This week, the Grant Park Music Festival notches two major anniversaries: its 90th season, and its 25th and final year led by artistic director and principal conductor Carlos Kalmar. Those milestones aren’t without their growing pains. With Kalmar ceding his Grant Park seat — initially to focus on teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music, though he’s now the floundering conservatory — it’s anyone’s guess what becomes of the festival’s future.
The generous guest allotments this summer to Ludovic Morlot, Giancarlo Guerrero and Eric Jacobsen imply the search for Kalmar’s successor, in progress since he first announced his departure three years ago, is rounding a corner. Whoever inherits the role, one hopes they, at minimum, continue resisting the populist tilt of summer music series everywhere. Another major change this year: the elimination of program books.
Attendees now receive lean pamphlets with QR codes for the concert webpage. The pamphlet have enough room to exhaustively list donors and sponsors — but, ironically, not the festival musicians, who get QR-antined. Grant Park will always toddle on the tightrope of making the festival free and open to all while satisfying the ticket buyers who make that possible.
In turn, they, with each passing year, increasingly seem to demand the pastoral of Ravinia in a downtown setting. Even Kalmar stepped offstage on Friday in a futile attempt to quiet amplified buskers on Michigan Avenue. It doesn’t help that th.