For my brother, sister, and me, we see the Ravinia Music Box as a hugely exciting opportunity to introduce our dad to younger people, and in a deeply meaningful context – because the presentation evokes our dad’s lifelong devotion to using music to make the world a better place.

I think my dad would have loved the exuberance of the presentation; it radiates the same childlike joy which Bernstein himself often emanated from the podium. I also think he would have appreciated that the show does not shy away from tough questions and topics. His own musical compositions expressed all the extremes of human emotion: fear, longing, love, fury.

Bernstein’s Answer really shows how Bernstein used his music to paint a portrait of the world he lived in – both the outer and the inner world – and how that music can help us make sense of our own worlds, too.

I really appreciate the moment when the questions get tough, and my dad’s music underscores some disturbing images of human turmoil. I like that it’s... real.

Beautiful, heartfelt music can help us get through the tough times, not just celebrate our joyous times. This is a great message for kids: we won’t pretend there aren’t bad, scary things out there, but we also know that music is a potent tool we can all use to help us get through the tough stuff, and has a unique power to connect us, to bring us together in – literally – harmony.

Brad Shelton and his team at BRC were unfailingly generous and patient in explaining to our group at the Leonard Bernstein Office what their vision was. They worked hard with our music editor, Garth Sunderland, to get the music cues right, and they did their utmost to honour Bernstein’s music as they went along. It was beyond touching for all of us to witness how devoted the whole BRC team was to communicating what our dad stood for through his work and his legacy.

In a way, I’m the least useful person to ask about the role classical music has played in my life – because I lived and breathed it from the day I was born! It gave me a chance to learn how to do a deep dive into music. You can hear a work like, say, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, and get a kick out of it on one listen. But: when you hear it a few times, or maybe sit in on a rehearsal, or best of all, even get to play an instrument in the piece, it will start to unfold for you like a magic, multicoloured flower. Every time you hear it, you’ll get more out of it.

In Caracas, Venezuela, I sat in an audience full of young kids who were participants in the country’s famous El Sistema youth orchestra programs. Those kids knew their “Tchaik 4,” as we like to call it, by heart – and they were hearing a fantastic performance conducted by their fellow Venezuelan, Gustavo Dudamel, who had risen through El Sistema and was now an international superstar.

The kids were leaning forward in their seats, straining with anticipation for their favourite moments, and at the end, they whooped and hollered as if they were at a ball game! I was so profoundly delighted by this: that’s exactly how I feel when I hear a great performance of a piece I know and love. I hope young viewers at the Ravinia Music Box will be moved to try some deep dives into the glorious waters of orchestral music.

I would love for young people to treasure Leonard Bernstein as an artist who, even though he lived before them, has the power to speak directly to them through his music. I hope they explore his compositions further.

We look at projects like this by asking ourselves the question: what is the change we want to make in the audience? Answering that simple question drives the choices we make in our storytelling and drives the early design decisions in the environments we need to enable a transformation within our guests.

We wanted to reduce the stigma of classical music that is perceived by younger audiences. Hopefully encouraging guests who show up for a pop music night to return for an evening with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This show has a one of a kind ‘holographic’ illusion. We spent a year developing this magic trick and two years designing and building an entire theatre around this illusion! All of that work was to convince the audience, if only for a moment, that conductor, composer and artist Bobby McFerrin had just walked on stage. That singular moment captures the imagination of our audience and gives us the freedom to begin to play with visuals around the theatre.

Beyond a spectacular immersive cinema system we are particularly proud of the audio system in Bernstein’s Answer. It was important for us to be able to accurately recreate the score but also place the music and voice anywhere around the room.

To do this, we developed a 30.1 sound system that allows us to place sound and music anywhere we like. Of course all of those speakers are unsightly so the team spent a great deal of design resources concealing every speaker in the room and making sure that every surface was treated acoustically. And that’s very BRC – technology is an amazing tool for storytelling, but we never want the audience to know that it’s there.

I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to take part in creating an experience with Jamie Bernstein and the Bernstein organisation. Playing Bernstein’s albums was how my parents introduced me to classical music. It was a thrill and the honour of a lifetime to be a small part in continuing his legacy for the next generation of audiences.

My favourite thing to do is to stand in the back of the theatre and watch the audience react when the room transforms into the magic story box. After the illusion on stage appears most audience members think that this is all the show will be. Moments later, just when their guard is down, the room begins to transform and I just love watching the surprise on all of their faces!

Bernstein’s activism and humanitarianism were essential elements of his approach to music (and his egalitarian love for all of it, not just classical), as well as essential to his approach to life, so they obviously were also essential to our story. And, due to the delay in opening due to COVID-19, those parts of his life became even more powerful and transformative as part of the experience.

There were definitely some long conversations about how far we could push this, but Welz Kauffman, the incredible Board at Ravinia, and the Bernstein family understood that what would make the experience powerful and unforgettable was to be brave and use those pieces of Bernstein’s legacy as a storytelling device that would move people emotionally.

It’s been incredibly gratifying to see both general audiences at Ravinia and the top performers in the classical music world have the same response as they walk out of the show. It’s always some version of ‘holy crap, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen’.

What’s even more gratifying are the number of phone calls our client has got from people the day after they saw the show saying, “I wanted you to know I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

The show was constructed to take guests on an unexpected emotional journey. When it starts, you think it’s about Leonard Bernstein... and it is, but at its heart it really just uses Bernstein’s story and music to take us on a personal journey, one that focuses on the role music plays in all of our lives and the role it plays in helping us all create a better world.

I like to think that’s the thing that would make Bernstein happiest – it uses his incredible legacy to lead us all to something bigger than ourselves, which is what he did throughout his life.

I want guests to feel slightly uncomfortable and transformed by what they’ve experienced. Music venues are one of the few places left where strangers still feel comfortable showing real emotion around each other. That’s a real opportunity both for the venue and for the guests.