Sounds of Chicago’s Lakefront
A Celebration of the Grant Park Music Festival
Chicago’s downtown lakefront has an astonishing history of cultural events, gatherings, and celebrations. One of the most treasured and long-standing lakefront traditions is the Grant Park Music Festival. From its birth during the Great Depression to its current incarnation as the resident classical musical festival in Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Grant Park Music Festival has enchanted hundreds of thousands of people each summer.
This vibrant history features hundreds of stunning never-before-published photographs of the Festival and Chicago’s lakefront, as well as interviews with dozens of musicians, architects, politicians, and prominent Chicagoans. It also includes new historical insights about the evolution of Chicago’s downtown lakefront and its rich legacy of hosting memorable events, ranging from world fairs to Barack Obama’s 2008 election-night celebration. As the city’s front yard, Grant Park has long been the place where Chicagoans come together.
The nation’s only free, municipally funded, summer-long, classical music series, the Grant Park Music Festival has been a key part of the lakefront’s vibrant history. The Festival currently presents concerts in Millennium Park for ten weeks each summer. It celebrated its seventy-fifth season in 2009.
