Performers ranging from mainstream rock bands to classical musicians and opera singers have appeared at the pavilion, which even hosts physical fitness activities such as yoga.

Pritzker Pavilion is built partially atop the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the park's indoor performing arts venue, with which it shares a loading dock and backstage facilities.

With several design and assembly problems, the construction plans were revised over time, with features eliminated and others added as successful fundraising allowed the budget to grow.

In the end, the performance venue was designed with a large fixed seating area, a Great Lawn, a trellis network to support the sound system and a signature Gehry stainless steel headdress.

The city sought donors to cover Gehry's work,[12][13] and the Chicago Tribune dubbed him "the hottest architect in the universe" for his acclaimed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

The Tribune noted Gehry's designs would not include such Mayor Richard M. Daley trademarks as wrought iron and seasonal flower boxes.

[14] Millennium Park project manager Edward Uhlir said "Frank [Gehry] is just the cutting edge of the next century of architecture," and noted that no other architect was being sought.

[1] The pavilion was built above and behind the Harris Theater, which has the benefit that Millennium Park's indoor and outdoor performance venues share a loading dock, rehearsal rooms and other backstage facilities.

[24] The bandshell's brushed stainless steel headdress frames the 120 ft (37 m) proscenium theatre; the main stage can accommodate a full orchestra and chorus of 150 members.

The bandshell is connected to a trellis of interlocking crisscrossing steel pipes that support the innovative sound system, which mimics indoor concert hall acoustics.

Construction started before the park's design was completed, and in January 2000, 17 additional caissons had to be added to the partially built garage to support the weight of Gehry's pavilion.

[30] Zahner of Kansas City, Missouri, was the subcontractor for the pavilion's ribbons,[9] described as "stainless steel panels that appear to be peeling back from the central opening".

[33] Acme Structural of Springfield, Missouri, was the subcontractor for the trellis over the Great Lawn,[9] which resulted from the distributed sound system's requirement for speakers every 70 ft (21 m).

[38] In the end, budget limitations led to compromises with the original architectural plan that left many elements in their most straightforward form, such as exposed pipes and conduits, or rough concrete.

[39] The Talaske Group of Oak Park, Illinois, was the subcontractor for Jay Pritzker Pavilion's LARES sound system,[9] which "generates the reflected and reverberant energy that surrounds and envelops the listener in an indoor performance venue".

The forward-facing reinforcement speakers time the relaying of sound so as to make it seem to have arrived directly from the stage with proper clarity and volume levels.

[8][41] Although Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein felt the inaugural concert's sound quality was "a work in progress" that varied with the listener's location in the pavilion,[42] critics Kevin Nance and Wayne Delacoma of the Chicago Sun-Times said that on the opening weekend it was clear that the acousticians, Talaske Group, and Gehry had solved many of the problems presenting classical music outdoors.

[44] James Palermo, artistic and general director of the Grant Park Music Festival, felt that musicians were able to interact more effectively with the new sound system because they could hear each other better.

[45] Protected by legislation that has been affirmed by four previous Illinois Supreme Court rulings, Grant Park has been "forever open, clear and free" since 1836,[46][47][48] which was a year before the city of Chicago was incorporated.

"[56] However, when parking revenue fell short of estimates during the first year, the city charged $10 for lawn seating at the August 31, 2005, concert by Tori Amos.

[79] By 2009, as the city grappled with a budget deficit, it considered realigning parts of the larger festivals and made definite plans to move some of the smaller ones to the more modern venue.

This led Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy to encourage the crowd to breach the barriers between the seats and Great Lawn to get closer to the stage for the band's encore performance, which was without the orchestra.

[88][89] The pavilion has hosted several one-day events that were noted in international publications, including the United States debut of A Throw of Dice, a 1929 Indian silent movie about two kings with a common love interest, on July 30, 2008.

[90] Oprah Winfrey filmed the September 8, 2008, season-opening Oprah Winfrey Show on September 3, 2008, at the pavilion with more than 150 Olympic medalists, including Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Dara Torres, Kobe Bryant, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, in an effort to rally support for the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid.

[92][93] The concert featured the world premiere of Michael Torke's work for symphony and chorus entitled Plans, paired with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.

[98][99][100] Among the artists who performed with the festival at the pavilion in the 2000s decade are sopranos Karina Gauvin and Erin Wall, tenor Vittorio Grigolo, pianist Stephen Hough, violinists Rachel Barton Pine, James Ehnes, Roby Lakatos, Christian Tetzlaff, and Pinchas Zukerman, and vocalists Otis Clay, Mariza, and Maria del Mar Bonet.

Fodor's travel guide described it as the park's "showstopper" and "stunning", praising its stainless steel and sound system, as well as the variety of events it hosts.

[7] Another Financial Times critic noted that Gehry revisited some of his past design motifs, such as his use of stainless steel, and explored new ones such as the trellis and sound system.

[7] During the opening concert von Rhein noted that the sound is not of uniform quality throughout the venue and opined that the optimal sonics are toward the back of the seated area and front of the lawn.

[115] A review in the Chicago Tribune criticized the "ugly concrete structure" surrounding the mixing console in the midst of the fixed seats as the pavilion's "biggest design miscalculation", and called for it be moved.