Like a blue moon, a pageant with a unusual identify crops up each from time to time on the humanities calendar, typically leaving Chicagoans scratching their head: Ear Taxi.
The identify alone doesn’t inform you a lot — besides that its route is winding (true) and also you’re in for a memorable journey (additionally true). Based in 2016 by composer Augusta Learn Thomas, the pageant provides a platform to up to date classical musicians, members of a flourishing, if stubbornly unmarketable, musical neighborhood in our metropolis. And whereas we’re divining that means from names, “up to date classical” is exactly what it seems like: music utilizing classical methods and coaching by composers who — not like Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, bless them — are very a lot nonetheless residing and with us.
Then, there’s the scope of all of it. The third-ever Ear Taxi, which zooms across the metropolis between Oct. 3 and Nov. 2, encompasses 44 concert events or affiliated occasions and options some 430 artists. Over the course of a month, the Pageant will current greater than 70 items of music for the very first time, most by Illinois composers.
These are some head-spinning numbers. You’ll wish to spend a while parsing via the pageant’s full checklist of concert events to plot your individual route. They’re helpfully damaged into sequence, such because the main-event Anchor Performances. These start Oct. 3 with the rock-meets-Baroque oratorio “Misplaced Objects” and finish on Oct. 18, with Damien Geter’s “African American Requiem” and a brand-new piano concerto by Chicago composer Stacy Garrop.
However must you need extra under-the-radar pointers, listed below are a number of the listings that caught my eye, then my ears.
Citizen musicians
A successful new function of this yr’s Ear Taxi is its double and even triple payments, permitting you to soak up oodles of music within the span of a single night. One can’t-miss instance comes on Oct. 5 at PianoForte in South Loop: Crossing Borders Music, a globally minded chamber music group, premieres items written by scholar composers in North Lawndale and Garfield Park. After that, the all-treble choir La Caccina presents “Bizarre Sisters,” a whimsical program about “witches, magic, and highly effective girls.” The packed night ends with a set by Holocene, a singular trio of piano (Phoebe Wu), flute (Dalia Chin) and cello (Isidora Nojkovic).
Who’s on subsequent
Talking of stuffed payments, three of the town’s most enterprising and ingenious younger musicians share one on Oct. 9 on the Epiphany Middle, a church-turned-arts-haven. Ty Bouque is many organisms within the new music ecosystem: a musicologist, author, composer, and baritone with an inherent ability for demanding, wet-ink works. On this event, Bouque steers the maiden voyage of a piece by the ever-intricate British composer Michael Finnissy.
Saxophonist/composer Nick Zoulek follows that with a set “explor[ing] the saxophone as a biofeedback mechanism,” through which all the things from his breath to the clack of the instrument’s keys will be constructing blocks for towering musical statements. Asé, alias John Bitoy III, brings it house with a quasi-autobiographical set that nods to the West Sider’s experiences throughout jazz and classical.
Uncommon instrument, rarer context
The fervour venture of percussionist Gregory Beyer, Arcomusical stands out as the solely ensemble of its form on the earth: a chamber orchestra of berimbaus. The one-stringed Afro-Brazilian instrument isn’t heard outdoors of capoeira video games; on Oct. 12 at Roosevelt College’s Ganz Corridor, Arcomusical makes use of it as a car for brand new music by the likes of Chicago bassist/composer Matt Ulery and tabla participant Krissy Bergmark, each performing as a part of its set. They share the invoice with avant-garde instrumentalists Fonema Consort and Stare on the Solar, avid and adventurous commissioners of latest choral music.
Going large
Ear Taxi’s Anchor Performances are its greatest gimmes, however ensure to not miss this one: the operatic triptych on Oct. 17 on the Kehrein Middle for the Arts in Austin. Chicago Fringe Opera — a scrappy outfit unafraid to assume outdoors the field — guides performances of one-acts by composers Kate Soper, Regina Harris Baiocchi and Jasmine Barnes (of She Who Dared fame, on earlier this yr at Chicago Opera Theater).
Sippable sounds
Ensemble Dal Niente is aware of easy methods to throw itself a celebration. Yearly, the group has balanced its bracing, cerebral repertoire with a season-end bash, at which the tipples have flowed as simply because the tone rows. This time, Dal Niente opens its season — its twentieth — with “Exhausting Music, Exhausting Liquor,” hosted by West Lake View new-music hang-out Constellation on Oct. 19. The repertoire is, certainly, very arduous; fortunately for you, you’ll be able to observe the musicians’ sweaty virtuosity over the frosty rim of a Genmaicha Collins.
The Oct. 24 drawback
This specific Friday night is the pageant’s busiest, with 4 totally different Accent Concert events occurring without delay across the metropolis. Choosing amongst them is hard, however I wish to put in a plug for 6 Levels, at Columbia School’s Sherwood Corridor in South Loop. That program spotlights works by Regina Harris Baiocchi (additionally featured within the Chicago Fringe Opera program), Kyong Mee Choi, Ester “Hana” Hanviriyapunt, Janice Misurell-Mitchell, Patricia Morehead and Africa Brown — six stalwart Chicago composers who’ve been at it for many years, working in spheres from classical music to jazz to West African percussion and dance. Plus, the otherworldly pipes of singer Adore Alexander, acting on this system, is well worth the worth of admission alone.
A composer neglected
On Oct. 26 at PianoForte, pianist Daniel Baer presents a portrait live performance of the underrated New York composer Robert Savage, whose profession was lower tragically brief by AIDS in 1993. This system contains two works written within the final yr of Savage’s life: “Dance of Avoidance” and “AIDS Ward Scherzo,” the latter Savage wrote within the hospital.
Venues off the overwhelmed path
Of the 20-plus venues internet hosting Ear Taxi, two stand out. Michael Corridor, a violist and unflagging champion of native composers, performs an Oct. 20 recital at Hyde Park’s historic Blackstone Library. Corridor’s repertoire ranges from a bit being heard for the very first time (Jonathan Hannau’s Leaflet) to his personal music.
Then, on Oct. 28, the Chicago Bagatelles Challenge takes over the Corridor of Immortals on the Worldwide Museum of Surgical Science. The sampler-platter night spotlights these bagatelles — 12 new mini-works for solo saxophone, performed by Phil Pierick — in addition to music for soprano (Kristina Bachrach), percussion (Kyle Flens) and flute (Sasha Ishov). There’ll even be an viewers participation portion: an interactive efficiency of Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza VIIb,” from his landmark sequence for solo devices.
The grand finale(s)
This ain’t your high-school marching band. On Nov. 2, Mucca Pazza — a Chicago mainstay for his or her costumed personas and genre-fluid, extravagantly kooky performances — brings Ear Taxi to a festive shut at SPACE in Evanston.
Earlier that afternoon, a cluster of jazz and classical artists calling themselves the Inexperienced Mill All-Stars will sound a somberer notice on the legendary Uptown membership. There, they current an elegiac and meditative Día de los Muertos program, together with a efficiency of “Troubled Water” by the late, nice Chicago composer Margaret Bonds; College of Illinois college pianist Rochelle Sennet is the featured soloist.
