Christopher Bell will conduct the Grant Park Orchestra at the Grant Park Music Festival July 4th concert. Alongside Bell, 16-year-old Emily Bear who will be performing Rhapsody in Blue in the annual Independence Day Salute. The holiday tradition will be full of marches and patriotic anthems, including Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, and the Armed Forces Salute.
Christopher Bell
Christopher Bell has served as Chorus Director of the Grant Park Chorus since 2002. He oversees more than 100 singers, prepares all of the Festival’s choral programs, and conducts the orchestra and chorus for several concerts. During his tenure, he and the chorus have been recipients of the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence given by Chorus America, as well as glowing reviews from both critics and audiences alike. In 2013, Bell won the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art.
In addition to his work with the Festival, Christopher Bell is the Artistic Director of The Washington Chorus and Chorus Master of the Edinburgh Festival. He is largely responsible for the formation of the National Youth Choir of Scotland in 1996 and has been its Artistic Director ever since. Bell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the Royal Conservatoire in Scotland in 2012, in recognition of his contribution to performing arts in Scotland.
Emily Bear
Sixteen-year-old Emily Bear is a recording artist, composer, arranger, orchestrator and performer in styles including pop, film, jazz and classical. Bear made her professional debut at age five, she and is known across America as well as internationally. In 2017, she was featured at the Hollywood Bowl performing the Oscar-winning animated Tom & Jerry cartoon, The Cat Concerto (Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2), live to film. Following that engagement, she starred in Night of the Proms, a 25-concert stadium tour of Europe featuring a 70-piece orchestra, choir and rock band. Bear began composing at three and publishing a year later; she currently has five original songbooks distributed worldwide, a portion of whose sales are distributed to various charities. At age six, she was the youngest-ever recipient of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. In 2015, Bear's Les Voyages received the ASCAP Composer of the Year Award for Orchestral Concert Music. Her album, Into the Blue, was one of the top jazz releases of 2017.
When
Wednesday, July, 4 6:30 p.m.
Where
Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park
Tickets
$26
by calling 312.742.7647
or online at the Grant Park Music Festival website.
Free seats on Great Lawn by a first come first serve basis.
Photos courtesy of Chicago DCASE
