Live-music venues worth the trip in Aurora, Illinois

Aurora’s outdoor concert park on the Fox River, run by the Paramount and home to the Blues on the Fox festival, a park that opened its inaugural concert season in summer 2013 with Idina Menzel and Loretta Lynn and was renamed for former Mayor Thomas J. Weisner in 2016.

A volunteer-run downtown Aurora performance hall seating up to 190, operated by the Fox Valley Music Foundation with an adjacent outdoor space, NIVA-certified as Live Independent and booking, in its own words, nationally-recognized talent in all genres of music from blues and big band to rock and world music and everything in between.