Constellation is delighted to announce the line-up for Frequency Festival 2026, which runs at Constellation, the Renaissance Society, and the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry between Tuesday, February 24 and Sunday, March 1. The festival debuted in 2016 as an extension of the acclaimed Frequency Series, a weekly program of contemporary and experimental music at Constellation that has become an integral showcase for the city’s burgeoning new music community and touring international artists since it began in April of 2013. As with the 2025 edition of the festival, everything happens Constellation except for Saturday’s performances by Alasdair Roberts and Fredrik Rasten at Bond Chapel on the campus of University of Chicago in Hyde Park.

The fest launches at Constellation on February 24 with the US premiere of Tristan Perich’s Open Symmetry— 50-minute work for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics—performed by the all-star percussion trio of Douglas Perkins, Ian Antonio, and Xin Yi Chong. The evening opens with a solo performance by the Oslo-based powerhouse percussionist Jennifer Torrence playing recent work from Chicago composers Kelley Sheehan and Kari Watson. On Wednesday, February 25 the critically acclaimed improvising quartet أحمد [Ahmed] makes its Chicago debut. The group’s British pianist Pat Thomas made his US debut in performance with turntablist Mariam Rezaei at last year’s Frequency Festival, and now the full group with British saxophonist Seymour Wright, Swedish bassist Joel Grip, and French drummer Antonin Gerbal will treat Chicago audiences to its singular take on the music of the great bassist and composer Ahmed Abdul-Malik. The evening is opened by the remarkable trombone duo Rage Thormbones (Weston Olencki and Mattie Barbier), returning to Frequency Festival after jaw-dropping performances on their own and with Kevin Drumm in 2019.

On Thursday, February 26 Chicago Olivia Block will perform new music— long form experimental songs for piano, voice and electronics including sounds from custom sampler instruments she made by recording autoharp and piano on reel-to-reel tapes, then arranging and performing them on a keyboard. The evening is opened by the sublime Chicago saxophone ensemble ~Nois Quartet—which helped debut Noah Jenkins’ Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry in 2025—return with a set of their own, giving the world premiere of the new Alex Mincek work The Perpetual, Poly-Iterative, Multivalent, Transmodal, Vibe Maximizer.

On Friday, February 27 Chicago’s beloved Ensemble Dal Niente makes its annual appearance at Frequency Festival. This year the group will give a world premiere of a major new chamber work by composer Lei Liang, along with music by Ayanna Woods, Chaya Czernowin, José Julio Diaz Infante, and Helmut Lachenmann.

On Saturday, February 22, the action again moves to Hyde Park for a mini-fest within the fest at Bond Chapel at the University Chicago. The fascinating Berlin-based Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten will give his first-ever US performance, manipulating a half-dozen guitars as part of a focus on musical exploration of just intonation and related sound phenomena. At 8 PM, following a short pause for a snack or drink, the Renaissance Society co-presents the US debut of Rasten’s duo with the brilliant Scottish folksinger Alasdair Roberts, making his first US visit since 2013. Together they transform traditional Scottish narrative ballads, often with long durations, where slowly evolving musical materials build up throughout the strophic verse-structure to emphasize the storytelling. Both events are free and co-presented with the Renaissance Society and Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.

The fest concludes on Sunday, March 1, with New York’s daring TAK Ensemble giving the Chicago premiere of Weston Olencki’s when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean, a performance project engaging with the legacies of early scientific modernity and their relationships to experimental sound practices and archival preservation. The evening opens with the world premiere performance of Zachary Good’s Lake Heritage, a stunning multi-clarinet piece for which the composer will be joined by fellow clarinetist an McEdwards

Frequency Festival 2026 is generously supported by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.

Festival logo: http://beta-field.org/