Join us for this improvisation session featuring current and past Chicago Jazz String Summit artists. 

Dorothy Carlos (solo cello)Doyeon Kim (gayageum) and Tomas Fujiwara (drum set)Yacouba Sissoko's SIYA (kora and n'goni)

Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones pushes the boundaries of free jazz, composition and electronic forms, with the raw riotous energy of “spiritual punk”

Birdhouse Inc., Constellation, and Experimental Sound Studio are proud to present the Greg Ward Quartet performing Fred Anderson, Composer; interpretations celebrating Fred Anderson’s 95th year. 

Join us for the release of Osnat Netzer's debut album of contemporary chamber music, with live performances, refreshments and an art exhibit

Laurel Halo performs solo at Bond Chapel. Presented in partnership with The Renaissance Society

Experience the Midwest premiere of legendary minimalist composer La Monte Young’s The Melodic Version (1984) of The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China (1962) in Dream Light.

Experimental Sound Studio and Asian Improv Arts Midwest are proud to present Japanese performer, composer, and sound poet Tomomi Adachi with Chicago artist Lou Mallozzi.

For this one night performance, musician and composer Macie Stewart has arranged her debut solo album Mouth Full of Glass for a large ensemble. The evening opens with a special guest performance by Damon Locks and Dana Hall.

ESS presents Moment to Moment, a collective of artists including Hamid Drake, Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado, Michael Zerang, and Zahra Baker.

Friday, April 21: The Bridge Presents Sophie Agnel & Michael Zerang - 7:30PM

The Tuning of the Elements involves four distinct areas of binaural electronic beat patterns corresponding to the frequencies of different brainwaves, situated around a droning string quartet in the center.

A special afternoon of free music with a subset of the magisterial Exploding Star Orchestra, Rob Mazurek's incendiary large ensemble.

For the first time in over five years, Rob Mazurek’s long-running Exploding Star Orchestra returns home to Chicago for an immersive performance at the Adler Planetarium. Experimental Sound Studio and International Anthem—two Chicago leaders in exploratory music—join forces to bring nine performers from across the U.S. to for one night only amidst Mazurek’s abstract video work, presented in epic proportions across the sky dome.

Lia Kohl presents a live rendition of her first LP, The Ceiling Reposes, out March 10th on American Dreams Records, featuring lush soundscapes of cello, synthesizers, live radios, and more. Kohl will perform in the beautiful Hall of the Immortals, overlooking Lake Shore Drive.

In the second iteration of ESS's residency exchange program with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain, Spanish artist Clara de Asìs and Chicago artist Veronica Anne Salinas have been sharing ideas and processes across continents throughout this summer.

A genre-defying adventure into the orchestra as sound-art. How can orchestral sound become the material for artistic exploration? Find out how sound artists reinvent what the orchestral medium can mean.

Sonic Transmissions announces the premiere of a commissioned video work by Irreversible Entanglements, a liberation-oriented free jazz collective formed in early 2015 by saxophonist Keir Neuringer, poet Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) and bassist Luke Stewart. The video premiere runs parallel to our solidarity with those affected by the horrific war in Ukraine. In this spirit, we are asking for donations to be directed to The Federal Refugee Agency (UNHCR) that works to give help to the refugee crisis in Ukraine and neighboring countries right now. Please donate what you can!!

In celebration of two current exhibitions, Corbett vs Dempsey is pleased to present a special live-streaming event titled Sequesterfest Vol. 8: Emilio Cruz & Dick Higgins.

Douglas R. Ewart returns for a final performance alongside the recently-closed exhibition Douglas R. Ewart: A Retrospective at ESS’s Audible Gallery. This time, Ewart is joined by the group Quasar: Mankwe Ndosi and Vincent Davis. Attend the presentation of Songs of Life’s Vineyards live at the Logan Center at University of Chicago, Sunday, December 12th at 4pm CDT.

Experience the super charged Baltimore based label Crass Lips Records’ maximalist approach to DIY underground music including exclusives from a video compilation only available on VHS and DVD. Get a copy at https://crasslipsrecords.bandcamp.com/merch

Join Kioto Aoki and students from the Sonics and Optics course at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the final edition of the Systems of Vision series on Thursday 12/9.

Systems of Vision is a series featuring artists approaching sound as image-makers. These artists work within a performative framework that considers sound as a responsive system of the photographic & cinematic image.

As "Archive Artists in Residence" at the Experimental Sound Studio, Every house has a door will premier a new short film 5 Beginnings ESS. Every house has a door director Lin Hixson and dramaturge Matthew Goulish selected five works from the ESS archives and invited collaborating artists to remake their beginnings, sequencing them into a five-part performance, a lyrical trajectory and a live mini-essay for the camera.

Congratulations to Sandra Binion, one of our fiscally sponsored artists, for her upcoming exhibition at Lake Forest College, along with a list of accompanying concert performances featuring Carol Genetti, Kioto Aoki, and Katinka Kleijn throughout September!

Congratulations to Sandra Binion, one of our fiscally sponsored artists, for her upcoming exhibition at Lake Forest College, along with a list of accompanying concert performances featuring Carol Genetti, Kioto Aoki, and Katinka Kleijn throughout September!

Congratulations to Sandra Binion, one of our fiscally sponsored artists, for her upcoming exhibition at Lake Forest College, along with a list of accompanying concert performances featuring Carol Genetti, Kioto Aoki, and Katinka Kleijn throughout September!

Noisée le Seque is an outsider performance artist and DIY noise musician. She used to bury cassette tapes in the DIY basements where she would perform with her cast of salvaged hybrid electronic instruments. Noisée le Seque (born Ruth Edwards) furiously forages the city for electronic equipment that could be broken into and hacked for their lurking electronic sounds. Noisée then transforms her instruments into fantastical hyper-dimensional hybrids - part sculpture, part machine, part animal.

Ben Zucker will present an experimental/performance podcast à la Radiolab. He'll be utilizing Max/MSP to alter his own voice/other voices so he can talk with himself. This performance and its recording will be used as a springboard for future performance. The recording of the ESS performance will be part of an expanded series or set where the recordings could be used as material as part of future performances, so that episodes of the podcast, in hopes that it gets so far, begin to fold in on themselves as themes and material collide.

Helen Gillet uses an amplified cello, loop pedal, effects and vocals in her solo show.  Her current solo performance explores the noise, distortion, vibration and rhythmic phasing by both extended techniques of improvisation and live looping the cello.  Afterward she'll discuss her creative practice with Tim Daisy.