Rendezvous Arts is kicking off its seventh season with a bigger sound and a few surprises for patrons, expanding its longtime woodwind octet into an 11-member ensemble it's calling Strings Attached. The nonprofit's opening concerts run Thursday through Sunday, October 8, 9 and 11, with stops in Dixon, Lake Forest and Chicago, each pairing chamber music with a visual art exhibit in the organization's signature hybrid format.
The expanded group adds another French horn, a cello and a bass to what had been an eight-piece wind ensemble, according to Chicago Tribune. That growth marks a notable leap for an organization that, just two seasons ago, hosted an eight-piece wind octet performing Mozart, Prokofiev and Krommer at the Gorton Center in Lake Forest in November 2024. Now billed as Strings Attached, the 11-player lineup will anchor all three season-opening performances.
The program opens with a French horn fanfare on John Barrows' “La Chasse,” according to founder and executive director Deb Stevenson, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. Stevenson said the concert's cello and bass duet, Edgar Meyer's “Duet for Cello and Bass,” is designed to let the strings take center stage, with bassist Christian Dillingham — known for playing both jazz and classical music — featured in that moment.
A World Premiere Dedicated to a 98-Year-Old Mother
The centerpiece of the opening concerts is the world premiere of “nice, fresh,” a new piece by composer Scott Stevenson performed by all 11 members of Strings Attached. Scott Stevenson told the Chicago Tribune he wrote the piece because Deb Stevenson asked him to compose something for an unusual instrument combination, and he dedicated the work to his 98-year-old mother. The piece unfolds in three sections — silly, romantic and playful — reflecting a range of moods across its brief run.
Scott Stevenson has composed music since childhood and has spent almost 40 years working at the Methodist Church in Geneva, where he now serves as director of worship arts. He has written music for that church as well as for the St. Charles Singers and Old Saint Pat's Church in Chicago. He currently serves as composer-in-residence for the St. Charles Singers, where his “Requiem 9/11” premiered in 2011 at the United Methodist Church of Geneva, and in 2019 Old Saint Pat's Church and the Metropolis Chamber Orchestra commissioned him to write “London Yuletide” for Chicago's annual Deck The Hall concerts.
Deb Stevenson brings her own deep roots in Chicago-area classical music to the organization she founded. She has served on the guest oboe faculty at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music since 2009 and has performed with the Lake Forest Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony.
Dvořák, Dove and a Nod to Mozart
Strings Attached closes each concert with Antonín Dvořák's “Serenade for Winds in D minor, Op. 44,” a work the composer wrote in January 1878 for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, cello and double bass, drawing on traditional Czech Slavonic dance rhythms, according to the Antonín Dvořák Museum. Rendezvous Arts' 11-member lineup matches the piece's original 11-player scoring.
Earlier in the program, the woodwind ensemble performs Jonathan Dove's “Figures in the Garden,” which is based on themes from Mozart's operetta “The Marriage of Figaro.” Dove composed the piece in 1991 for the Glyndebourne Mozart Bicentenary as an outdoor wind serenade drawing on themes and arias from the opera, per Faber Music.
Visual Art Pairs With Each Performance
All three concerts also include an exhibit of 15 to 20 pieces of artwork by Fred Draper, who displays work in pastels and acrylic. Draper studied art at Wright State University, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree with a concentration in painting, and has exhibited his work in Pennsylvania, Los Angeles and Ohio. In 2024, he was selected to participate in Wright State's national juried exhibition “Drawing from Perception, Invention, and Memory,” which featured 91 works by 68 artists nationwide, according to Wright State University.
The three opening concerts carry different ticket prices and venues. The Next Picture Show in Dixon hosts the first performance Thursday, October 8, with tickets priced between $5 and $10. The Gorton Center in Lake Forest follows Friday, October 9, at 7 p.m., with $35 tickets. The run concludes Sunday, October 11, at Artifact Events in Chicago, where tickets cost $33.85.
The Chicago stop sits close to home for the organization: Rendezvous Arts programmed the official music stage at the Ravenswood ArtWalk in September 2026 for the third consecutive year, operating a stage and artist booth in the neighborhood just one block from Artifact Events, according to the organization's own event listing. Rendezvous Arts was founded in spring 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit built around pairing chamber music with visual art exhibits and post-concert artist receptions, a model meant to reconnect communities with live performance and local visual artists during a period of pandemic restrictions, per ArtsLink North.
That grassroots growth has drawn institutional backing as well. Rendezvous Arts received a $2,500 General Operating Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency for fiscal year 2025, state funding that supports the nonprofit's multi-venue programming across Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood, Lake Forest and Dixon.
