Carillon Events and Festivals

TOWER THOUGHTS | A CARILLON NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

Friday to Sunday, May 9 to 11, 2025
Five Concerts: Friday at 7 pm, Saturday at 1 pm and 5 pm, and Sunday at 1 pm and 5 pm

Performances by Tiffany Ng, University of Michigan; Jasper Depraetere, Belgium; Stefano Colletti, France; and Alex Johnson, University of Chicago, with Local Chicago Carillonists.

The festival is free and open to the public, no tickets required.

Bring a blanket or chair to enjoy these concerts from the Rockefeller Chapel lawn. In case of inclement weather, the chapel will be open for indoor viewing via live audio video feed.

THE BELLS OF SUMMER

Summer Sundays, 5 pm
June 22 – August 10, 2025

Rockefeller Chapel hosts its 59th Bells of Summer Concert Season! Bring your summer picnic and blanket or picnic chairs to the east lawn, and enjoy the beautiful sound of the bells, played by virtuoso carillonists from the greater Chicago area and beyond.

See our Facebook page for updated schedule of performers.

The Bells of Summer (a poem for Wylie Crawford, University Carillonneur 1984–2015)

The Bells of Summer are summer itself:
all urgent tasks aside;
moments stayed by sounds sustained
and sent back;
air cleansed of noise by gentle motions
in cups of bronze,
the lightness of being conveyed
in rhythms of measured stress, without strain;
the wily musician of struck bells,
master and foreman of their perfection,
modestly out of sight through forty-one summers,
comes into sight, and to our right praise.