Millennium Park, Pritzker Pavilion

This city-sponsored venue hosts world-music and jazz shows in a beautifully designed bandshell in Millennium Park. Thank the city, as it’s also free (save the occasional Death Cab for Cutie or Pavement show). Last year, the city began curating indie-rock gigs with a summer lunchtime concert series dubbed Edible Audible Picnic. Now there’s an evening counterpart, too—Downtown Sound. Blog darlings such as St. Vincent and Dirty Projectors have stopped by. Nothing beats the sight of indie skronk scaring away tourists. We’ll clear up the confusion right now: The Grant Park Orchestra plays in Millennium Park, not Grant Park. For years, the Grant Park Music Festival was in Grant Park, but when the splashy new playground that is Millennium Park opened in 2004, the festival moved with it. (Insert joke about who’s buried in Grant’s tomb here.) Postmodern architect Frank Gehry designed the pavilion’s flying stainless-steel sails and its spidery trellis. Those sails—which can also be seen on Gehry’s Bilbao Art Museum in Spain and L.A.’s Disney Concert Hall—are either his signature or an example of his artistic repetitiveness; either way, they’re eye-catching. The trellis holds the speakers that broadcast the amplified orchestra above the lawn (where seating is free). The sound is so good you’ll think you’re sitting in a room.