Programs that encourage students to PLAY instruments and experience music throughout their lives
The Jazz Mentor Program offers pre-professional training to 25 talented youth musicians (the Ravinia Jazz Scholars) plus workshops and assemblies for 1,000 Chicago Public High School students led by the Ravinia Jazz Mentors, an ensemble of Chicago’s finest teaching and gigging musicians.
The Jazz Scholars receive year-round artistic and career guidance from the Jazz Mentors, as well as scholarships and opportunities to perform.
Sistema Ravinia emphasizes social development and community building, as well as musical excellence, through intensive orchestral music education for 500 3rd–12th-grade students in 14 Chicago and Lake County public schools, following the El Sistema model of daily ensemble instruction.
Launched in 2012 at Catalyst Circle Rock School in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood (now multiple schools in the area), Sistema Ravinia expanded to serve Lake County and other Ravinia-neighboring schools in 2015—hosting rehearsals in Bennett Gordon Hall—as well as Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood in 2020.
National Seminario Ravinia: Orchestras for All, inaugurated by Reach Teach Play in 2023, gathers over 100 students from El Sistema–inspired organizations across the United States and internationally to participate in four days of orchestra training and mentorship with a professional partner orchestra and Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop, culminating in a side-by-side concert by the student and professional musicians.
The Ravinia Lawndale Family Music School—hosted at Douglass, Franklin, Homan Square, and Piotrowski Parks as part of the Chicago Park District’s Arts Partners in Residence Program since 1998—provides hundreds of children, adults, and families residing in the under-resourced Lawndale community on Chicago’s West Side with access to tuition-free music classes in general music, voice, violin, guitar, and piano, fostering opportunities for artistic enrichment and the appreciation and joy of music.
