[3] Live performances have been a Chicago tradition since 1931, when mayor Anton Cermak suggested free concerts to lift spirits of Chicagoans during the Great Depression.

During its ten-week season, the Festival features a weekly live broadcast series on WFMT, and has consistently engaged many of the world's leading classical musicians.

[1] The District was responsible for performer payrolls, concert advertising and marketing, administered orchestra auditions, and coordinated the scheduling for each season list of guest artists.

As a result, he was greeted with a celebration that included a ticker tape parade down Michigan Avenue and his Grant Park Music Festival appearance was a major event.

[20] In the 1960s, the Festival took a more adventurous direction featuring works by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Gustav Mahler and Anton Webern.

[22] In 1963, the Festival introduced the interactive daytime Young People's Concerts led by Irwin Hoffman and at times by youth audience members.

[28] Ovitsky focused on living American composers such as William Bolcom, John Adams, Michael Torke and Paul Freeman.

[27] The 1980s also saw a host of elite principal conductors such as Zdeněk Mácal, Leonard Slatkin, Hugh Wolff, David Zinman and Robert Shaw.

[35] During the decade, the Festival hosted an innovative array of talents such as Chinese erhu player Betti Xiang, pipa player Yang Wei, Portuguese fado singer Mariza, Cuban classical and jazz clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera, Hungarian-Roma fiddler Roby Lakatos and Mediterranean singer Maria del Mar Bonet.

[38] The Festival is represented by a staff of trained guides, called docents, that field questions and provide educational talks during the rehearsals.

[40] In the 1930s, the concerts lured some of the most prominent performers and conductors in the world: Pons, Jascha Heifetz, Bobby Breen, Rudy Vallee, Helen Morgan, conductor Andre Kostelanetz, violinists David Rubinoff, Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist and Albert Spalding, pianist Moriz Rosenthal, sopranos Marion Claire, Edith Mason and Vivian Della Chiesa, tenors Tito Schipa, John Carter, Lawrence Tibbett and baritone John Charles Thomas.

[41] The 1940s saw a broad spectrum of performers including Mario Lanza, clarinetist Benny Goodman, soprano Kirsten Flagstad and actor-singer Paul Robeson.

[42] Other performers included sopranos Claire, Eileen Farrell, Grace Moore and Della Chiesa, tenors Giovanni Martinelli, Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce, baritone Robert Merrill, violinist Mischa Mischakoff and conductors Frederick Stock, Leo Kopp, Arthur Fiedler and Antal Doráti.

[44] Among the performers of the 1950s were sopranos Beverly Sills and Farrell, tenor Peerce, pianists, Van Cliburn, Jorge Bolet, Gary Graffman and Earl Wild, violinists Elman and Michael Rabin, and cellist Janos Starker.

[45] The 1960s upheld the tradition of diverse audiences and performers such as contralto Marian Anderson, pianists Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim, Leon Fleisher, Lorin Hollander and Christoph Eschenbach, violinists Itzhak Perlman, Ruggiero Ricci, Charles Treger, Jaime Laredo, cellist Leonard Rose, conductor Leonard Bernstein, tenor Plácido Domingo, mezzo-sopranos Maryilyn Horne and Tatiana Troyanos, soprano Martina Arroyo and Roberta Peters, as well as a host of dance companies such as the American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet and Maria Alba Spanish Dance Company.

[46] In the 1970s, the Festival hosted soprano June Anderson, vocalist Gordon MacRae, pianists Dave Brubeck, Alicia de Larrocha, Jerome Lowenthal and Sheldon Shkolnik and violinists Elaine Skorodin.

[48] In the 1980s, featured performers included pianists Walter Klein, Hollander, André Watts and Garrick Ohlsson, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, the Vermeer Quartet, baritone Merrill, bass Paul Plishka, soprano Arleen Auger and harmonica player Corky Siegel.

[29] In the new millennium's first decade the Festival welcomed sopranos Battle, Dawn Upshaw, Karina Gauvin and Erin Wall, tenor Vittorio Grigolo, pianist Stephen Hough, violinists Rachel Barton Pine, James Ehnes, Roby Lakatos, Christian Tetzlaff and Pinchas Zukerman, vocalists Otis Clay, Mariza and Maria del Mar Bonet and rock band The Decemberists.

[50] Other performers include pianist Valentina Lisitsa, soprano Jonita Lattimore, baritone Nathan Gunn and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore.

Guests in the 2007 season included Marc-André Hamelin, Russell Braun, Erin Wall, Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus and many more performing the works of composers such as Brahms, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Leo Brouwer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Tan Dun and Ferruccio Busoni.