Some people I know who have season tickets to the Grant Park Music Festival skipped this concert, I would guess out of concern for the heat. The weather was very warm, but not unbearable. The only thing that was too hot to handle was Michelle Cann’s virtuosity on the piano, which may have been why a couple of the bass players were wearing shorts on stage.

Cann, who I have seen and written about several times before, thrilled the crowd with her work on Ravel’s Piano Concerto, but what really set the place on fire was her encore, which wasn’t listed in the program, but, if I had to guess, was Hazel Scott’s arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C# Minor. I could practically see the smoke rising from the piano.

The orchestra opened with William Grant Still’s Festive Overture and closed with Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, both well-performed and well-received, but the night belonged to Cann, another in the list of must-see pianists the festival has presented this season.