing visions for future generations in classical music.
The inaugural events centered on women on the podium, additionally recognizing two milestone anniversaries — the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in its 20th year supporting young women conductors’ careers and 100th anniversary of the birth of Margaret Hillis, the pioneering conductor who founded the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Breaking Glass Ceilings
Chicagoland business and nonprofit leaders UL Solutions President and CEO Jennifer Scanlon and Kinzie Capital Markets founder and partner Suzanne Yoon, along with Marin Alsop and Taki Alsop fellow and business coach Laura Jackson, discuss how historic context, challenges, opportunities, and mentors have forged their leadership styles in a panel moderated by ABC7 News co-anchor Karen Jordan.
Women on the Podium
Marin Alsop, chorus leader and Margaret Hillis biographer Cheryl Frazes Hill, and Taki Alsop fellows Anna Duczmal-Mróz and Jeri Lynne Johnson discuss past and present pathways for women conductors in a panel moderated by longtime music journalist Wynne Delacoma.
From the opening of Ravinia’s 2022 summer season, the main entrance was transformed into a walkable exhibit of posters highlighting over 100 groundbreaking women of the past century who have led prominent music organizations across Chicago, the US, and the world. For the 2023 season, the installation expanded to include banners highlighting women composers whose music was been heard at Ravinia in the past three years alone.
“This is exactly the sort of artistic enterprise an international music festival that cares about the next generation of musicians, and the continued vitality of the art form, should be investing in.”
“We have all been lone wolves out there, and there have just been a handful of us out there conducting. … You know, the old boys’ network has been out there for hundreds of years, right? We need an old girls’ network, so we are working on it.”
“Summer festivals can and should take more risks and, indeed, break barriers. That is exactly what Alsop and Ravinia did successfully with this three-day mini-festival.”
2024: Aural Orrery: Amanda Lee Falkenberg transits The Moons and taps into telescopic transfixation
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2023: Brain Storm: Gabriela Montero surges with moments of inspiration
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2022: The Conductor’s Score: Marin Alsop leads a crescendo of Taki Fellows
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