The Jazz Mentor Program offers pre-professional training to around 25 talented youth musicians (the Ravinia Jazz Scholars) plus workshops and performances for 1,200 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 at Chicago-area venues.
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, inaugurated by Reach Teach Play in 2023, gathers over 100 students from El Sistema–inspired organizations internationally, including the festival’s own Sistema Ravinia orchestra program, under the guidance of Chief Conductor Marin Alsop. Participating students—selected through a collaborative nomination process—experience four days of orchestral training and mentorship from members of a professional partner orchestra, as well as a young professional conductor (the National Seminario Conductor) and Alsop herself.
Culminating the National Seminario, the student musicians perform multiple pieces side-by-side with the partner professional artists, as well as one work on their own with the National Seminario Conductor.
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.
