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In addition to
Cumming and
McDonald, the
multi-talented artists
performing at Ravinia
this year include
(clockwise from left)
Jason Mraz (August
25), recent star of
Broadway’s
Waitress
;
Steve Martin and
Martin Short (August
12); Mary J. Blige
(July 20); television
and Broadway star
Kristin Chenoweth
(August 14); and Jill
Scott (June 22).
The Golden Globe and Emmy Award–winning
Amazon series
Mozart in the Jungle
has even
featured several classical musicians in cameo
roles as themselves, including violinists Joshua
Bell, who returns to Ravinia twice this year, on
July 12 and August 21, and Ray Chen, who
returns on July 25, as well as such favorites of
the festival as pianists Lang Lang and Emanuel
Ax and composers Caroline Shaw and Nico
Muhly, among many others. Conductor
Gustavo Dudamel, who makes his eagerly
anticipated Ravinia debut on July 18, made
perhaps the most scene-stealing cameo on
the show on account of his unique connection
to it, being an inspiration for central character
Rodrigo De Souza, conductor of the fictitious
New York Symphony. Instead of appearing
as himself, Dudamel plays a stagehand in Los
Angeles who attempts to lure De Souza away
to the city (where he is in real life the music
director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic).
all multi-hyphenates when she reflects
on what inspires her own prodigious
forays into musical theater, concerts,
opera, acting, and recording. “I want to
be a better artist tomorrow than I am
today,” she tells
Ravinia
Magazine. “For
me, that means exploring all facets of
my artistic ability, pushing myself, and
treading new ground—it’s the only way,
I think, that I can evolve. It looks like
I’m resisting being typecast, but I’m
really just allowing myself to explore
everything that’s possible and not saying
no to myself.”
Cumming shares a similar feeling:
“The most successful work I’ve done
is the stuff where I have been the most
personal and authentic in terms of my
story; peeling away the facade between
me, the person, and the audience. That
is definitely the case with my cabaret
shows.” In
Legal Immigrant
, Scot-
tish-American Cumming reflects on
his own immigrant experience—this
at a time when he feels immigrants
are being denigrated and not celebrat-
ed, and when the phrase “a nation of
immigrants” has been deleted from the
official United States Citizenship and
Immigration Services website. But it’s
a fun evening, Cumming assures, with
intimate (and humorous) reflections
about aging.
Cumming has drawn from his ex-
periences to create his passion projects,
such as
The Adventures of Honey and
Leon
, the children’s book he co-wrote
with his husband, artist Grant Shaffer.
The book chronicles the derring-do of
the couple’s dogs, which travel around
the world incognito keeping their own-
ers out of trouble. Cumming and Shaffer
wrote the book after their beloved com-
panions passed. “It was us channeling
our grief into something that keeps their
spirit alive,” Cummings says.
How do these artists juggle their
various projects and disciplines? If
one compares them to children, do the
artists ever feel guilty that one might
seem to be getting more attention than
the other? “They seem to all get enough
attention,” McDonald states. “Somehow
you end up being able to love all your
children equally. It may be in different
ways, but you love them all. I’ve been
lucky in that when I’m working on tele-
vision, there seems to be some sort of
concert project or play in the pipeline,
or I’m doing different projects simulta-
neously. When I’m doing a Broadway
show, I think that’s the only time where
it’s really all you can do, because it takes
up so much of the schedule, but I’ll do a
run for a stated amount of time then I’ll
go off and do something else. Somehow
it finds its way to balance itself out
.
”
As with Cumming, the concert
McDonald is bringing to Ravinia is all
kinds of personal. “I’m always looking
for new material to sing, and there’s
a whole catalogue of songs that I’ve
thought about for a while or tried to
sing at different points in my career and
it just didn’t sound right or feel right
at the time,” she notes. “I had looked
at ‘Chain of Love’ [from Claibe Rich-
ardson’s
The Grass Harp
] four or five
years ago, but I don’t think I was in the
right frame of mind when I looked at it.
I thought, ‘Aw, yeah, it’s a pretty song,
but you’re singing about cats. What?
I don’t understand.’ Now that I’m an
older woman with more life experience,
this song is incredibly moving to me. I
sing what I’m thinking about, what I’m
feeling. And right now, a lot of the songs
I’m singing kind of have to do with my
reaction to what’s going on in the zeit-
geist of this country right now.”
What distinguishes the extraordi-
nary careers of these artists is that they
remain, as Cumming says, open to “new
possibilities.” For his part, he is set to
be a guest star on
Doctor Who
and is in
talks with an animation studio to adapt
Honey and Leon
, and a second book is
scheduled to be published in the fall.
“People always ask me, ‘What’s on
your bucket list?’ ” Cumming reflects. “If
you have a list of things that you want
to do before you die, just go ahead and
do
them. All of the things I do, even
the crazy things like having a bar, they
happen because I’m open to them. It’s a
good way to be because you have many
more exciting experiences. It makes you
stay in the present and enjoy it more.
You’re not busy looking to the future.”
Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based entertainment
writer. His work has appeared in the
Chicago Tribune
,
Chicago Sun-Times
,
Los Angeles Times
, and on
RogerEbert.com. The first Ravinia concert he attended
without his parents was Procol Harum in 1970.
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