https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/about daily 0.75 2026-01-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/c35a82d2-8c0b-4c52-8f42-866b8e9c6fb3/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/e2d208f3-ca1b-4af5-ba97-5e685b0b89c7/partners%24.jpeg About - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2020 daily 0.75 2022-01-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573475792236-BC5M2I1S5QJSDV2CDWEN/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573469452710-M6D549EVA53J2IDOS16U/Oren_Chris.jpg Program 2020 - Oren Ambarchi / crys cole February 24 - 8:30 PM - Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $17 advance/$20 door Over the course of two decades the music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi has demonstrated an inexorable sense of development and exploration. The Australian native has enhanced his sublime guitar playing with electronics and signal processing, applying his sound-making to countless, evolving practices, drawing upon traditional song-form, minimalism, free improvisation, and abstract composition in ever-shifting combinations and contexts. Ambarchi, who played the music of Alvin Lucier as a member of the Ever Present Orchestra on a Frequency Series concert in 2017, will play solo, mixing guitar and electronics. crys cole is a Canadian sound artist working in composition, performance and sound installation. Generating subtle and imperfect sounds through haptic gestures and seemingly mundane materials, she creates texturally nuanced works that continuously retune the ear. She has ongoing collaborations with Oren Ambarchi (AU) and with James Rushford (AU) (under the name Ora Clementi, which performed a Frequency Series concert in 2015), and tonight she will perform a new solo work. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573469645035-1C5JI7787OS0YHJD6R9X/jacob-56_Gudinni+Cortina.jpg Program 2020 - Jacob Wick with Phil Sudderberg February 25 - 6:30 PM - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago Ave.) Free for Illinois residents A Chicago native based in Mexico City, Jacob Wick is an improviser, writer, and artist. His work is dedicated to and informed by queer feelings and queer politics. “Playing until he physically can’t, playing outside the boundaries of the trumpet’s conventional voice, and de-naturalizing listening encounters, are all of cornerstones of Wick’s work,” says the Wire. Wick will perform solo music from his acclaimed 2019 recording Feels and play in a duo with Chicago drummer Phil Sudderberg. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573473738775-HSG4YZ363YCNV2BDESQ3/Eckhardt_Wooley.jpg Program 2020 - Julia Eckhardt and Nate Wooley play Éliane Radigue February 26 - 8 PM - Bond Chapel, University of Chicago (1025 E. 58th St.) Free Julia Eckhardt is a musician and curator in the field of the sounding arts and at the intersection of composed and improvised music. As a performer of composed and improvised music she has collaborated extensively with composer Eliane Radigue, and worked with artists such as Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Jennifer Walshe, Rhodri Davies, Taku Sugimoto, Manfred Werder, Angharad Davies, and Lucio Capece, among others. She has been lecturing about topics such as sound, gender and public space, and is (co-)author of The Second Sound, conversation on gender and music, Grounds for Possible Music, The Middle Matter – sound as interstice, and Éliane Radigue – Intermediary Spaces/Espaces intermédiaires. In her Chicago premiere she will perform Occam IV, a piece composed for by Radigue. New York trumpeter Nate Wooley moves easily and nonchalantly between the worlds of contemporary classical, jazz, noise, and electronic music as an interpreter, improviser, and composer. He leads several of his own projects including Battle Pieces, Columbia Icefield, and Seven Storey Mountain, while maintaining a rigorous solo practice and collaborating with a wide array of artists including Ken Vandermark, Ashley Fure, Anthony Braxton, Yoshi Wada, Matthew Shipp, and Annea Lockwood (whose work he performs on Friday night’s portrait concert at Constellation). He played the music of Radigue with clarinetist Carol Robinson on a Frequency Series concert in 2014, and tonight he’ll play the composer’s Occam X. Julia Eckhardt’s appearance in Chicago is presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society and in cooperation with Goethe Institut Chicago, and is made possible in part by the generous support of the Flemish Government. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573473853714-B5MFXEWM5G5KTUYJAZF8/charles.beth+ross-buckley+.jpg Program 2020 - Charles Curtis plays Éliane Radigue February 27- 7 PM - Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago (111 S. Michigan Ave.) Tickets: $10/$5 for AIC members Called by ArtForum "one of the great cellists" as well as "spellbinding and minimal," Charles Curtis has woven a unique career through the worlds of classical performance and musical experimentation. For more than twenty years Curtis has been closely associated with the legendary avant garde composer La Monte Young. As soloist and as director of Young's Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble, Curtis has participated in more performances and premieres of Young's music than any other musician. French composer Éliane Radigue created her very first work for a purely acoustic instrument for Curtis, the hour-long solo "Naldjorlak I," for which he will give its Chicago premiere this evening. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573474182108-8FBYO7DKSY7KTJ96JQ46/annea_2014sit_lg_NicoleTavenner.jpg Program 2020 - Annea Lockwood portrait concert with a.pe.ri.od.ic and Nate Wooley February 28, 8:30 PM, Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Composer Annea Lockwood has been a pioneer in the world of sound art for more than five decades. Early in her career the New Zealand native explored the sonic possibilities of glass, initiating a life-long fascination with new timbres and sound sources. Her notorious Piano Transplants series created events in which non-functioning pianos were either set ablaze, submerged in water, covered in sand, or eventually buried in an English garden. She’s also created a series of studies of rivers and their attendant sound worlds, mostly recently with Sound Map of the Danube, which will be presented as an installation at Experimental Sound Studio. This evening Chicago ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic will perform the first-ever survey of her works in Chicago, and New York trumpeter Nate Wooley will play “Becoming Air,” a work she created specifically for him. Annea Lockwood’s appearance is made possible through a partnership with the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573474354997-SI0VG9USYPGUZRJU6MU4/annearecording.jpg Program 2020 - Annea Lockwood: Sound Map of the Danube sound installation February 29 - 2 PM - Experimental Sound Studio (5925 N. Ravenswood Ave.) Free Join us for the opening reception of composer Annea Lockwood’s sound installation A Sound Map of the Danube, an aural tracing of the Danube, interleaved with the memories and reflections of its people. Lockwood will be in discussion with trumpeter Nate Wooley. The installation runs through March 29. Annea Lockwood’s appearance is made possible through a partnership with the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573474405335-3ONC994XXNXNYRBBLP7E/KFW_McCowen.jpg Program 2020 - Keith Fullerton Whitman / John McCowen February 29 - 8:30 PM - Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Brooklyn-based electronic music artist Keith Fullerton Whitman gives his first Chicago performance in seven years, performing a new iteration of his Redactions series. The Redactions (2015-) constitute an ongoing exploration surrounding the extraction of "peaks," or "transients" from geographically & thematically relevant audio materials given a particular realization or performance; the source materials utilized are invariably derived from a conceptual layer wrapped around the geography or setting of the eventual performance, blurring the line between what is inherently acoustic and/or electronic. In its essence it is a way to improvise within the rigidity of seemingly fixed audio signals. It is exclusively a live-performance work, performed in stereo & 4-channel quad arrays & as of yet remains undocumented by a tangible commercial recording. John McCowen is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer. His work focuses on extending the possibilities of the clarinet family. John embraces long-form drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to extrude the dimensions within - treating the clarinet as an acoustic synthesizer. In his own words he creates “polyphonic drones emitting from a single length of tube.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1574022298631-S5IX7WQUBNUDS0RU7BPI/Ganavya%2BRajna-AHT.jpeg Program 2020 - Ganavya Doraiswamy & Rajna Swaminathan March 1 - 2 PM - Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.) Free In this duo project, vocalist Ganavya Doraiswamy and percussionist Rajna Swaminathan interweave stories, prayer, and rhythm to create an enveloping, healing soundscape. Drawing on various threads of Indian music and the improvisational textures of creative music, they present a unique meditation on the alchemies of social and spiritual realms. Ganavya Doraiswamy is a critically acclaimed vocalist, scholar, and composer who has quickly amassed an incredible breadth of contemporary works. She has been featured on various projects, notably on the Quincy Jones produced Tocororo, which hit #1 on jazz charts. Hailed as "extraordinary" (DownBeat) and "most enchanting" (NPR), Ganavya's last album, Aikyam: Onnu was described in The New York Times as “majestic . . . a thick ephemera, like smoke as dark as ink, just coming off the fire.” Rajna Swaminathan is an acclaimed mrudangam artist, composer, and scholar. In her music and research, she explores the undercurrents of rhythmic experience and emergent textures in collective improvisation. Her debut album with her ensemble RAJAS, titled Of Agency and Abstraction (Biophilia, 2019), has been described as “music of gravity and rigor… yet its overall effect is accessible and uplifting” (Wall Street Journal). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1573472698654-MT129H928RCOP3GYE543/katinka_julian.jpg Program 2020 - Katinka Kleijn / Julian Otis March 1, 2020 - 8:30PM - Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Hailed as “Chicago’s first lady of the cello” by Timeout Chicago Magazine, Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn defies today’s traditional definition of a cellist, transitioning comfortably through the styles of classical, experimental, contemporary, improvisatory, folk and progressive rock, as well as across the traditional fields of solo, chamber and orchestral performance. A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, she’s recently formed dynamic new collaborations with guitarist Bill MacKay and fellow cellist Lia Kohl. Tonight Kleijn premieres new work by Nathan Davis and Aliya Ultan, among others. Julian Terrell Otis is a genre defying musician dedicated to the advancement of Black Music in America. The utilization of the operatic voice brings new perspective to the creative music, jazz, commercial, and contemporary classical worlds. Otis performed Julius Eastman’s “Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan of Arc” on the 2018 Frequency Festival. Tonight he premieres Anthony R. Green’s “Empathy I: Diamond Reynolds,” which he calls “an opportunity to process the inner emotional life of Reynolds’ witness to the death of her boyfriend Philando Castille.” https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/new-home daily 1.0 2026-02-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/ddaaa215-2a68-4e21-9a4f-334376bff5f9/FF_Wave-Logo-B.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/99283fc7-ef62-42e4-a8f1-c6ac4370fdfa/2026_update.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/772b2f90-5d7c-456b-8b09-a69fdd3b5617/logos+small.png Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2025 daily 0.75 2025-02-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a1b22e8c-215b-49c3-8813-2a9f2731d24a/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2025 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/312ab091-38d9-4835-ab46-187e12783b23/FF_2_18_Mand_Nick.png Program 2025 - 2/18 - 8:30pm John McCowen & Madison Greenstone: Mundanas + Varo String Quartet and ~Nois play Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry by Noah Jenkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/df2b1804-e5fa-46d4-8abc-4fce6f29ac64/Screenshot+2025-01-02+at+23.04.52.png Program 2025 - 2/19 - 8:30pm Beyond this Point + Mabel Kwan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/b82cf590-ddc4-4331-8fde-89c7246493d4/FF_2_20_NIS_Zosha.png Program 2025 - 2/20 - 8:30pm Joshua Abrams & the Natural Information Society Community Ensemble + Zosha Warpeha https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/33b1c3f2-825f-4149-8f9a-d7507f035f45/FF_2-21.png Program 2025 - 2/21 - 8:30pm Mivos Quartet + Ian Antonio plays Jürg Frey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/76ca719d-ec84-41dc-81e3-621425dd4e93/Angharad.png Program 2025 - 2/22 - 6pm Angharad Davies @ The Gray Center https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/665c5c0d-ed96-4b7a-b0d4-9a24d64647ce/mariam-rezaei_combined_v2.jpg Program 2025 - 2/22 - 8pm Pat Thomas & Mariam Rezaei @ Bond Chapel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/14077b56-083b-406d-95b2-ded80477b696/DN_no+credit.jpeg Program 2025 - 2/23 - 8:30pm Ensemble Dal Niente https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/archive daily 0.75 2026-01-05 https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2022-copy daily 0.75 2023-01-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a1b22e8c-215b-49c3-8813-2a9f2731d24a/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/be80ed7e-9711-4634-b574-550536b38bc4/BillHaleyLiaMacie.png Program 2022 - Bill Nace & Haley Fohr / Lia Kohl & Macie Stewart Tuesday: 8:30 PM February 22, 2022 - Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Philadelphia’s Bill Nace (Body/Head) and Chicago’s Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) are two of the most dynamic and distinctive voices in experimental and rock music today. The former has carved out a sui generis strain of guitar that channels noise into a limitless array of possibilities, from pin-drop quietude to a tsunami roar. Working with producer Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas), he revealed new dimensions on his head-tripping 2020 album Both, masterfully layering disparate sound streams of noisy abstraction. A devoted collaborator, Nace has previously worked with Chris Corsano, Okkyung Lee, Steve Gunn, Samara Lubelski, Leila Bordreuil among many others. Haley Fohr is best-known for stunning art-pop project Circuit des Yeux in which her force-of-nature voice is meticulously situated within ever-shifting arrangements that collide post-Nico wanderlust with orchestral grandeur. Her acclaimed 2021 album _io featured majestic string arrangements recorded in piecemail fashion during the first year of the pandemic. On her own she remains committed to fearless experimentation, blending electronics with gripping vocal improvisations. This concert marks the duo’s first-ever performance. //\\//\\ Lia Kohl and Macie Stewart are a Chicago-based duo creating freely improvised music that explores rich harmonies, timbres, and textures. Starting from the quartet of their two voices, cello, and violin, the duo’s varied sound centers curiosity and an uncanny receptivity to each other. They have recorded two albums, Pocket Full of Bees (2019) and Recipe for a Boiled Egg (2020), both on Astral Spirits. Downbeat magazine calls their music “more filling than a four course meal.” Photos: Chelsea Hogue/Evan Jenkins/Maren Celest https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/d9bb31af-0815-4b2d-b1f5-645ed4ebbc54/MatchessRyanJeff.png Program 2022 - Matchess / Jeff Kimmel & Ryan Packard Wednesday: 8:30 PM February 23, 2022 Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Sonescent (adj): 1. (of sound) showing advanced signs of aging 2. (of music) elderly, not functioning as it once did 3. describing the last minutes in the life of music Sonescent will be released on February 25th as a stereo LP on Drag City. The album was conceived during a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation in Joshua Tree where Whitney Johnson perceived sound and music in the body, psyche, and beyond. Without access to pencil and paper in the moment, she later recollected, reconstructed, and transcribed the sonescent music that had passed in and out of thick waves of cognitive consonance and dissonance. A band comprised of Haley Fohr, Tim Kinsella, Brian J. Sulpizio, Rob Frye, and Kalina Malyszko performed these scores, and the resulting compositions are represented here tonight. //\\//\\ Clarinetist Jeff Kimmel and percussionist Ryan Packard are long-time collaborators who have worked together in many settings, including Packard’s chamber piece For Lying Down and Breathing (released on the Amalgam label in 2020), numerous ad hoc improvisation groupings, as well as performances with experimental music ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic. Their 2021 release Contrast Shifting on the Dinzu Artefacts label documents their first meeting as a duo, with both players augmenting their instruments with synthesizers and electronics. The session dates from early 2020, when recording engineer Alex Inglizian invited Kimmel and Packard to perform for his recording techniques course at Northwestern University. Their shared history and camaraderie result in a set of improvisations that highlight the subtleties and extremes of their instruments, ranging from serene and atmospheric to pointillistic and playful. Photos: Marzena Abrahamik/Julia Dratel/Erika Råberg Ryan Packard’s appearance is made possible thanks to a generous contribution from Konstnärsnämden. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/b4ecf050-89e0-470d-85ee-d4f9f43b3ec0/Screen+Shot+2022-01-23+at+11.20.16.png Program 2022 - Hanna Hartman Thursday: 8 PM February 24, 2022 William Eckhardt Research Center(5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Room 161) free Hanna Hartman is a Swedish composer, sound artist and performer living in Berlin. She has composed works for radio, electroacoustic music, ensembles, sound installations and given numerous performances all over the world. Her many awards and grants includes the Karl-Sczuka-Preis, the Phonurgia Nova Prize, a Villa Aurora grant and the Rosenberg Prize. During 2007 and 2008 she was Composer-in-Residence at the Swedish Radio and in 2019 at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Hartman is a meticulous weaver of sound, and according to an informative Philip Clark feature in the Wire this in 2019 she’s been recording and amassing a huge catalog of hyper-specific recordings going back decades, and somehow she has mental access to them for something a new piece she’s working on might require. While it’s fascinating to learn where some of the sounds come from—in the Wire piece she describes rolling a ball in potato starch, noting that you need “exactly the right weight, and you must also have a lot of potato starch,” to say nothing of an excellent contact microphone—that’s hardly necessary to be knocked out by these worlds she creates. Obviously her processes relate to musique concrete, although she downplays any connections. This concert is her Chicago debut. Program: SOLO for amplified and moving objects FRACTURE commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur Hanna Hartman’s appearance in Chicago is presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society and in cooperation with Goethe Institut Chicago and STAGE (Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration) at the University of Chicago. Photo: Göran Gnaudschun https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/ce6eac3d-d0c8-4cbc-8fe0-d6c0e4d5d995/SusanJordan.png Program 2022 - Susan Alcorn / Jordan Dykstra Friday: 8:30 PM February 25, 2022 Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 One of the world’s premiere exponents of her instrument, Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz, and world musics. Though known as for her solo work, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Chris Cutler, the London Improvisors Orchestra, the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bourdreuil, Evan Parker, and Mary Halvorson among others. For this special solo performance Alcorn will play music by Astor Piazzolla and Olivier Messiaen, as well as her own compositions. //\\//\\ In Better Shape Than You Found Me is a one-hour piece jointly composed by Jordan Dykstra and Koen Nutters in the year 2020. The two bring together their sounds and structures in very organic ways, merging into a single, intriguing sound world. Sparsely created minimal sounds from various instruments (piano, cello, free-reed, and percussion) and electronics intersect and move organically in a geometric pattern, linearly or ascendingly, while retaining a calmness and a sense of spatial expansion over the subtle presence of field recordings, occasionally hovering at the edge of harmonies or assimilating into silences. This concert is the US premiere of the work, and will be performed by cellist Lia Kohl, percussionist Ryan Packard, pianist Jonathan Hannau, and Dykstra. Photos: David Lobato/Gabe Long https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/848f71b3-0edc-40ea-9a23-8b5b6a4e32fe/TomekaKatie4tets.png Program 2022 - Tomeka Reid, Sam Bardfeld, Curtis Stewart & Stephanie Griffin* / Krista Franklin, Ben LaMar Gay, Sam Scranton & Katherine Young * Play the music of Julius Hemphill Saturday: 8:30 PM February 26, 2022 Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 In late 2020 New World Records released The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony, a stunning boxset of previously unissued music by the singular St. Louis reedist, composer, and improviser Julius Hemphill. Among the treasures was a recording of Mingus Gold, for which he created dazzling string quartet arrangements for three of Charles Mingus’ most beloved tunes. Chicago cellist Tomeka Reid has assembled a superb string quartet with violinists Sam Bardfeld and Curtis Stewart and violist Stephanie Griffin to perform that rarely heard piece—its Chicago premiere—along with a selection of other Hemphill transcriptions for string quartet. //\\//\\ Krista Franklin, Ben LaMar Gay, Sam Scranton and Katherine Young—four artists who work between and across media, histories, genres, and practices—perform a set of improvised music. Composer and cornetist Ben and writer and visual artist Krista first worked together performing in response to a Folayemi Wilson’s 2019 Hyde Park Art Center solo exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times. Sam and Katie play together in the duo Beautifulish and released their first album in 2020 on Shinkoyo. For the online interview platform Documented Dialogues in spring 2021, Sam and Katie invited Ben and Krista to join them in a free-wheeling conversation. The four jammed over Zoom about play, intensity, noise, early morning rituals, trust, and other things connected to music and collaborative arts. By the end of the hang, there was a feeling in the air and across the ether that something special had happened and that more would be fun. As Ben said at one point in the conversation, “We all create music without our instruments. You know, the music happens way before we touch our instruments.” In a way, that was the quartet’s first session. This is the group’s first public performance. Photos: Cristina Marx (Reid)/Rogelio Bucareli (Griffin)/Roberto Cifarelli (Bardfeld)/Deidre Huckabay (Young) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/0480ade0-800d-49da-a880-eec59838d7a2/20160821_DN_0100small_credit_Aleksandr_Karjaka.jpeg Program 2022 - Ensemble Dal Niente Sunday: 8:30 PM February 27, 2022 Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Ensemble Dal Niente closes the 2022 Frequency Festival with a program centered around Garden of Earthly Desire, Liza Lim’s sensual, labyrinthine chamber work for 11 musicians that made a name for the composer when it was first performed in 1989. The program opens with Murat Çolak’s hypnotic Nefes.Pas.Cira.Isi for piccolo, percussion, and sin wave, and closes with the brand-new musical branchings of Linda Catlin Smith’s chamber work New Vine. Program: Murat Çolak, Nefes.Pas.Cira.Isi (2015) for piccolo and percussion Liza Lim, Garden of Earthly Desire (1989) for 11 musicians (flute, oboe, clarinet, percussion, mandolin, electric guitar, harp, violin, viola, cello, contrabass) Linda Catlin Smith, New Vine (2021) for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and contrabass Photo: Aleksandr Karjaka https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2023-2 daily 0.75 2023-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a1b22e8c-215b-49c3-8813-2a9f2731d24a/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/24a1329b-f4f2-4845-bc0e-ad692f45d160/Screen+Shot+2023-01-08+at+23.04.21.png Program 2023 - Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano / Eli Winter Tuesday, February 21, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 One of the great improvising duos of our time, Bay Area guitarist Bill Orcutt and Ithaca drummer Chris Corsano make their long overdue Chicago premiere to open this year’s edition of Frequency Festival. Orcutt, who played solo at the 2017 iteration of the fest, has forged a powerful amalgam of blues phrasing, stabbing noise, and spindly hypnosis, extracting a titanic flow of sound that holds on to some abstract vestige of the past as it rockets into the void. Corsano is a ferocious improviser who’s built a thick constellation of associations including Akira Sakata, Mette Rasmussen, Paul Flaherty, Bill Nace, and Rodrigo Amado. But his partnership with Orcutt is something special, a collaboration that has morphed organically over more than a decade, evolving into something genuinely telepathic. ///\\\ Over the last five years or so Chicago guitarist Eli Winter has been turning heads, unveiling a new face in the ever-evolving American Primitive sound pioneered by John Fahey. But the Texas native quickly disabused anyone that he was content to settle into fingerstyle perfection, and over time he’s increasingly made collaboration a part of his practice, with folks like David Grubbs, Yasmin Williams, and jaimie branch all appearing on his eponymous 2022 album, with each idiosyncratic guest helping him forge disparate sounds. Tonight Winter conjures that growth in a solo performance. Photos: Hans van der Linden/Julia Dratel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/d90529b5-2a19-4ba8-ad4b-59d6a92c2501/Screen+Shot+2023-01-08+at+23.02.47.png Program 2023 - Jen Torrence & Bethany Younge / Elias Stemeseder Wednesday, February 22, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 This collaborative performance features the singular Oslo-based percussionist Jen Torrence (Pinquins) and composer and one-time Chicagoan Bethany Younge. Torrence, who has collaborated with a diverse array of composers including Øyvind Torvund, Viola Yip, Thrainn Hjalmarsson, Simon Løffler, Jessie Marino, and François Sarhan (she recently performed his work “"Dreams, why not?" with Beyond This Point at the Steppenwolf Theater in November), is a wildly resourceful and daring musician who routinely defies and expands the role of a percussionist. Bethany Younge, who was recently hired as a professor at Dartmouth University, embraces a distinctive attitude toward her practice: “All of my works, regardless of instrumentation or media, are, in essence, works for voice and percussion. It is through these mediums that the act of music-making cannot be divorced from the human instigator. By no means do I reject the corporeal gifts those other instruments bestow, but rather reimagine them so that the experiencer/doer—as they are so inextricably linked—cannot be easily forgotten. The being behind the sound and the movement is responsible for making these aesthetic sensations palpable. For this reason, I prefer a working scenario that allows the individual performer to seep into the music itself in a conscious manner as bodily agents of sound. The mannerisms, preferences, and discomforts of the performer for whom I am composing take center stage in both the development and performance of the piece. In the developmental phase, I become a sponge.” Torrence and Young will perform as a duo on a new work by Jessie Cox, while they both interpret solo pieces by the composer and Trond Reinholdtsen. Trond Reinholdtsen Institute for Post-Human Performance Practice (Torrence) Jessie Cox Transmutations: The Immortal I (Torrence and Younge) Bethany Younge //Atavist III (Younge) Bethany Younge Organs of Another (Torrence) ///\\\ Austrian pianist Elias Stemeseder, who currently lives in New York, is a musician of uncanny range, curiosity, and sensitivity. He’s known best to American listeners as the wunderkind keyboardist in the Jim Black Trio with bassist Thomas Morgan, but over the last decade his collaborations and interests have expanded broadly. Perhaps no single element of Stemeseder’s exciting practice conveys the full diapason of his art more than his solo piano music. Last year he released Solo Piano, his first album in the format. As the album’s liner note essay avers, “While there’s an undeniable cohesion to the 15 concise pieces here, the range of ideas is sprawling, yet even when the pianist cites a particular inspiration—the driving repetition of notes gleaned from fellow pianist Craig Taborn and the Ligeti étude “Désodre” on the album opener “Repetitionen”—his own conception and realization transcends any given influence.” This acoustic solo performance marks the pianist’s Chicago premiere. Photos: Juliana Schutz/ Deidre Huckabay / Szymon Hantkiewicz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/b7435cdf-9b99-4d38-bfdf-17c9fe527560/Screen+Shot+2023-02-01+at+16.20.19.png Program 2023 - Julia Reidy Thursday, February 23, 8 PM - Bond Chapel (1025 E. 58th Street) free Julia Reidy makes music for processed and acoustic instruments (mostly guitars). Their recent work can be described as a series of non-traditional song forms which combine unstable harmonic territories, rhythmic elasticity and abstract narrative over stretched and episodic forms. Reidy’s current work finds them playing a custom-made guitar to perform music composed in just intonation. As We Jazz Magazine wrote of Reidy’s latest album World in World, “Even though the arrangements feel more airy and lighter than their more recent work, the music ultimately feels denser by dint of its exquisite detail and psychedelic splendor. Each track feels like a mind-altering trip, building a unique sound world and then leaving the listener off-balance as we struggle to gain our bearings. With time, we become acclimated and as the novelty dissolves, we can truly wander in these layered textures, rhythms, and harmonies like otherworldly universe it is.” This performance is Reidy’s Chicago debut. Julia Reidy’s appearance in Chicago is presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society and in cooperation with Goethe-Institut Chicago. Photo: Joe Talia https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a3072b67-627f-47ba-967d-c02b6bfe7d9d/Screen+Shot+2023-01-08+at+23.00.45.png Program 2023 - a.pe.ri.od.ic / Greg Davis Friday, February 24, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 a•pe•ri•od•ic presents the world premiere of a concert-length work by Magnus Granberg. The ensemble will work with Granberg over the course of a week and then record the work in studio in preparation for a release (with support from the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation) prior to premiering it on the Frequency Festival. In his long-form works, Granberg integrates “experiences, methods and materials from various traditions of improvised and composed musics into a new modus operandi. ”This concert will mark the first presentation of Granberg’s work in Chicago, as well as his first opportunity to visit the city. __________________ "Programme Note, Aus der Nacht Programme Note, Aus der Nacht, von den Wehen Aus der Nacht, von den Wehen was commissioned by and composed for the Chicago-based ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic in the autumn of 2022. The piece partly consists of selections of materials originally written for another recent piece of mine, Evening Star, Vesper Bell, but which has been reorchestrated and reorganized so as to result in what I believe is a very different piece of music. The piece takes as its points of departure two songs from two different (and indeed rather distant) times and places, So in Love by American composer and song writer Cole Porter and Abendbilder by Franz Schubert and poet Johann Silbert, from whose lyrics the piece also borrows its title. Aus der Nacht, von den Wehen consists of a cycle of 71 different but closely related events, which may also be lengthened or shortened in accordance with the desires of the performers." -Magnus Granberg Magnus Granberg’s travel is supported by a grant from the Konstnärsnämnden (The Swedish Art Grants Committee). ///\\\ Chicago native Greg Davis plays in town for the first time in more than a decade, performing work from his stunning 2022 album New Primes. Davis, who now lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he runs Autumn Records, has explored a wide variety of sounds over the decades, but even as he experimented with folk and other song-based forms his immersion and devotion to electronic music has never wavered. His album New Primes employs custom-written software to translate prime number sequences into a mesmerizing universe of sound within a just intonation system. Davis pares his sound materials down to their most basic — a network of pure sine tones — to create a collection of pieces ranging from the almost-tonal to the harmonically alien. Photos: Ryan Bourque/ Visby International Centre for Composers/ Phi Centre https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/18cd7a2d-3ada-4704-a290-78b1a39c11cf/Screen+Shot+2023-01-08+at+23.03.55.png Program 2023 - Sounding Limits: Pascale Criton, Silvia Tarozzi & Judith Hamann/Ning Yu Saturday: February 25, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $15 Pascale Criton’s Sounding Limits series of compositions, two of which were co-authored in close collaboration with renowned string players Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (cello). This special performance will mark the first time Criton will be in Chicago to present her work and features the first collaborative transference of Walker’s co-authored piece, to be performed by renowned cellist Judith Hamann. The program includes three compositions: Circle Process (Criton-Tarozzi, 2012) for solo violin. Chaoscaccia (Criton-Walker, 2014) for solo cello. Bothsways (Criton, 2015) for violin and cello. Circle Process and Chaoscaccia were co-authored in close collaboration between Criton with Tarozzi and Walker. Their collaborative creative process was instrumental to their composition. With Deborah Walker unable to travel to NYC, this event marks the beginning of a unique transference of Deborah Walker’s Chaoscaccia to be performed by Judith Hamann—the first time this deeply collaborative work will be interpreted by another musician. Hamann will also perform Criton’s piece Bothways alongside Tarozzi. On Monday, February 27 between 6-8 PM, Gray Sounds presents a free conversation with Pascale Criton about her music, with Silvia Tarrozi and Judith Hamann. The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, 929 E 60th Street (Midway Studios next door to the Logan Center, University of Chicago campus. Constellation’s presentation of the work of Pascale Criton has been made possible through Jazz & New Music, a program of FACE Foundation and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States with support from the Florence Gould Foundation, the French Ministry of Culture, Institut français, SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) and Bureau Export. ///\\\ Pianist Ning Yu has performed previously at Frequency Series concerts in the past as a member of Yarn/Wire, the singular New York dual piano-dual percussion quartet. But her creative spark and curiosity have carried on in her solo practice. In 2021 she released a stunning collaboration with composer David Bird, a recent émigré to Chicago, entitled Iron Orchid, an interactive electro-acoustic gem created as part of an installation piece by sculptor Mark Reigelman. Tonight she gives the US premiere of Catherine Lamb’s “Prisma Interius II” and plays the first movement of Klaus Lang’s stunning solo piano work Sieben Sonnengesichter. Photos: Laurence Prat (Criton)/ Olle Holmberg (Hamann)/ Massimo Simononi (Tarozzi)/ Bobby Fisher (Yu). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/547e1c80-5da6-4ac8-9512-da6569b97001/Screen+Shot+2023-01-08+at+23.11.33.png Program 2023 - Silvia Tarozzi & Judith Hamann Sunday, February 26, 2 PM Corbett vs. Dempsey (2156 W Fulton St.) Free A special afternoon performance by Italian violinist Silvia Tarozzi and the Berlin-based Australian cellist Judith Hamann, both of whom will play the music of Pascale Criton on the previous evening. Silvia Tarozzi will perform an improvisation based on a graphic score created by her, looking for a connection with the art work and music of Roscoe Mitchell. ///\\\ Judith Hamann will perform studies drawing on their work for cello and humming, and shaking. Here, Judith challenges the boundaries of their instruments, cello and voice, considering how bodily and sonic thresholds offer generative sites of instability and movement, vulnerability and intimacy. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/838a63e8-4cd9-4093-b88b-b51f14cbbe14/DalNiente_by_Alexander+Perrelli.jpeg Program 2023 - Ensemble Dal Niente Sunday, February 26, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave) Tickets: $15 Dal Niente closes the annual Frequency Festival with an ear-bending program of compositions by George Lewis, Rebecca Saunders, Raven Chacon, Nicole Mitchell, and Suzanne Farin. The composers on this program use whistle tones, breathless multiphonics, and haunting timbral shifts to vastly different effects. Rebecca Saunders’ Shades of Crimson: Molly’s Song, named for Molly Bloom’s breathless monologue at the end of Ulysses, weaves alto flute, viola, guitar, and music boxes into sensuous textures; Nicole Mitchell’s Cave of Self-Induction creates an otherworldly trialogue between two flutes and percussion; and Raven Chacon’s Atsiniltlish’ iye passes pitches and gestures between a quintet of instruments in a subtly shifting landscape. Soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett is featured in both George Lewis’ a whispered nine, which sets the rhythms of Lyn Hejinian’s poem into wheezing, grooving context; and Suzanne Farrin’s Prisoner Poems, based on the love poetry of Michaelangelo, in which bassoon and soprano become a single voice. Program: George Lewis A whispered nine [sop.gtr.fl.vla.perc.conductor] Rebecca Saunders Shades of Crimson: Molly's Song [fl.viola.guitar.music boxes] Raven Chacon Atsiniltlish’ iye [fl.cl.bsn.vlc.perc] Nicole Mitchell Cave of Self-Induction [two flutes and perc] Suzanne Farrin Prisoner Poems [bsn.sop] Photo: Alexander Perrelli https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2024-2 daily 0.75 2024-12-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a1b22e8c-215b-49c3-8813-2a9f2731d24a/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2024 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/37ac562a-9145-4310-8306-52a222e066b9/BCMC_AndPlay.png Program 2024 - BCMC/andPlay Tuesday, February 20, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 BCMC is the duo of multi-instrumentalist Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas) and guitarist Bill MacKay. On their ravishing 2023 debut album Foreign Smokes on Drag City they united to create a record that's equal parts deep space, rock’s dreamy lyrical interior, soloed multi-track, remix, raga, new age fugue state, field recording, blues and beyond — gossamer-light avant-garde noir flowing into fire-and-icy jams, collecting bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life’s strange and sunny days. They will headline the opening night program of the 2024 Frequency Festival with a characteristically meditative journey that ignores the lines between disparate styles. Instead, the pair extends its reach to generate shifting, interactive textures, drifting melody, and dreamy clouds of harmony. ///\\\ andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire by commissioning new works and actively collaborating with living artists. The New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo (Mivos Quartet), violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, has since commissioned over forty works. andPlay’s “Translucent Harmonies” allows listeners to deeply immerse themselves in sound, silence, and resonance. This hour-long program includes Vid stenmuren blir tanken blomma by Kristofer Svensson (Sweden) and Prisma Interius VIII by Catherine Lamb (USA, Germany), both composed in Just Intonation. The rare experience to hear a full program in Just Intonation invites one to listen in a detailed way to the “sensation of tone.” This shifts the concept of intonation, which is often unnoticed by the listener, to the foreground, where it becomes a focal point to explore the most simple, yet nuanced, relationships in sound. Though the evening is one curated experience, the two pieces complement each other in their form. Lamb, in her chant-like work, uses droned pitches to slowly build the relationships between notes and intervals, transforming them into longer phrases. Alternatively, Svensson creates their work out of silence, with brief melodic fragments appearing against a backdrop of silence and noise. Together, they pause time -- guiding the audience through an alternate reality where there is ample opportunity to sit and listen. Catherine Lamb's work courtesy Zeitvertrieb Wien/Berlin Photos: Haley Fohr / Shervin Lainez https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/3aa69ba3-9340-427e-b061-9a0d2c5b6f0f/Wooley_Saviet.png Program 2024 - Nate Wooley/Sarah Saviet Wednesday, February 21, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 Nate Wooley used a Foundation for Contemporary Art award, received in 2016, as the seed money to begin For/With, a commissioning project to expand the solo trumpet literature with pieces that value collaboration, the spontaneity of improvisation, and exploring beyond the tradition of the instrument. American composer Sarah Hennies, known initially for her psycho-acoustic percussion works, wrote Monologue to close the last of For/With’s annual festivals in 2018. The piece, first intended to be comically performative, as the trumpet player slowly dismantles the horn and mimes its destruction, is underpinned by a feeling of a slow rite to failure, a meditation on everything gone wrong. The piece was premiered at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room October 16, 2019. Straw, by Canadian composer Martin Arnold, was commissioned in 2022, the result of funding from the New York Foundation of the Arts. Arnold’s music presents a fuzzy, warm, and slightly askew combination of extreme contemporary extended techniques with hummable and intimate folk melodies. The piece was premiered in Bergen, Norway on September 30, 2023, and this performance marks its American premiere. ///\\\ Sarah Saviet is a violinist based in Berlin and dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. She performs as a soloist and chamber musician and is a member of the Saviet/Houston Duo and Ensemble Mosaik. She will give the US premier of British composer Bryn Harrison’s A Coiled Form (2020/2022) for solo violin. It was commissioned for Saviet by the Riot Ensemble, with funding provided by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. She premiered the piece as a 15-minute version in Wigmore Hall in September 2021. She and Hrrison met to rehearse before the premiere and both felt that the material was calling for expansion. Over the following months she built a new route through the piece, winding through circular forms of holding and releasing through loops and slowly changing timbre. The construction of this path was informed by the different physical states and perceptions of time she experienced as it unfolded. Photos: Julia Dratel / Dorothea Tuch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/55813758-28d3-45ef-8e3c-f5978de78b63/KangKenney_Zara.png Program 2024 - Eyvind Kang & Jessika Kenney / Zarabanda Variations Thursday, February 22, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 Eyvind Kang & Jessika Kenney Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang recently released Azure, their third full-length Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. ///\\\ Zarabanda Variations (Keir GoGwilt, Wilfrido Terrazas, Kyle Motl, Alec Goldfarb) Zarabanda Variations is a speculative sounding of music from 16th- and 17th-century New Spain/Mexico. Taking inspiration from both material histories of instruments and tunings, and musical histories of dances, rhythms, chants, and counterpoints, the quartet experiments in the archival gaps of early American music. The zarabanda—a dance with putative Spanish, American, and Arab origins, a plausible etymology from the Kikongo “nsala-banda” [Sublette, 1951], and which eventually transformed into a courtly dance of the European baroque—represents one such fragmentary, transatlantic musical-material genealogy. Zarabanda Variations references the generative role that the zarabanda—amongst other folk, baroque, and popular genres—plays in the formation of this project. The quartet was brought together by Keir GoGwilt (violin) in collaboration with Wilfrido Terrazas (flutes), Kyle Motl (bass), and Alec Goldfarb (guitars). Special thanks to the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) for their support in developing this project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/505004c4-74f2-4d4e-aad8-ae700cb9eddf/ellenArkbro.png Program 2024 - Ellen Arkbro Friday, February 23, 8:00 PM co-presented with the Renaissance Society in partnership with Rockefeller Chapel Bond Chapel (1025 E. 58th St.) Free Sculptures is a work for organ by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro. The piece grows out of Arkbro’s fascination for the textural qualities of chordal sound and is an extension of the explorations on her latest release Sounds while waiting. By fine-tuning complex, yet clear, harmonies she guides the listener through rare moments when harmony and space blend and become perceptually inseparable. The concert marks her Chicago debut. Ellen Arkbro (b. 1990) is a composer, musician, and sound artist working with precision-tuned intervallic harmony and installation. Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, synthetic sounds, and combinations of the two. She has presented her site-specific work at Barbican in London, Kölner Philharmonie, Serralves in Porto, Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Silent Green in Berlin, Ina GRM in Paris, and Tempelaukkio Kirke in Helsinki. In all aspects of her practice, Arkbro focuses on the qualities of harmonic sound that reveal listening as an active process of creative participation, inviting the listener to gradually transform into the sound itself. Photo: Marcus Pal https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/4f5c7acb-77e6-43f3-82d7-9bf40f5451b5/DALNIENTE.png Program 2024 - Ensemble Dal Niente Saturday: February 24, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 Ensemble Dal Niente returns to the 2024 Frequency Festival with a program featuring a large-scale new work from Louis Goldford, commissioned for Dal Niente by the Fromm Foundation. Also on the program are Lei Liang’s glassine, skittering Listening for Blossoms (2013) for flute, harp, violin, viola, double bass and piano; a new orchestration by Kari Watson, winner of the 2023 Kranichstein Music Prize; and Carlos Carillo’s dancing, magnetic Will the Quiet Times Come for violin and piano. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a5943975-f233-4c63-8491-87d6ad53ccca/Wulliman_Smythe.png Program 2024 - Austin Wulliman/Cory Smythe Sunday, February 25, 8:30 PM Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) Tickets: $20 Austin Wulliman: Live News The News From Utopia is the title of violinist Austin Wulliman's debut release as composer. This concert presents the Chicago premiere of several works by him and continues unspinning the breaking News with questionable journalistic practices and improvisational lines of weaving the conspiratorial thread. The record is a solo project built from many multi-tracked layers of Wulliman, which he composed, recorded and mixed. The live experience will incorporate electronics built of samples from the album, as well as live performances from himself using live violin processing and sampling and video by Argentinean artist Daniel Bruno. Additionally, the concert includes Down Pat for electric guitar and electronics, written for the unique talents of guitarist and improviser Alec Goldfarb. Violinist, composer and educator Austin Wulliman embodies the imagined and empathizes with the absurd through sounds both familiar and radical, telling stories with a limitless passion for tuning cries from every corner of the human capacity to hear. He is a member of JACK Quartet, called “the nation’s most important quartet” by the New York Times and has been praised as a “gifted, adventuresome violinist” by the Chicago Tribune. Through in-depth collaboration with performers and composers working in a panoply of aesthetic realms, Austin searches daily for the violin’s voice in today’s musical world. ///\\\ Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including multi-instrumentalist-composer Tyshawn Sorey, violinist Hilary Hahn, and transdisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own “perplexingly perfect” (The Wire) music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader). Smythe has been featured at the Tectonics, Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, and Mostly Mozart festivals. He has received commissions from Present Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the Wiener Festwochen, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, of which he is a longtime member. Smythe received a Grammy award for his work with Ms. Hahn and a 2022 Herb Alpert Award in music. Improvising wisps and ringlets of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" at a piano augmented by novel microtonal extensions, Smythe explores an instrument that, like the love affair lamented in the Kern/Harbach standard, isn't quite what it seems. Photos: Alex Sopp / Moritz Bichler https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/program-2026 daily 0.75 2026-02-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a1b22e8c-215b-49c3-8813-2a9f2731d24a/FF_Wave-Logo-E.jpg Program 2026 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/667de6c8-29fc-44f1-8810-8d1958e35fd7/Tristan_Jen2.png Program 2026 - 2/24 - 8:30pm Tristan Perich’s Open Symmetry + Jennifer Torrence https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/1e9c77f3-d44f-4796-8c22-26a28ff181a5/Grubbs_Rage.png Program 2026 - 2/25 - 8:30pm David Grubbs + Rage Thormbones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/f4d1489b-6010-4f87-96f2-7e621de10147/Olivia_Nois2.png Program 2026 - 2/26 - 8:30pm Olivia Block + ~Nois Quartet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/a6a42cb2-6037-48e2-ae38-0c825fcd670b/Dal+Niente.jpg Program 2026 - 2/27 - 8:30pm Ensemble Dal Niente https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/209d938b-b9b0-435c-93b4-e9526f7424a7/alasdair-fredrik.jpg Program 2026 - 2/28 - 6pm + 8pm Fredrik Rasten (solo) + Alasdair Roberts & Fredrik Rasten https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc17822c298f371088769d7/d5968564-d132-445a-ab46-c471fc349c77/Tak_Zack2.png Program 2026 - 3/1 - 8:30pm TAK Ensemble + Zachary Good with Ian McEdwards