Millennium Park Residency Program
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Vocalo's Summer Finale (September 20, 6-9pm)
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Old Town School of Folk Music presents "Global Carnival" (September 22, 5-9pm)
Millennium Park, Jay Pritzker Pavilion • Free Admission
Enter at Michigan Ave. & Washington St., Michigan Ave. & Madison St., Randolph St. or Monroe St. • View Map
DCASE Homepage > Millennium Park > Residency Program
Returning for its second year, the 2024 Millennium Park Residency Program selected five esteemed Chicago cultural organizations to present their own dynamic programming as part of Millennium Park’s 20th Anniversary Summer Season. 2024 organizations-in-residence include: Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, Vocalo, Collaboraction Theatre with Teatro Vista, Experimental Sound Studio, and Old Town School of Folk Music.
All performances are free. Details about each organization’s programming is listed below.
Vocalo's Summer Finale
Featuring Pivot Gang, Marquis Hill, KAINA, and More!
Friday, September 20
Jay Pritzker Pavilion • 6-9pm
Vocalo is Chicago’s only urban alternative station, the first of its kind in the country, founded to reflect Chicago’s distinct cultural and creative fabric through music discovery — both on and off the airwaves. On Friday, September 20, Vocalo presents the Summer Finale, a special one-night-only free concert to wrap up the summer, featuring an incredible lineup of Chicago talent: Pivot Gang, a hip-hop collective of independent artists (Saba, Joseph Chilliams, Frsh Waters, MFnMelo and DaeDae) based out of Chicago’s West Side; internationally acclaimed trumpeter and South Side native Marquis Hill; beloved multi-genre singer-songwriter KAINA, and more.
Old Town School of Folk Music
Global Carnival
Sunday, September 22 • 5-9pm
Jay Pritzker Pavilion and throughout the Park
A dynamic, immersive performance experience that will feature Afro-Brazilian carnival block Ilê Aiyê and New Orleans Black Masking Indian artists Flagboy Giz & the Wild Tchoupitoulas. With additional performances by local ensembles such as the Windy City Ramblers, Muntu Dance Theatre, Azania Drum, Team Jukeboxx Mas Band, and the Epic Steel Orchestra! Using various areas of Millennium Park as well as a main stage performance, Old Town School’s Global Carnival will weave together performances found in celebrations across the Black Atlantic. Carnival season is a well-known tradition throughout the Caribbean Basin and Latin America, with famous celebrations in Brazil, New Orleans, and Trinidad. While Chicago boasts sizable populations from the regions that participate in the Carnival tradition, large-scale outdoor celebrations are often difficult in the traditional lenten season in winter. The celebratory feeling found in Carnival celebrations engage the healing possibilities of releasing pain, stress, frustration and creating opportunities to embrace freedom, liberatory joy and revelatory experiences with your shared neighbors and community. Global Carnival will bring an evening of these experiences to Millennium Park, following Old Town School’s commitment to the folk tradition: sharing stories and performances from one culture to another.
Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project
Divination: The Dancing Souls of Black Folk
Saturday, August 24 • 5:45pm
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Returning to Millennium Park following a wildly successful 2022 engagement, the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project presents ten dynamic companies in a concert exploring the divine, mystical and spiritual ways our ancestors communicate and celebrate with us.
The companies performing include: The Chicago Multicultural Dance Company and Hiplet Ballerinas, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, The Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers & Center, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre, NAJWA Dance Corps, and Praize Productions Inc.
Visit us:
Admission is FREE
Open Daily 6am–11pm
Welcome Center, open 9am-7pm (open until the end of the performance on event nights)
| Plan Your Visit | Attending An Event |
Find us:
Millennium Park
201 E. Randolph St.
Chicago, IL 60601
Parking:
Nearby parking garages are located at Grant Park North Garage (25 N. Michigan Ave.), Grant Park South Garage (325 S. Michigan Ave.) and Millennium Park Garage & Millennium Lakeside Garage (5 S. Columbus Dr.).
Pay in person at each garage location or pre-pay online for discounted parking. Visit www.millenniumgarages.com or call 312.616.0600 for 24/7 customer service.
Public Transportation:
Take CTA to Millennium Park
From the elevated lines: exit at Washington/Wabash and walk east.
From the subway: exit at Lake (Red Line) or Washington (Blue Line) and walk east.
Served by buses 3, 4, 6, J14, 20, 56, 60, 124, 146, 147, 151, 157
For travel information, visit www.transitchicago.com. For fare information or to purchase fares in advance, visit www.ventrachicago.com.
Presented by Collaboraction and Teatro Vista
present the return of Sandra Delgado’s La Havana Madrid
Starring Sandra Delgado
Directed by Cheryl Lynn Bruce
Friday, August 23 • 6:30pm (pre-show at 5:30pm)
Millennium Park, Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Free
La Havana Madrid, Sandra Delgado’s smash hit musical play celebrating Chicago Latine music and history, returns one-night-only, Friday, August 23 at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, as part of Millennium Park’s 20th Anniversary Season
Bring your dancing shoes and step back in time as Collaboraction Theatre Company and Teatro Vista Productions transform the Jay Pritzker Pavilion to honor La Havana Madrid, a sacred space in Chicago’s Latine community, where the glorious rhythms of mambo and salsa formed the heartbeat of an ever-changing city.
La Havana Madrid is inspired by true stories told by newly arrived Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Colombian immigrants who arrived in Chicago in the 1960s and found refuge in that vibrant, second-floor, Lakeview supper club. Its characters are inspired by real Chicagoans who found community at La Havana Madrid, like arts advocate Myrna Salazar, club owner Tony Quintana, photographer Carlos Flores, band leader Roberto “Carpacho” Marin, Maria Bechily, and Carlos and Maria Delgado.
The production features iconic Latine music from the ‘60s and ‘70s (Joe Arroyo, Beny Moré, Los Panchos, La Lupe) along with original songs by composer Cristian Amigo with lyrics by Delgado. “Es Mi Verdad,” for instance, is a new song dedicated to the late Myrna Salazar, the glass breaking Latine talent agent and co-founder of the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance.
Throughout, Carpacho y Su Súper Combo chronicles the history of Caribbean Latine music, from boleros, to mambo, to the birth of salsa. By the end of the night, audiences need little encouragement to get on their feet and dance along to this amazing live band’s soul-stirring Latine beat. DJ Julio Bishop starts spinning traditional salsa music at 5:30pm. The performance begins at 6:30pm.
This free performance is part of the Millennium Park Residency Program, presented in partnership with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and with support from the Pritzker Foundation and Millennium Park Foundation.
Experimental Sound Studio
the urban+nature sonic pavilion
Saturday, July 13 • 1-4pm
Thursday, August 15 • 5-8pm
Millennium Park's Great Lawn
The urban+nature sonic pavilion is an auditory exhibition that explores how the sounds of nature are hidden and embedded in the soundtrack of the city. Bringing together 10 multichannel compositions from an international roster of sound artists, this program invites visitors to actively listen to the nature rooted in the urban, and to reconsider the obsolete notion that the human and non-human cannot be beautifully reciprocal and entwined.
Free and open to the public, this immersive experience will take place on Millennium Park’s Great Lawn beneath the world-renowned latticed speaker system of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Interactive curatorial discussions will offer additional insights into the creative concepts of the artists.
This exhibition is curated by Giovanni Aloi and Chris Hunter of the Antennae Project, a leading international peer-reviewed publication on the subject of nature in contemporary art, in collaboration with Experimental Sound Studio (ESS).
