The Grant Park Music Festival announced its 2025 season — one that already carries the stamp of Giancarlo Guerrero, its new music director.
This summer, the free music festival runs June 11 to Aug. 16, with the usual Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evening programs. All concerts will be held at Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, with the exception of two chorus concerts at the South Shore Cultural Center (June 26 and 30) and a few retreats to Harris Theater to avoid noise pollution from other Grant Park programming (June 27-28 and Aug. 1-2).
The season reflects Guerrero’s interest in contemporary American fare — and, broadly, the festival’s, as a longtime programming plank of director Carlos Kalmar’s before him. Chicago composer Stacy Garrop has been commissioned to write a new work for the festival’s String Fellow Quartet, inspired by the Pritzker Pavilion (date to be announced). The orchestra also gives the Midwest premiere of Chelsea Komschilies’ “Mycelialore” as the piece’s co-commissioner (Aug. 13).
Other recently written works fill out the season, most of them regional and city premieres. Those include Rockford-born Jake Runestad’s “Earth Symphony” (June 13), Chicago-based Clarice Assad’s “Baião N’ Blues,” Arturo Márquez’s “Concierto de Otoño” for Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores (both June 20-21), Henry Dorn’s “Transitions” (July 2-3) and Brian Nabors’ “Pulse,” originally commissioned by Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony in 2019 (Aug. 1-2).
Also included are pieces from the 21st century canon that have evaded Illinois, until now. Getting belated area premieres are Peter Lieberson’s “Neruda Songs” (Aug. 1-2) — written for the late, great mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and here sung by J’Nai Bridges — and Jennifer Higdon’s “The Singing Rooms,” featuring commissioning violinist Jennifer Koh (Aug. 8-9). Somehow, so is Margaret Bonds’ choral-orchestral “Credo,” despite the late composer’s Chicago bona fides (July 11-12).
The festival also welcomes its first “artist-in-residence” since 2023 in Inbal Segev. The Israeli cellist plays two consecutive Wednesday concerts: Mark Adamo’s “Last Year” (July 9), a 2021 concerto that maps Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” onto present climate change realities, and Anna Clyne’s “Dance” (July 16), now a calling card of Segev’s. She will also lead masterclasses and possibly play a solo recital on the Pritzker Pavilion stage; as of press time the festival was awaiting confirmation from the city for the latter.
Still to come, too, is programming for the festival’s annual “Independence Day Salute,” this year landing on July 4 proper. Principal percussionist Josh Jones and mezzo-soprano Imara Miles, a former festival fellow, will get solo spotlights.
Guerrero’s summer schedule was partly accounted for when his directorship was announced in the fall. Colorado Symphony music director Andrew Litton will open the season in his stead, conducting and playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (June 11) after the piece’s last outing in 2023 was thwarted by the weather.
“A lot of it was marrying projects with people,” Guerrero says of programming the season. “And I could not do everything myself to begin with.”
But he’ll lead a lot of it. Guerrero conducts eight of the 20 planned festival programs, after shuffling some commitments to spend more time with the Grant Parkers. His first program on June 18 features Adolphus Hailstork’s “An American Port of Call” and Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Waterfront” suite — both of which were no-brainers, he says, as “two great American works” — and concertmaster Jeremy Black in Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. Black’s musicianship and camaraderie made such an impression on Guerrero during his trial weeks last summer that he specifically requested to conduct the Mendelssohn, which was already in the books.
“It’s a combination of the new and the old — him being with the orchestra for years, and me coming in. It will be a great privilege,” Guerrero says.
Guerrero also leads the festival’s “Carmina Burana” finale on Aug. 15-16. (If you’re getting déjà vu, it’s not just you: the choral-orchestral blockbuster also closed the 2018 festival.) Joining it is Alan Hovhaness’ “Mysterious Mountain,” the most famous of the prolific Armenian American composer’s many symphonies.
Other 2025 highlights include the festival debut of the Imani Winds, in a piece by flutist Valerie Coleman (June 25); podium stands by Osmo Vänskä, formerly and famously of the Minnesota Orchestra (July 2-3), and Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra founder Keri-Lynn Wilson (July 18-19); and encore performances by soprano Janai Brugger (in Bonds’ “Credo” on July 11-12, alongside baritone Sankara Harouna), violinist Augustin Hadelich (playing the Tchaikovsky concerto July 18-19 under Wilson), and pianist Clayton Stephenson (in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on Aug. 13).
Guerrero says the preponderance of local premieres this season wasn’t necessarily intentional — they were works he gravitated toward, only to find out they had never been heard in Chicago, or, in most cases, Illinois generally. It’s convinced him that he’s on the right programming track already.
“Like the Duruflé (Requiem) last season, you get to hear this music and say, ‘Why haven’t I heard this before?’” he says. “It is our duty as musicians, as institutions, to expose our audiences to what’s out there.”
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
