James W. Palermo, the festival's artistic and general director told the Sun-Times that the 27 concerts drew an average audience of 10,000 people.

"By and large," Palermo said, "when organizations have a new performance venue, they see a year or two of really great audiences and then things slow down. We're doing even better than last year. Our audiences are more consistently large. There have been times when we've been over capacity, at about 13,000, when you consider the people walking around and hanging along the [walls along the pavilion]."

Memberships, which guarantee access to a portion of the pavilion's 4,000 fixed seats and cost $60 and $150, sold out in mid-June. This year, the festival sold 3,764 memberships, an amount up 30 percent from last year.