If you are a meeting planner who is planning a corporate meeting, conference or convention, visit our directory, Hereschicago.com for a list of Chicago meeting venues and Chicago meeting facilities

Visit Hereschicago.com if you are seeking a meeting room in Chicago for your next meeting in Chicago.

Visit Hereschicago.com if you are seeking a meeting planner or Chicago destination management company (DMC) to assist you with your Chicago meeting.

Visit Hereschicago.com if you are holding a corporate meeting in Chicago or a business meeting in Chicago

Hereschicago.com, Chicago’s Resource Directory for Meetings and Special Events

Visit our Directory of Chicago Conference Centers and Meeting Facilities at Hereschicago.com, Chicago's Online Resource Directory for Meetings and Special Events.

Our Chicago Conference Centers combine the highest standards of service with state-of-the art amenities that exceed industry standards. We specialize in fulfilling the needs of both large conferences and small- to medium-sized corporate events that often get overlooked at other Chicago meeting facilities. Every event, large or small, Hereschicago.com conference center advertisers understand your need to save both time and money. That’s why our Chicago Conference Centers offer the best meeting facilities in the midwest. You get everything you need to make your meeting a success at a price that satisfies your budget.

Hereschicago.com features meeting facilities, conference centers, party facilities, banquet venues that match your search criteria. These unique facilities are ideal for meetings, conferences, events, seminars, retreats, parties and weddings.

Visit our directory at Hereschicago.com for unique Chicago conference centers, business meeting facilities and venues for your upcoming sales meeting, company meeting, annual meeting, conference, event, seminar, retreat or party. 

Chicago's Online Meetings and Special Events Directory

(L-R) Doreen Levy of Event Gallery, Angela Motola of Angela's Charter Service and Paula Cline of Creative Impact Group aboard the Anita Dee 2.

Anita Dee Yacht Charters has been providing Chicagoland with private charters for groups of 50 to 400 passengers along Chicago's magnificent skyline for more than 20 years. The Anita Dee II is Anita Dee's most elegant Yacht. From the sleek outer-styling of the hull to the helicopter on the observation deck, this 140-foot long yacht can accommodate groups between 150 and 400. The interior design is fashioned in art deco style with etched glass. The Anita Dee II has three levels, two that are enclosed and one that is outdoors. The salon level of the yacht features a grand piano and leather couches, so that you can fully enjoy your cruise along Chicago's lakefront. The dining deck includes a built-in buffet and wait station. It also offers an area for entertainment, as well as a spacious dance floor.

Find the Chicago charter boats for cruising in Chicago on Hereschicago.com for Chicago corporate events, Chicago firework cruises, Chicago air and water show cruises, bachelor party cruises, bachelorette party Cruises, Chicago skyline cruises, July 4 fireworks cruises, corporate entertainment in Chicago, Chicago River Cruises, client entertaining cruises and concerts at Northerly Island, charter a boat in Chicago on Hereschicago.com.  Chartering a boat in Chicago is one of the most unique ways to entertain clients and friends. 

Chicago's Online Resource Directory for Chicago's Special Event Venues and Services

“This record is a little like equipping yourself with a Eurail card,” says Loreena McKennitt of listening

to her new album, AN ANCIENT MUSE. “It’s like saying, ‘I don’t know where I’m going to go to on

this trip. I’m just going to get on board the train, and allow each encounter to lead to the next.’”

On her seventh full-length studio recording, McKennitt follows her Muse across time and tide, from Homer’s Greece to Ottoman Istanbul to England in the age of the Crusades. As with earlier albums, particularly the multi-platinum The Book Of Secrets, she takes her inspiration from the history and migrations of the Celtic people, fusing the melodic sensibility of Scots and Irish balladry with musical traditions from Greece, Turkey, Spain, and even Scandinavia.

“The process is like coming up with a new recipe,” McKennitt explains. “You think, well, I’d really like to make a dish with these elements.” Although there are clearly some favorite new spices — the lute-like oud; a Greek folk violin called the lyra; the triangular kanoun, which is similar to the zither; and the nyckelharpa, or Swedish keyed fiddle — the music itself isn’t tied to any particular style or epoch. Instead, McKennitt draws from far-flung influences, moving easily from the sinuous Silk Road groove of “Caravanserai” to the courtly quiet of “The English Ladye And The Knight,” with its boys’ choir and viols da gamba. “There are some extreme tasting-menu moments,” she laughs.

Accompanied by regular collaborators including Brian Hughes, Donald Quan, Hugh Marsh, Caroline Lavelle and Rick Lazar, McKennitt has also invited a host of other acclaimed international performers to collaborate on An Ancient Muse. Despite the differences in instrumentation, all of the performances derive from similar inspiration, or what McKennitt describes as the “landscape” of the song. “When I’m working on a piece, I try to locate it in terms of geography and time,” she explains. “I have a visual image, or a series of images, in mind for most, if not all, songs I’ve ever recorded. And when I get into the studio, I reference those images. Because if I don’t do that, I won’t have my legs, so to speak, in terms of choosing what instrument, what feel.”

That sense of landscape also helps her convey what she has in mind to her musicians. “I will tell them, ‘Here is the painting that is in my mind,’” she says. “In ‘The Gates Of Istanbul,’ it’s about approaching Istanbul in 1453 — there are camels, there are horses. It’s the end of the day, and the campaign has gone very well. Everyone is looking forward to getting through the gates and seeing their loved ones. And as you come in, there are the wonderful parks, and water… I try to paint a central picture for them, so they can say, ‘Ah, OK.’

“Very rarely is any music ever written down when I bring it to the studio,” she adds. “When one is working with musicians of that caliber, the songs develop very organically in that environment. Even though they are playing what might be regarded as folk instruments, my collaborators’ skill and sensibility really lies as much in the classical realm. So I might gesture toward a phrase, a modality, and then I just let them go to it.”

In addition to setting the scene, McKennitt’s musical landscaping helps ground the music in specific emotional terms.

“At the end of the day, I’m trying to preserve a feeling that stretches out, and changes, journeys through and comes back,” she says. “The landscaping may have to do with some of the years I spent around or in the theatre, and even, on a couple of occasions, working in film. Which is why this recording opens with the track ‘Incantation’: I think of it in my mind’s eye as being in a theatre when the lights go to half, and the music might start. Then the lights go to black. ‘Incantation’ sets the scene, and then the first song per se is ‘The Gates Of Istanbul.’”

In that sense, An Ancient Muse begins with a return home, and ends with a departure, “Never-ending Road (Amhrán Duit)”. Along the way, the album conjures the wonder of wanderlust in “Caravanserai,” weaves a tapestry of lost love and the dramatic tales of the Crusades in “The English Ladye And The Knight,” visits the ruins of a Celtic settlement in Anatolia, Turkey in “Beneath A Phrygian Sky,” and even conjures the loss and longing felt by those left behind in “Penelope’s Song.” “The English Ladye And The Knight” is based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott. “I usually choose at least one poem by another author to use in every recording. I find it inspiring to explore the words of such wonderful writers via a musical treatment,” McKennitt says. Although the classically Celtic melody is supported by strings, she opted for the more ancient

sound of viols da gamba instead of violins and celli. “It’s rawer and slightly less refined, and I wanted that sound,” she says. “Instead of making the setting too pretty or too sweet, I felt the viols added a wonderful texture, and contributed their own sonic imagery.”

As for the poem itself, McKennitt was drawn by the fact that “it touches on the issue of people loving across cultural lines, so to speak, and tragedy happens. What was interesting, I found, is that at the end of the story, the knight goes off to fight in Palestine. “Well, here we are — it’s 2006, and conflict in Palestine is still in the news.”

“Penelope’s Song” also has a literary antecedent, taking as its inspiration the long-suffering wife of Odysseus, who sat at home waiting for and worrying about her husband while he had the adventures recounted in Homer’s The Odyssey.

“In our contemporary Western experience, where we have access to a lot of technology, or have the affluence that allows us to travel, that whole notion of people going away for long periods of time with the prospect of not seeing them again, really doesn’t enter our experience,” she says. “So I wanted to create something that was sparked by a person waiting for someone to return, and being true to them.”

Not every song on An Ancient Muse is an epic, of course. “Sacred Shabbat,” for example, was conceived more as a snapshot. “It’s apparently a very well-known melody in the Mediterranean area,” she says of the traditional tune. “I heard a version of this on a recording that came from Spain – part of a collection of Sephardic music.” Although there are traditionally lyrics for the tune, McKennitt recorded it as an instrumental, performing with Haig Yazdjian on oud, Panos Dimitrakopoulos on kanoun, Sokratis Sinopoulos on lyra, and cellist Caroline Lavelle. “I wanted to put it in as an experience, as if you overheard

these particular four musicians sitting around in a park, casually playing this piece of music.”

Yazdjian, Dimitrakopoulos and Sinopoulos appear on a number of selections, as do bouzouki player Georgios Kontogiannis and percussion ensemble Krotala. Yazdjian is Armenian but lives in Greece, as do Dimitrakopoulos, Sinopoulos, Kontogiannis and the members of Krotala, and their inclusion in the album, McKennitt says, “grew out of learning that the Celts had made their way to Greece as well. In fact, in 279 B.C. the Celts actually attempted to sack Delphi, and that was all the excuse I needed to head off in more of a Greek direction.” She laughs. “It was like a license to open up a door to Greek literature and Greek influences. So I wanted to bring that geographical territory closer through these instruments.”

Again, though, it wasn’t just the history and culture that attracted McKennitt; there was also the emotional weight of the instruments’ sound, particularly that of the lyra. “I was drawn to the Eastern sentiment,” she says. “I remember the first time I heard a kemanje, which is a Turkish instrument very similar to the lyra — a small bowed instrument with a loud, rich and very evocative voice. It was in Istanbul, at Yerebatan Sarayý, a astonishingly beautiful 6th century Roman cistern, and I just found the sound of the kemanje so appealing, because it has tonalities similar to the human voice, in the way the cello does. It is a haunting sound.”

Istanbul also figures in the album’s other instrumental, “Kecharitomene,” which was inspired in part by the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena, considered by many to be the first female historian. Kecharitomene — Greek for “full of grace,” the greeting the Angel Gabriel gave the Virgin Mary — was the name of the convent in which Comnena wrote her major work, a book that among other things presented a critical view of the Crusades from the vantage point of the Byzantine Empire, rather than that of Richard the Lionheart and his fellow Western European adventurers.

“If I may be so bold as to have ambitions for this recording,” Loreena McKennitt says of An Ancient Muse, “it would be to whet people’s appetite, to broaden the scope of their awareness of our collective past by saying, ‘Back in the Crusades, well, it wasn’t just the story of Richard the Lionheart — there was Saladin as well.’ But then, I primarily see myself as being like a travel writer, because the best ones are those who serve as conduits and catalysts, rather than saying, ‘This is my story, and it’s all about me.’”

For further information, please contact:

QUINLAN ROAD

PO Box 933, Stratford, Ontario, Canada N5A 7M3 Tel. 519-273-3876 Fax 519-273-4553

press@quinlanroad.com www.quinlanroad.com

Krista Williams or Carla Sacks SACKS & CO.

427 West Fourteenth Street, New York, NY 10017

Tel. 212-741-1000, Fax 212-741-9777

krista@sacksco.com, carla@sacksco.com

“The Next Shining Stars Showcase” Gives Undiscovered R & B, Soul or Pop Talent the Chance To Be Chicago’s “Next Shining Star”

Chicago – In the competitive music industry, the opportunity to secure a “big break” can prove to be the turning point of a career. 

From June 6 through July 14 at the Congress Theater, 2135 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, Ignition Entertainment Group’s The Next Shining Stars Showcase will provide this once-in-a-lifetime chance for one undiscovered R & B, Pop or Soul artist in the Chicagoland area. The winner will receive $10,000 in cash and prizes, including recording studio time, a photo-shoot makeover and Electronic Press Kit (EPK) video and an all-expense paid trip to the national finals in Miami in November, where they will compete against other regional winners from California, Houston and Atlanta to land a starring role in the reality show “15 Minutes of Fame” and a contract with a major record company, along with $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Musicians and singers will showcase their talents before a panel of judges consisting of industry professionals and music greats.  After making the initial cut following auditions on May 5 and 6 and winning a weekly preliminary competition held from June 6 through July 4, six finalists, five from competitions and one fan-favorite selected as the “wild card contestant” from online votes, will compete in the regional finals, held on July 14. 

“While contestants do receive valuable cash and prizes, this amazing opportunity can produce incredible and measurable results for their careers,” said Don Russell, General Manager of Ignition Entertainment Group.

All contestants must be unsigned R & B artists and must perform popular present and past R & B cover tunes for their performances, as original music is not allowed for the competition.  These talented music hopefuls will be accompanied by a live band in front of a live audience.  The competition can prove to be the real “big break” these musicians want and need to unleash their potential and live their music dreams.

Auditions will take place at West Loop Studios, 17 N. Elizabeth, Chicago.  Callbacks will occur at Superior Street Rehearsal Facility, 2734 W. Superior Street, Chicago.  All competitions for Chicago’s The Next Shining Stars Showcase take place at the Congress Theater, 2135 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago.  The schedule is as follows:

§         May 5 and 6 – Auditions

§         May 19 and 20 – Callbacks

§         May 26 – Due date for registration materials and $250 registration fee for contestants selected from auditions.

§         June 6 – Preliminary Competition 1

§         June 13 – Preliminary Competition 2

§         June 20 – Preliminary Competition 3

§         June 27 – Preliminary Competition 4

§         July 4 – Preliminary Competition 5

§         July 8 – Online Voting Deadline

§         July 14 – Regional Final Competition

§         November 17 – National Final Competition (Bank United Center, Miami)

For more information on The Next Shining Stars Showcase events and for additional audition information, please call 800.928.0374 or visit www.thenextshiningstars.net.

                                                            ###

Contact Information: Kate Hughes/ Lianne Wiker                FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Noreen Heron & Associates                                           

773.477.7666

The Musical Sensation

Grease

Opens May 3

at Theatre at the Center

Music, Book and Lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey

Directed by David Perkovich

Munster, IN— Theatre at the Center is proud to present the electrifying smash hit musical, Grease!  The most popular, fun-filled musical in the history of Rock’n’Rollpreviews April 26, opens May 3 and runs through June 3 at Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Road, Munster, Indiana.  Grease will be directed by David Perkovich.

Greaseis the energetic musical comedy tribute to the age of rock and bop, blue suede shoes and poodle skirts.  When good girl Sandy and greaser Danny fall in love over the summer, they unexpectedly realize that they attend the same high school in the fall. As Danny tries to play it cool with his gang, Sandy tries to win him over with the help of the sassy “Pink Ladies.”  The hilarious adventures of Rydell High's class of '57 are a fun and nostalgic look back at the vibrant culture of the 1950s.  Grease features hit songs including, “We Go Together,” “Beauty School Dropout,” “Summer Nights,” and “Greased Lighting.” 

Grease stars Brandon Koller as “Danny”, Meg Miller as “Sandy”, Tammy Mader as “Betty Rizzo”, Richard Strimer as “Kenickie” and Dina DiCostanzo as “Frenchie”.

Set Design for Grease is by Robert Kovach, Lighting Design is by Geoffrey Bushor, Costume Design is by Janice Pytel, Sound Design is by Victoria DeIorio, Props Design is by Stanlee Hodsden, Production Manager is Chuck Gessert, Stage Manager is Rita Vreeland, and Technical Director is Ann Davis. In addition to Direction by Bill Pullinsi, Choreography is by Stacy Flaster, and Musical Direction by Malcolm Ruhl.

Founded in 1991, Theatre at the Center is a year-round professional, equity theater at its home, The Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1040 Ridge Road, Munster, Indiana.  Theatre at the Center is conveniently located off I-80/94, just 35 minutes from downtown Chicago. 

The regular schedule is:  Wednesdays & Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. ($36.00); Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ($39.00); Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. ($39.00); and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. ($39.00).  There are Saturday matinees at 2:30 p.m. on 4/28, 5/19, 6/2 and Sunday evening performance at 6:00 p.m. on 4/29. Season subscriptions are $130.  To purchase individual or group tickets call the Box Office at 219.836.3255 or Tickets.com at 800.511.1552.  For more information on Theatre at the Center, visit www.theatreatthecenter.org.

####

Contact Information: Kate Hughes/ Lianne Wiker                                              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Noreen Heron & Associates, Inc.                                                                    

773.477.7666

THE MARRIOTT THEATRE

in Lincolnshire

Terry James, Executive Producer

Andy Hite, Lead Artistic Director

Aaron Thielen, Artistic Director

present

Shenandoah

Music by Gary Geld

Book by James Lee Barrett, Peter Udell and Philip Rose

Lyrics by Peter Udell

Lincolnshire, IL— The Marriott Theatre is proud to present Shenandoah, the poignant Tony-award winning Broadway musical.  Shenandoah previews April 25, opens May 2 and runs through June 24 at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Drive.  Based on the classic Jimmy Stewart film, Shenandoah is the emotional telling of a father and his pledge to protect his family.  The musical will be directed and choreographed by Jeff Award winner David H. Bell.

It's North versus South, brother against brother in Shenandoah.  Widowed Charlie Anderson’s opposition to both the war and slavery prevents him from siding with either the Confederate or the Union in the Civil War.  He isn't about to let any of his six sons take sides, but as war besets the Shenandoah Valley, Charlie is pushed to the limit as his family is dragged into the fray.  Through joy, sorrow and turmoil, the Andersons realize that their family bonds are what now matter the most. 

Shenandoah stars Broadway veteran actor, David Hess as Charlie Anderson; and features Abby Mueller, Brian Hissong, Jessie Mueller, Jason W. Shuffler, Galen Schloming, Matt Raftery, Christian Libonati, Richie Roesner, Cory Connor and Stephen Schellhardt.   

Musical direction is by Doug Peck, Set Design is by Tom Ryan, Costume Design is by Nancy Missimi, Lighting Design is by Diane Williams, Sound Design is by Cecil Averrett and Properties Design is by Greg Issac. Patti Garwood conducts the Marriott Theatre Orchestra. 

The performance schedule for Shenandoah is Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 5:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sundays at 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.  With the purchase of a $45 ticket on Wednesdays and Thursdays, you receive a free dinner, based on dining availability. All other performance ticket prices are $42.00, excluding tax and handling fees.  A $5.00 discount for students and seniors is valid on Wednesday and Sunday matinee performances. Dinner packages for Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances are available for an additional $40.00 per person at King’s Wharf and $30.00 at Fairfield Inn.  

Free parking is available at all performances.  To reserve tickets with a major credit card, call the Marriott Theatre Box Office at 847.634.0200 or visit www.marriotttheatre.com.