Happy 200th to Chopin in Chicago land! Come out for some free concerts on Mar 1. 2010 as Northwestern University student pianists celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of composer Frederic Chopin at the free “Chopin Fest: Happy 200th Birthday, Chopin!”. 
The student artists will present a marathon of free concert recitals featuring Chopin’s major works, and during intermissions, guests can enjoy free Polish delicacies including free sausages, free pierogies and free birthday cake. All the free marathon concerts will take place from 5 to 10:30 p.m. Monday, March 1, in Lutkin Hall at Northwestern University, 700 University Place, Evanston. For more info, call (847) 467-4000.
Free admission.
Frédéric François Chopin, christened Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (surname pronounced [ʃɔpɛ̃] in French, usually /ˈʃoʊpæn/ in English, sometimes written Szopen in Polish (1 March 1810– 17 October 1849), was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music.
Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother. He was considered a child-prodigy pianist.At age twenty, on 2 November 1830, he left Warsaw for Austria, intending to go on to Italy. The outbreak of the Polish November Uprising 27 days later, and its subsequent suppression by Russia, led to his becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration.
In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his given names, and traveled on a French passport, possibly to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents. After ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French novelist Aurore Dupin, better known by her pseudonym, George Sand. For the greater part of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849, aged thirty-nine, of pulmonary tuberculosis.
