Located among pristine woodlands in the Ryerson historic home in Riverwoods, Il., Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods promotes the importance of nature for nurturing personal and community wellbeing, cultivating creativity, and inspiring learning.
Join us for a heartwarming evening of live jazz celebrating the timeless music from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Beloved by generations, Vince Guaraldi’s iconic soundtrack captures the spirit of the holidays with swinging rhythms, lyrical piano lines, and joyful improvisation that bring Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts characters to life.
Performed by the Kevin Fort Trio, this concert features favorites such as “Linus and Lucy,” “Christmas Time Is Here,” and “Skating,” along with other gems from Guaraldi’s catalog. Set amidst the natural beauty of Ryerson Woods, this event invites audiences of all ages to experience the warmth, nostalgia, and pure jazz artistry that define this holiday classic.
Come early to enjoy the festive atmosphere, a homemade hot cocoa bar, curated by Chef Lindsay Johnson, and the company of fellow music lovers. Let the spirit of the season and the cool sounds of Vince Guaraldi fill your evening with joy and swing!
Black Moon Trio is a horn, violin, and piano ensemble redefining the chamber music experience through adventurous programming, community-centered education, and a commitment to equity in the arts. By engaging with diverse audiences, youth, and artists of every type, Black Moon Trio works to prove that classical music is for everyone.
Parker Nelson is the French horn player for Black Moon Trio, and the Director of Public Programs and Music at Brushwood Center. “Convergence offered a really unique opportunity for me flex the artistic side of what Brushwood’s mission is: to do work at the intersection of wellness, the arts and nature,” he says. He thinks this integration of the arts into health equity work is ” Kind of our special sauce, this unique combination of things that we’re able to provide here at Brushwood Center. Because of the staff that we have and because of the connections that we have, we’re able to tell these really unique stories and kind of get to this type of storytelling that only Brushwood Center can provide.”
October is a busy month for the Trio. They are preparing to launch their latest album, Flourish, a collaboration featuring author Robin Wall Kimmerer, inspired by her writings. Influenced by Kimmerer’s work as a scientist and Indigenous knowledge keeper, Flourish embraces nature not as something to be conquered or consumed, but as a living, breathing partner, whose wisdom is available to those who take the time to listen. Kimmerer’s insights, expressed through her reflective and poetic voice, guide listeners to see the land as a giver: one that offers more than sustenance, but also lessons of gratitude, respect, and care. The album will be released on October 17, 2025.
The Trio has also launched a For Your Consideration campaign for this year’s GRAMMY Awards®, for their album, Principal. Here at Brushwood, we’re cheering them on!
art in action
Convergence in the Community
On June 28, 2024, Gorton Center in Lake Forest hummed with conversation and rang with applause as audiences experienced Convergence for the first time. Brushwood Center debuted the world premiere performance of music and art inspired by the findings of our recent report Health, Equity, and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County, Illinois, that links access to clean air, water, and nature to healthier lives.
Convergence: Health Equity in a Changing Climate, is a bilingual (English and Spanish) performance, guided by Brushwood Center’s Ensemble-in-Residence, Black Moon Trio. It translates the lived experiences of communities in Lake County, Illinois, affected by environmental racism and health inequities through original music, illustration, and storytelling.
This signature concert experience features live music performed by Black Moon Trio (Parker Nelson, Jeremy Vigil, and Khelsey Zarraga), including two commissioned compositions from composers Marc Mellits and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. Visually, it includes original artworks from five artists from across the country: Natashna Anderson, Kelley Clink, Laura Horan, Lakosh, and Naimah Thomas. The live performance is complemented by filmed narration in English and Spanish.
Since 2024, Convergence has quickly become a conversation-starter in communities in the region. Audiences in Waukegan saw a performance in August 2024. In the winter and spring of 2025, Convergence was condensed into a shorter program for educational and community settings. It connects students to the important data of health equity through art, while promoting social and emotional learning, and music and art literacy skills.
“Some of my favorite responses that I’ve gotten from audiences are things like the music program that we visited in North Chicago, where the program had grown from about five students to over 150. The students were just really excited to have real live musicians in their school, something that they had never dealt with before, something that they have never experienced before. Just having a chance to connect with these young musicians and talk a little bit more about how they can use their artistic talent to make change in their community was something that was really, really special,” says Parker Nelson, Director of Public Programs and Music at Brushwood Center.
“Brushwood Center is working with our artistic and community partners to make this data as accessible as possible,” says Catherine Game, Executive Director of Brushwood Center. “As an organization committed to improving health equity through community, nature, and the arts, we also know that art is a powerful tool for social change. By translating the research of the report into a multi-disciplinary performance, we hope to mobilize even more people and communities in this movement for a healthy and just future.”
Everyone deserves a healthy environment and access to the outdoors.
Research demonstrates that clean air, water, and access to the outdoors are vital to human health. So if nature is a necessity for everyone’s health and well-being, why is it so hard for some people to access it? What are the consequences?
The vital connections between health, equity, and nature are increasingly visible across the United States. Throughout special 90-minute experience, audiences will watch and listen to the lived experiences of members of communities affected by environmental racism and health inequities and their interconnections through music, illustration, and videography and be guided in a Forest Bathing Invitation by Jess Rodriguez from Reciprocal Forest Bathing.
Convergence: Health Equity in a Changing Climate is a collaboration between Black Moon Trio and Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods and features two commissioned compositions from composers Marc Mellits and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate as well as original artwork from five visual artists across the country to emphasize the data collected from Brushwood Center’s Health, Equity, and Nature Accelerator Report.
Celebrating one of our region’s and the world’s most precious natural resources, Black Moon Trio collaborates with author Barb Rosenstock; illustrator, Jamey Christoph; and the DuPage Children’s Museum to tell the story of the Great Lakes. Accompanying Rosenstock’s and Christoph’s 2024 book, The Great Lakes: Our Freshwater Treasure, this program features music by living composers to bolster the dramatic journey of a single drop of water in this enormous water system. Along the way, audiences will learn how these incredible lakes were formed, how to preserve the six quadrillion gallons of water they hold, and the cultural and spiritual importance of these five blue jewels.
A limited number of copies of the book will available for sale in the Driehaus Museum Store on the 3rd floor.
Brushwood Center’s Spring concert with the Chicago Chamber Choir embraces the beauty and freedom found in the natural world, and seeks peace on earth.
We look to light as a metaphor of transformation, anchored by Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden which urgently seeks “Peace on Earth.” This concert explores stories about how we care for each other, and seek transformation in ourselves and the world.
Join Brushwood Center for a moving and transfixing 60-minute concert. The concert will take place outdoors, weather permitting, so bring your picnic blankets, food, and drink to usher in spring!
Come enjoy the original culminating works of this residency at The Brushwood Gallery in a Pop-up Exhibition! These pieces of music, that at first glance appear to be pieces of abstract art, will be displayed at Brushwood Center accompanied by QR codes that will link to performances of the works by Black Moon and allow the general public to listen to the pieces as they were intended to be heard by the Veteran composers who wrote them.
Join us at Brushwood Center for a celebration of Women’s History Month with an afternoon of chamber music written and performed by women!
Duo FAE performs music filled with “virtuosity and maturity” (Hill and Hollow Music.) for audiences with works by Florence Price, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Lili Boulanger, and Dame Ethel Smyth.
In 2012, Duo F.A.E. was founded by violinist Charlene Kluegel and pianist Katherine Petersen who had met at the Aspen Music Festival several years prior. The duo takes its name from the motto of virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim and composer Johannes Brahms “Frei Aber Einsam” meaning “Free but Alone.” (shown on the left) The duo brought new meaning to this motto, doing all of their rehearsing and concertizing while living in Canada and the U.S. respectively at the inception of the ensemble. The duo seeks to present concerts that feature chamber music in its rawest form by joining two voices into one.
Come usher in spring and celebrate the artistry of these marvelous composers and performers this March!
Join us at Brushwood Center for a celebration of music and food in honor of Black History Month.
Angela Walker, a U.S. Navy Veteran and jazz vocalist, curates a musical afternoon sharing examples of the cultural contributions of African Americans in both the past and present. The afternoon will be filled with dance, drama, multimedia, and music.
Audiences also have the option of spending the hour prior to the performance in our renovated culinary studio with Jeff Williams from From Hood to Table as he cooks up a wonderful workshop that covers the history of Black farming and cuisine while also teaching how to make some Soul Food recipes that can be enjoyed during the performance.
Come warm your body and soul with this unique program this February!
Returning by popular demand, Black Moon Trio guides Veterans from the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center and We Serve: Special Recreation Association for Central Lake County to create and perform their very own musical compositions.
Using resources from Brushwood Center’s At Ease and Art Supply Exchange programs, Veterans participate in a six-week graphic score and poetry composition residency culminating in the creation of 20 original pieces of music performed and recorded by professional musicians.
Black Moon Trio is honored to again be joined by world-renowned botanical artist, Heeyoung Kim and members of her Botanical Art Academy to showcase watercolor painting methods and techniques. Poet and creativity expert Kathryn Haydon also joins the team as her collection of poetry, Unsalted Blue Sunrise: Poems of Lake Michigan, provides the thematic framework for Veterans to compose works about their connections to our freshwater treasure as well as their connections to each other.
This program has been generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Creative Forces initiative.
