Ravinia 2025 Issue 2

Broadway. “And when you get on the stage, you can speak that language without actually speaking.” But while Foster says that with age comes a confidence that the music will deliver all that is needed to satisfy an audience, McPhee is quick to mention that nervousness can still crop up. “There is always that fear that your voice is just not going to perform as well as you want it to,” says McPhee, who has found herself often covering some of Foster and Celine Dion’s greatest collaborations—songs such as “All By Myself,” “Because You Loved Me,” and “To Love You More.” “Having my voice crack or something like that in front of thousands of people is not fun.” “In the past five to 10 years, Kat has had some vocal cord issues, and now she works for half an hour on her vocals every day,” adds Foster, who is currently at work on his next musi- cal, an adaptation of Amy Bloom’s 2014 novel Lucky Us . “But I never worry about her when she is up on that stage.” However, they do have their minds on what will be going on off the stage in Chicago, as their four-year-old son Rennie will be joining them. “Rennie is coming with us on these tour dates, and we’ll see how he responds to it,” explains McPhee, who also hopes to sneak in a visit to Joe’s Stone Crab while in town. “I mean, he’s so much older now.” And so is David Foster—but whatever you do, don’t remind him. “Do you want me to talk about how I’m going to die some- day?” he laughs about entering what he has called in the past his “last chapter of life.” “Obviously, the older you get, I think saying you ‘don’t sweat the small stuff ’ is inaccurate. You still sweat the small stuff. It’s just different small stuff. Yes. And your minutiae becomes different. And I do sweat a lot of things, but I also let a lot of things go now that, in my twenties and thirties I would’ve been horrified about. Just go out there and do it. That’s when the magic happens.” Tricia Despres is a Chicago-area freelance entertainment writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times , Taste of Country , People , and numerous local, regional, and national publications. X: @CHIWriter “ What Chris [ Botti ] brings is a religious experience. We’ve seen him probably 50 times in concert [ ourselves ] … the fact that he wants to hang out with me really makes me feel great. ” RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 11 RANDALLSLAVIN