Grant Park Orchestral Association, Grant Park Music Festival

The Grant Park Music Festival is a free outdoor summer classical music series, making live symphonic and choral performance accessible to Chicagoans of all ages, backgrounds, and means. Core programs include a ten-week season of concerts, artistic development initiatives, radio broadcasts, and community engagement programs. With this award, Grant Park Music Festival engages consultants in a variety of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts including staff trainings and board committee development.

The Grant Park Music Festival is the nation's longest-running free outdoor summer classical music series, making live symphonic and choral performance accessible to Chicagoans of all ages, backgrounds, and means. The Festival serves both Chicago's residents and the millions of regional, national, and international tourists that visit the city each summer. The Festival's core programs include a ten-week season of concerts, artistic development initiatives, radio broadcasts, and community engagement programs. This award recommends renewed general operating support to the Grant Park Orchestral Association whose principal activity is the production of the Grant Park Music Festival.

Now in its eighth decade, the Grant Park Music Festival is the nation’s largest free outdoor summer classical music series, operating as a public-private collaboration among the nonprofit Grant Park Orchestral Association, the City of Chicago, and the Chicago Park District. Through its 10-week season of free concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, artistic development initiatives, radio broadcasts, and community engagement program around the city, the Music Festival currently serves nearly 800,000 people each year. In 2016, the MacArthur Foundation is marking the 35th anniversary of its Fellows Program with events and programs featuring Fellows. This award supports the Grant Park Music Festival’s week of special MacArthur Fellows programming which includes free performances and public events.

This grant provides renewed support for the production of the Grant Park Music Festival, the nation’s largest and only free outdoor summer classical music series. Each year approximately 315,000 people attend to hear the Grammy-nominated Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus perform a ten-week season of musical programs at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. The Festival presents a broad repertoire of classical, contemporary, operatic, dance, and world music in 30 free performances. The Festival draws a socioeconomically and geographically diverse audience to its live concerts and also offers a range of community education and outreach programs intended to make classical music more accessible to the general public.

In support of general operations (over five years).