Summer Elegance on Chicago’s Great Lawn

All’s forgiven if it slipped your mind that we have a National Picnic Month.  It’s July of course, the most appropriate month of all when summer is at full flower.  And perhaps the unlikeliest of suspects has created an ingenious way to celebrate al fresco dining at its purest. 

For the past few years, the Grant Park Music Festival has brought the celebration into the heart of the city by placing it on the Great Lawn facing Millennium’s Park spectacular center piece, the Pritzker Pavilion.

Known formally as a Pastoral Picnic in White, the themed commemoration of Picnic month cast a long net all the way across the Atlantic to find its inspiration.  Emulating a similar event that started in Paris during the late 80’s, this event also asks everyone to dress in white “from head to toe” for this novel and very fun happening. 

The French version started in the vast 2000 acre Bois de Boulogne, one of Paris’s most beloved and prestigious parks.  Participants wore white then just so they could find one another.  With a 6:00 pm start time last Saturday, finding people was a non-issue. 

Millennium Park’s Great Lawn can accommodate up to 7000 people and it would have been both dramatic and striking to see the entire lawn blanketed in white all the way to Monroe.  The evening’s impeccable weather would have enhanced the spectacle even more.  On this night pools of white clustered at the front of lawn closest to the band shell.  What celebrants lacked in numbers they made up for in style.   

Like haute pioneers, not only were these revelers clothed in white from tip top to flat bottom, they were dressed to the nines.  Most, conspicuously chic.  The inspiration may have been true French, but the feel somehow also had the unmistakable texture of New Orleans and carried the scent of extreme ease.

With long tables covered in white lace or linen, candelabra fitted with delicate tapers of wax, silver trays filled with an array of delicacies, stemmed wine glasses standing at the ready, and flower vases overflowing with pale green hydrangea and big white puffs of peonies, those who chose to go all in on the spirit of the event were a stunning sight.  Slightly awed, someone asked a person passing by why so many people were wearing white.  On hearing the explanation, he shook his head in mild dismay and replied, “I wish I got the memo”.

Sunset amplified the event’s theatricality.  And there was a reward.

The Grant Park Music Festival’s orchestra had selected Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 to accompany the evening and invited two extraordinary artists, brothers, to join them.  Anthony McGill holds principal clarinetist status at the New York Philharmonic.  His brother, Demarre, is principal flutist with the Seattle Symphony.  They performed a piece written for them, Puckett’s Concerto Duo and Saint-Saëns’ Tarantelle. At peak, the music flashed and sparkled like tiny rockets of color.   Brilliant renditions, their performances were as exciting as they were splendid.  As suitable for a night in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne as it was last weekend in contemporary Chicago with a wall of skyscrapers standing sentry, the program charmed across both time and place.

As one of a few, if not the only remaining free outdoor classical music series in the United States, the evening’s music sponsored by the Grant Park Music Festival as well as the Festival’s Pastoral Picnic in White act as potent reminders of Chicago’s good fortune.   They represent generous spirit restoring gifts of the city at completely no charge.   

Pastoral Picnic in White

Millennium Park

July 27, 2019

Pritzker Pavilion & Lawn

6:00 pm Open

7:30 pm Concert

Chicago, IL  60601

gpmf.org