Howard Reich

When the Grant Park Music Festival opened its 85th season Wednesday evening at the Pritzker Pavilion, the first standing ovation did not go to the musicians. Instead, the somewhat soggy...

It's a question I've been hearing for decades, applied to any number of seasoned performers I've covered: Why are they still working? I heard it plenty when Frank Sinatra was...

In 1994, trumpeter Jon Faddis starred in "The Newport Jazz Festival on Tour," a concert that launched a promising new jazz series in Orchestra Hall. On Friday night, Faddis returned...

On paper, the program that Australian conductor Simone Young created for her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut looked a bit rich: the thickly scored romanticism of Liszt, Wagner and Brahms, the...

The Grant Park Orchestra and the Grant Park Orchestral Association Board of Directors have reached a tentative agreement on a three-year collective bargaining pact, according to a joint statement from...

Chicago Symphony Orchestra bass trombone Charles Vernon didn't think small when he asked composer James Stephenson to write a concerto for him. "I said: 'I want something that's this wonderful...

They called it RamseyFest, but it didn't get festive until about 21/2 hours in. That's when singer Ann Hampton Callaway opened her segment of a three-act show that got off...

Barreling down the highway from a Minnesota gig the night before, Patricia Barber sounds exuberant. "Minneapolis is one of my favorite places to play in the United States," says Barber,...