“A good program,” chief conductor Marin Alsop told a crowd in Ravinia’s Tree Top Lounge, “is like a meal.”
She wasn’t just reaching for a fanciful metaphor. Each year, Breaking Barriers, the festival-within-a-festival she devised around gender equity at Ravinia, spotlights a different profession. This year’s focus on the culinary arts invited women chefs to design dishes inspired by Alsop’s Chicago Symphony programs. Alsop picked the music, while her co-curator, “Food Network” star Molly Yeh, matchmade the pieces with specific chefs.
At this ticketed, add-on event in the Tree Top Lounge, a Ravinia audience sampled the results. The chefs themselves assembled and handed out the hors d’oeuvres at a long table: “Chopped” judge Maneet Chauhan, New York City baker Jacqueline Eng, Florida chef Mika Leon, and Monteverde and Pastificio chef/co-owner Sarah Grueneberg.
For some of the chefs, thinking deeply about music is already second nature. Yeh is the daughter of CSO clarinetist John Bruce Yeh and a Juilliard-trained percussionist; she designed a bite and performed at Saturday’s chamber concert. And Eng is also a percussionist with a Juilliard credential. (Those department dinner parties must have been elite.)
Despite the crush of more than 250 attendees — about the most Tree Top can fit comfortably — the preconcert tasting went off smoothly. When the line got long, a quick-thinking Chauhan started offering her dish to those waiting, scoopable from a Fritos bag.
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I’m a pale excuse for a food critic. But after sampling the bites first, then attending the concert in the Pavilion, I found that the chefs’ dishes uncannily forecasted the performance to come.
Here’s how this musical feast went on Friday:
Course 1: Lamb vindaloo Frito pie, by Maneet Chauhan
Accompanying Reena Esmail’s “Re|Member”
By seeking an Indian spin on Midwestern comfort food, Chauhan set a challenge for herself. Any Frito pie, even a cheffed-up one, has to contend with the overwhelming saltiness of the chips themselves.
Chauhan might not have been able to surmount that totally, but I can’t imagine it being done much better. Her answer was to introduce several tastes: fruity pops of pomegranate seed and mango kachumber, sweet-and-sour tamarind chutney and briny-creamy queso fresco. In a clever stroke, Chauhan made the vindaloo with ground lamb, rather than the usual hunks, to nod to the more traditional chili topping. Your aunt in Cedar Rapids would surely approve.
The Midwest/Indian mashup was apropos for Esmail, who was born in Chicago. In her “Re|Member,” premiered in 2021, an oboist prerecords their solo, to be shown on a video screen at the top of the piece. Later, the video returns, with the same oboist duetting with their past self live onstage.
Of all the pandemic-era commissions out there, Esmail’s “Re|Member” stands out for its poignancy — and I loved that Chauhan, by riffing on a familiar, lovable dish, managed to nod to that nostalgia. So, I was extra disappointed that Ravinia opted to go a different direction for this performance. Instead of the video duet, CSO oboists Lora and Will Welter played a spatialized duet— Schaefer playing in the Pavilion aisle, Welter onstage.
Even with its profundity curbed, this was a fine, stirring performance. That’s a credit to guest conductor Alexandra Arrieche, a participant in Alsop’s fellowship program for female conductors.
Course 2: Black bread toast over beans and regional vegetables, by Jacqueline Eng
Accompanying Tim Corpus’s “Great Lake Concerto,” Movement III
When you think “percussion,” you probably think big, bold, maybe a little aggro. It’s no surprise Eng’s perspective as a former percussionist led her to temper those stereotypes. Instead of going for the obvious associations, she focused on that other, unseen aspect of being a musician: long sessions in the practice room.
As she explained in the introductory video played in the Pavilion, she selected rye for its resilience in many different climates. (That grain selection had the added benefit of a slightly sour edge, brightening the dish.) And the bean-and-vegetable bed it rested upon had the rich, layered flavor one can only achieve by stewing high-quality ingredients patiently for hours on end. Decadent, a little cheesy, and oh-so-umami, it was the most flavor-packed bite of the evening.
With its focus on Lakes-region vegetables and grains, Eng also drew inspiration from the piece’s title. Corpus, a Chicago-based composer, composed the work specifically for CSO percussionist Vadim Karpinos and Lyric percussionist Ed Harrison; it was premiered by Roosevelt University’s student orchestra last year.
The third movement, marked “Explosive,” throws us into a fast-paced repartee between Karpinos and Harrison from opposite sides of the stage — Karpinos on xylophone, Harrison on tom-toms. Corpus’s writing is consistently inventive: It’s never quite clear whether the soloists are teasing one another or casually trying to one-up each other, and you’ll never hear a xylophone sound more mournful than it does at the middle of the movement.
It’s always a high endorsement, to both performer and composer, when people start hooting in the middle of a classical piece like they’re at a stadium show. Harrison’s moment was his minute-long maraca solo (yes, really), and Karpinos’ stunt of tossing, then catching, a shekere 10 feet in the air during a cadenza. I’ll be thinking about that performance for a long time — just like those beans.
Course 3: Tostón with ropa vieja, by Mika León
Accompanying George Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture”
Of the four, León’s dish was the most conventional, which is no slight. The texture of the ropa vieja was just right — not too soupy, but also not getting caught in your teeth for perpetuity, like some ropier ropas viejas. I could see a world in which the tostón weighs down the dish. Instead, it was just dense enough to support the generous mound of meat on top.
I might have wanted some more acidity to brighten the dish. Then again, at this point in the meal, some unabashed heartiness was welcome. Without León’s dish, I don’t know that I would have left the Tree Top Lounge fully satiated.
Alsop and the CSO’s “Cuban Overture” stuck to one’s ribs, too. Maybe a little too much, actually — the overall spirit seemed transplanted from Gershwin’s blustery, big-city tone poems, like “American in Paris” or “Rhapsody in Blue.” For a work that references son and rumba so deeply over its short duration, this overture didn’t dance much.
Main course: “Scheherazade’s Pasta Tale,” by Sarah Grueneberg
Accompanying Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”
As much as possible, I tried to isolate each dish’s composite parts before taking them in together. The lamb vindaloo in the Frito pie. The cultured butter off Eng’s rye toast. Even the tostón, alone, in León’s creation.
When I did the same for this “pasta tale” — a chilled orzo, with a tomato saffron sauce pooling at its side — I admit, I was skeptical. Between the freshness of the lump crab and its vegetal crunch, the orzo had all the makings of a great summer pasta salad, if on the mild-mannered side. Meanwhile, the sauce was not at all what I expected, leading with the tomato’s acidity. The saffron, for all its potency, arrives only on the back end of the bite, albeit mild enough to be overpowered by the taste of Ravinia’s wooden utensils. I swapped to plastic before mixing it all together and digging in.
Then: total magic. It’s as though Grueneberg had carefully plotted a run-of-show for each bite. First, the salinity of the crab, now amplified. Then, that tomato zing, rounded off pleasantly to become more mere aroma than star. The fresh veggies complete the garden, but no longer dominate. And then: the saffron, asserting itself more bravely than before. If this ends up on Monteverde’s menu, catch me there tomorrow, a Road-Runner puff of dust pluming behind.
What kismet that the most nuanced dish got the most nuanced performance. If programs are like meals, “Scheherazade” would be the equivalent of a weekly special at Chez Ravinia: Like Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, appearing later in the weekend, Alsop conducted the work earlier in her Ravinia tenure, in 2022
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.But the flavor profile of this meeting between CSO, Alsop and associate concertmaster Stephanie Jeong — who, then and now, played the expansive solos representing Scheherazade — has only deepened in those three years. Conducting scoreless, as is her wont in big repertoire works, Alsop had a specific and inspiring vision for the piece: an end-to-end lyricism, episodes that elicited delicious contrasts, slowdowns that were just right.
Don’t mistake specificity for micromanagement. Just as exhilarating was the sheer freedom and creativity the CSO seized in their solos. Stephen Williamson’s runs in the third movement slowed at their peak, like the suspended, heartstopping moment before a roller coaster’s big drop. Keith Buncke’s bassoon solo was punctuated by pauses, a sage carefully choosing his words. And Jeong — where to begin? It was really her Scheherazade, a masterclass in taking time and, when called for, freezing it altogether.
I can’t think of a better “Scheherazade” I’ve heard live, anywhere, even including Grant Park’s noble account last summer. If only we could come back for seconds.
The Breaking Barriers Festival continues 5 p.m. Sunday with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian,” and Chicago Symphony clarinetist Stephen Williamson playing Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. Tickets $35–$95 Pavilion, $15 lawn. More information at ravinia.org.