Tuesday, July 1, 2025
If you’ve never been to Ravinia Festival, it’s worth the trip. I should clarify that Ravinia Festival is a place, not a multi-day event. Nestled in the trees just north of Chicago, Ravinia has been hosting music lovers since 1904 — the oldest outdoor music festival in the country. But it’s more than that. It’s a ritual. You bring your own picnic. You set up on the lawn. You open a bottle of wine. And then, as the sun sets and the cicadas hum, the music begins.
Ravinia has hosted legends across generations — from classical virtuosos to hip-hop innovators. But it also does something even more enduring: it invests in the next generation. Through its Reach Teach Play programs, Ravinia brings music education to thousands of children in under-resourced schools across the Chicago area. Music, they believe, belongs to everyone. And being there, you feel that. It’s a place that doesn’t just entertain — it teaches, it connects, and it shares.
We were there over the weekend — first to see The Roots on Friday night, and then on Saturday, The O’Jays and Al Green. It was the kind of weekend that leaves you a little lighter — the kind that reminds you why live music matters, and why people do too.
On Saturday night, the lawn was full — not just with bodies, but with spirit. Old-school R&B fans were spread out on blankets alongside couples on date nights and families with young kids. People of all backgrounds and generations came to move, sway, sing, and soak it in.
When the O’Jays closed with “Love Train,” something quietly magical happened. A dance line began near us on the lawn — not raucous, not staged, just spontaneous and joyful. People joined in easily, naturally. And as we moved along together, singing, clapping, grooving all along the lawn, strangers began stepping forward with open arms, offering hugs as our Love Train danced by. One woman I didn’t know embraced me and as we hugged she said, “This is how we heal the world.”
She wasn’t being dramatic. She meant it. And I felt it — not as a grand statement, but as a small, steady truth. That healing happens in community. That joy can be connective. That maybe, in a divided world, there’s still a quiet line running through us — not of fear or noise, but of shared humanity. A kind of love train, connecting us in ways we sometimes forget are possible.
Maybe this is the kind of healing Ravinia has been quietly nurturing all along — in the classroom, on the stage, and out on the lawn.
How nice that someone had that notion so many years ago, and built a place where magic routinely happens.
How lovely that it’s still there, waiting to have the same effect on us all.
Maybe one evening soon, we’ll see each other out on that lawn.
Until Next Time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC