Maxwell Street Klezmer Band to Open Concerts on the Quad June 30

Concerts on the Quad, the popular concert series accompanying the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, will begin this summer on June 30 featuring Chicago’s Maxwell Street Klezmer Band.

The concert series, which continues to grow in popularity with large audiences on the Illinois State University quad, features five 7 p.m. Monday night concerts on the northwest corner of the quad next to Cook Hall.  Patrons are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets.

Because the bridge over College Avenue (between Milner Library plaza and the quad) is closed for construction, the faculty-staff parking lots (marked with red signs) will be opened to the public at 6:30 p.m.  The closest lots to the quad are west across the street from Bone Student Center, east across School Street from Milner Library and at the corner of Main Street and Dry Grove.  The pay lot north of Bone Student Center and the University Street parking ramp also will be open.

Maxwell Street Klezmer Band was founded in 1983, named in honor of the spirit of the turn-of-the-century immigrants who founded what became the famous Maxwell Street open-air marketplace in Chicago.  The band brings an old-fashioned spirit of fun to their performance of traditional Jewish music. The combination of dance music, folk songs, theatre medleys and jazzy Yiddish pop music from the 1930's tothe1950's creates a rich, multi-dimensional experience of the lost world of Eastern European Jewish culture.

Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, which performed on the quad several years ago, has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe.  They have performed at Carnegie Hall and at New York's Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center.

The July 7 concert will feature Illinois State School of Music string faculty and guests in an evening of chamber music. 

On July 14, the string music group Fiddleback will perform.  Violinist Andrew Driscoll, violin/violist Victoria Brannan and guitarist Grant Krener play original acoustic music that blends jazz bluegrass folk and rock.  Fiddleback plays and blends elements of jazz, classical, American fiddle styles, folk and rock in their original compositions.  

The 10th annual ISU Jazz Festival will take place the evening of July 21, and the finale quad concert on July 28 concert will feature ISU vocal faculty and guests singing favorites from the operatic and Broadway stages.

In case of inclement weather, the concerts will be presented in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall.  If that change of locations is necessary, it will be announced after 5 p.m. on radio stations WGLT, WJBC and WBNQ.