Mike Reed is again within the music competition recreation, and this time, he’s doing issues his manner.
The Pitchfork Music Pageant co-founder, venue proprietor and distinguished Chicago presenter and musician will launch the inaugural Sound & Gravity competition this week. The five-day occasion will play out in and round his music corridor, Constellation, positioned close to Avondale alongside Western Avenue.
The programming will spill out into six different venues all through the neighborhood, together with the close by Hungry Mind, which Reed additionally owns, and can characteristic greater than 50 artists, like singer-songwriter Invoice Callahan, Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion and Nigerien guitarist Mdou Moctar.
Reed, 51, is obvious: He’s not making an attempt to recreate Pitchfork, the long-running Chicago music competition with indie roots that abruptly exited town final 12 months with little clarification given by its company proprietor, Condé Nast. As a substitute, Reed’s purpose is to fortify the way forward for Constellation, the nonprofit venue he opened in 2013, in a second when small and midsize arts venues are hurting.
“I don’t must make a brand new competition,” Reed mentioned. “What I must do is attempt to preserve the third house that’s Constellation and the Hungry Mind going.”
Not solely has federal help scaled again for the humanities normally, however viewers conduct has additionally modified. Earlier this 12 months, Hyperlinks Corridor — the longtime Chicago venue, centered largely on experimental dance, which shared house with Constellation — closed up store. That’s one other blow to Reed’s backside line and funds he should now make up for.
To construct up the venue’s coffers, Reed determined to stay to what he is aware of. He didn’t need to host a black tie gala or, as he mentioned, “a Giving Tuesday marketing campaign the place we’re gonna provide you with a mug and also you give us 100 bucks.” As a substitute, Sound & Gravity emerged.
“How about we do one thing we really do? And for over 20 years, I’ve been producing occasions,” Reed mentioned. “So what if we really made an occasion for the forms of folks that like to come back to reveals at Constellation? It doesn’t actually essentially matter that the proceeds are going to construct the reserves. They’re shopping for a product that they’re taken with, which is what we’re hopefully doing day by day, that is simply on a bigger scale.”
Along with Constellation and Hungry Mind, performances might be held at Judson & Moore, Beat Kitchen, Guild Row and Rockwell on the River, all venues inside a one-mile radius from Constellation. The choice to incorporate different venues inside a small footprint was born each out of practicality and the necessity for extra space, however Reed additionally hopes the occasion might be a lift for the neighborhood as properly.
“I hope that this may additionally then translate to a number of the different companies and inventive industries within the space,” he mentioned, “and that the neighborhood form of comes alive in its personal manner and we’re simply the factor that everyone can kind of draft off of.”
The lineup has a heavy deal with jazz, which is essentially Reed’s style of alternative. A jazz drummer himself, he’s simply come off one other 12 months programming Chicago’s annual Jazz Fest. However, his crew — together with his longtime deputy, the musician Sima Cunningham — additionally convey their very own style to the combo, infusing the lineup with bits of latest classical, digital music and experimental rockers reminiscent of guitarist Steve Gunn.
For Reed, the check in placing collectively the lineup was: Would the music aesthetically make sense at Constellation? “A few of them, like, let’s say Invoice Callahan, may play rooms a lot greater,” Reed mentioned. “So basically, it’s like, may these bands play right here? Despite the capability subject. And if the reply is sure, then that’s a part of the aesthetic that performs into it.”
However, even with rigorously curated lineups, it’s tougher than ever to attract audiences in. Persons are socializing much less and consuming much less. And, the competition world can also be altering, with a surge of cancellations final 12 months resulting from elements like rising manufacturing prices and waning viewers curiosity in an period of music streaming. Reed isn’t stunned that audiences are now not shopping for what the massive fests are promoting.
“You’ll be able to have a look at Coachella, it’s like, it’s only a advertising car with bands being accouterments for that stuff. It’s not concerning the music,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, Reed is betting on folks’s want to assemble collectively and listen to stay music. And he’s placing his chips on a walkable, “select your personal journey” competition, which he says was impressed, partially, by Huge Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“There’s been totally different variations of this, they usually’re all going to have their very own distinctive little factor about it, however the truth that it’s all form of shut collectively. The longest stroll between the venues is quarter-hour. That’s one of many distinctive traits about a few of these different occasions that I used to be impressed by,” Reed mentioned. “If I did this throughout city, it wouldn’t imply something. You’d spend half the day simply touring.”
The schedule isn’t meant to be prescriptive. For example, who’s the headliner? “Whoever you’re gonna need to see at 11 o’clock,” Reed mentioned.
Because the fest approaches, Reed mentioned ticket gross sales have been robust and have come from patrons in additional than 30 states and out of doors of the nation. However, the fest gained’t promote out this 12 months — a undeniable fact that Reed accepts. As a substitute, he mentioned, success might be proof of idea.
“The viewers and the artists are going to be the largest advertisers,” Reed mentioned. “There’s no promoting, and there’s no little bit of press — even this one — that’s going to do in addition to these people that got here out of the primary occasion and mentioned, ‘That was nice.’”
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and tradition reporter at WBEZ.
