With construction going on at St. James Cathedral, this year’s weekly, Tuesday evening, summer Rush Hour Concerts have moved to Holy Name Cathedral, which I had never before entered, so I figured what the h – – -, oops, sorry, not in church. Very elegant. And the music, Price and Mozart, was good.

Another opening, another show at the 2026 Grant Park Music Festival in Millennium Park.  I dodged the rain before and after the performance, which affected attendance, but the orchestra also showed up, and the music was excellent, Tower, Bernstein and Barber. The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story made me wonder whether musician auditions include demonstrations of finger-snapping skills.

What a long, strange journey to get to that concert. It took me three and a half weeks of begging, and desperately going over people’s heads, to get my tickets when they didn’t arrive as scheduled because, I was told, of a “unique and quite astounding” software problem that affected only me.

I hadn’t been to the Fourth Presbyterian Church Noonday Concert for a few weeks, and the next time I go will be for the outdoor season, in the beautiful courtyard, but I made it a point to see Jennifer Woodrum (clarinet) and Marianne Parker (piano), who, as I’ve written before, impresses not just with her technical excellence, but also with her performance style. On this day, she also demonstrated her ambidextrous, page-turning abilities, having forgotten her foot pedal at home, which she knew I would razz her about afterward.

The weather that day remained too good to pass up, so I doubled up, heading back to Millennium Park for that night’s Grant Park Music Festival program, featuring Ives and Brahms, before leaving early so as to avoid having to listen to a mass of people making vocal noises from the stage during classical music.

Two days later I made my annual trek to the Old Town Art Fair, not to see the art, such as it is there, but rather to see local blues star Donna Herula and her band do their thing, which I expect to do more of this summer when they appear at Navy Pier.