Julia Eckhardt/Nate Wooley (photo: Peter Gannushkin)

I haven’t used this space yet to write anything about the upcoming 5th edition of Frequency Festival, an experimental and contemporary music event I program each year. It runs between February 24-March 1 this year. The festival was an outgrowth of the weekly Frequency Series I’ve programmed at Chicago’s Constellation since the spring of 2013. I’m super proud of this year’s line-up—the biggest and most international program in the event’s history. Down below is the full spiel, but I did want to mention a few concerts that I think stand out due to their relative rarity in Chicago.

To the best of my knowledge the composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood, who celebrates her 80th birthday later this year, hasn’t had a proper public celebration of her work in Chicago, ever. She performed in the city way back in 1982, when John Cage invited her to be a part of New Music American that year—which also happened to be the last time Charlemagne Palestine had been in the city before the Frequency Series brought him to town for a momentous week in 2014—and while she’s definitely visited Chicago since then, most of those visits have been academically-oriented. I got to fully encounter her work a year ago at John Chantler’s spectacular Edition Festival in Stockholm, where I got to experience the same sound installation that will be presented in Chicago at Experimental Sound Studio, I heard her engage in conversation with crys cole, and I watched a terrific group of musicians interpret one of her works. Lockwood is a tremendously kind, generous, curious, ceaselessly creative soul who remains full of wonder. Her enthusiasm is insanely contagious, and after that weekend in Sweden I immediately set about bringing her to Chicago, where a.pe.ri.od.ic and the always-inspiring trumpeter Nate Wooley will perform her music on Friday, February 28 at Constellation. As noted above, A Sound Map of the Danube will be presented at ESS until late March, and the opening reception on Saturday, February 29 will feature a talk between Lockwood and Wooley.

Many of us realize how the ongoing rediscovery of Éliane Radigue’s music has resulted in increased opportunities to hear that work live. I feel supremely lucky to have witnessed a playback concert by her in Chicago back in 2002, presented by Lampo, but the best of my knowledge there have only been a couple of performances of her music for acoustic instruments, including a sublime concert on the Frequency Series by Nate Wooley and clarinetist Carol Robinson—one of the composer’s earliest acoustic collaborators—back in 2014. I’m super thrilled to present two nights of acoustic Radigue music, including cellist Charles Curtis playing Naldjorlak I and the German violist Julia Eckhardt—who recently published a book on Radigue—and Wooley performing pieces from the Occam Ocean series. As great as the recordings of this new phase in her writing have been, nothing compares to being in a room where those majestic, slow-moving sounds surround you.

Charles Curtis (photo: Beth Ross-Buckley)

I’m equally excited about the rest of the festival—Oren Ambarchi, crys cole, trumpeter Jacob Wick (solo and with drummer Phil Sudderberg), Keith Fullerton Whitman (in his first Chicago performance in seven years), John McCowen (a serious force you’ll be hearing about more and more), Rajna Swaminathan and Ganavya Doraiswamy, Katinka Kleijn and Julian Otis (both premiering new work). It’s been odd programming the weekly series from abroad, but I still believe strongly in the concerts I’ve presented. While I’m not on the ground in Chicago, from what I see online and from discussions with people who remain there, I still feel the series and the festival are super important to the rich musical community I spent three-and-a-half decades soaking up. That said, I’d encourage anyone in the area to attend some of the concerts, and if it’s within your means it would mean a great deal if you could contribute to the final fundraiser I launched at the end of 2019, to help defray the expense of making this all happen. You can check out the GoFundMe page here.

Katinka Kleijn/Julian Otis (photo: Kaelan Burkett—Mass MoCA)

Constellation is delighted to announce the line-up for Frequency Festival 2020, which runs in numerous Chicago venues between Monday, February 24 and Sunday, March 1. This year Frequency Festival celebrates its fifth anniversary with its most diverse and international program, with more events than all previous editions. 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. This year the festival has expanded its cooperation with other vital Chicago presenters, programming concerts and installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Renaissance Society, the Art Institute of Chicago, Experimental Sound Studio, and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, as well as Constellation.

The fest launches at Constellation on February 24 with a rare Chicago performances by the artistically versatile, stylistically elusive Berlin-based Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi and the Berlin-based Canadian sound artist crys cole, making her local solo debut. Both artists have performed previously on Frequency Series concerts—Ambarchi as part of the Ever Present Orchestra, playing the music of Alvin Lucier in 2017, and cole with Ora Clementi, her duo with composer James Rushford, in 2015. Later in the week the festival presents the first major Chicago showcase of work by the legendary French composer Éliane Radigue, with performances by the Brussels-based German violist Julia Eckhardt—in her Chicago debut—and trumpeter Nate Wooley at Bond Chapel in a concert co-presented with Renaissance Society on Wednesday, February 26, and cellist Charles Curtis in a concert presented with the Art Institute of Chicago on Thursday, February 27.

The wildly influential composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood will be featured in the first Chicago exposition of her work in nearly four decades, with a portrait concert of her music by a.pe.ri.od.ic and Nate Wooley at Constellation on Friday, February 28, and the sound installation A Sound Map of the Danube, an aural tracing of the Danube, at Experimental Sound Studio on Saturday, February 29, with an opening reception that includes a conversation with Wooley. Other artists performing are Mexico City-based trumpeter Jacob Wick, New York electronic music experimenter Keith Fullerton Whitman, New York-based contrabass clarinetist John McCowen, the Chicago debut of the duo of singer Ganavya Doraiswamy & Rajna Swaminathan—who dissolve boundaries between Indian classical music and improvisation—Chicago cello favorite Katinka Kleijn and rising vocalist Julian Otis, both premiering new work.

The full line-up appears below:

2/24: Oren Ambarchi/crys cole @ Constellation 8:30 PM

2/25: Jacob Wick (solo and with Phil Sudderberg) @ MCA 6:30 PM

2/26: Julia Eckhardt (w/ Nate Wooley) play Eliane Radigue @ Bond Chapel (co-presented with Renaissance Society) 8 PM

2/27: Charles Curtis plays Eliane Radigue @ Art Institute of Chicago 7 PM

2/28: Annea Lockwood portrait concert (with a.pe.ri.od.ic & Nate Wooley) @ Constellation 8:30 PM

2/29: Annea Lockwood: A Sound Map of the Danube opening reception and talk with Nate Wooley @ ESS 2 PM

2/29: Keith Fullerton Whitman/John McCowen @ Constellation 8:30 PM

3/1: Rajna Swaminathan & Ganavya Doraiswamy @ Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center 2 PM

3/1: Katinka Kleijn/Julian Otis @ Constellation 8:30 PM

Tickets and more information can be found at https://www.frequencyfestival-chicago.com/

Today’s playlist:

Jing, Adularescence (6dimensions)

Pierluigi Billone, On Om (Kairos)

The Way Ahead, Bells, Ghosts and Other Saints (Clean Feed)

Lucrecia Dalt, Anticlines (RVNG)

Wadada Leo Smith, Rosa Parks: Pure Love: An Oratorio of Seven Songs (TUM)

On the next edition of Frequency Festival, Chicago