Carillon Concerts Will Class Up Your Mondays

By Rachelle Bowden in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 4, 2007 12:54AM

When we were ages three to 12, the worst local field trip we were dragged on was to the Chicago Botanic Garden. For one thing, there are flowers in the backyard. For another, it's in, like, Glencoe. Also, the magic of anything we got our first glimpse of zooming along on the Edens is pretty much nonexistent.

But we're older now, and things like free admission are less inherently lame, and more inherently awesome. Also, we came across this great profile of Wylie Crawford, ace carillonneur, which led us to answers to life-long questions like "What's the deal with that huge slightly phallic belltower thing at the Botanic Garden?" Why, it's the Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon! It's made up of 48 bronze bells from Holland, and is played every Monday night at 7 by one of an all-star team of carillonneurs. Potentially exciting reason to trek out to Glencoe during Monday-night traffic: Carillon concert attendees get to sit on the grass and picnic, an activity general verboten.

If you're set on attending a carillon concert now, here is the schedule. Pack up your hideous rattan picnic basket with pasta salad and poached salmon and hop in the car and if it's lame, don't blame us.

Also, the Tribune story? A fairly decent job of pepping up an event announcement with actual information to get an entirely readable story out of it ... sort of like this post right here. Although Chicagoist does love any excuse for a picnic.

Image by Chicago Adventures.

Thanks, Rachel!