Too many wrestlers to love, too many wrestlers to love to hate, and tons of great bassists to listen to .. and why not do the second installment for the Bass Dreams minus B. FPE has allowed me to dig into the other side of my musical life once and once again Bass Dreams minus B: OYAJI ROCK was inspired by all my favorite bassists and wrestlers --Tatsu Aoki Tatsu Aoki's super badass real cats jammed out some true trips this time around. Tiger Tanaka and Rami Atassi are unhinged on electric guitar, eating boundaries for breakfast and lunching on cosmic interconnectedness. All of it quantum interaction, particles at arbitrary distances, precision interpenetrations, flow states bouncing, excited, one mind. Rumback hitting drums to catch the jams, pushing on an impulse drive, everyone chasing the fire.

Simone Baron (NYC) / Emily Rach Beisel (Chicago) duo, followed by a fresh new ensemble presented by The Bridge blending musicians from France and Chicago!

2 sets, starting at 8:30PM

$15/$10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door

At April’s Elastro Series we’re pleased to welcome NYC-based artist Laura Ortman, a duo from Chicago residents Kim Nucci and Ruby Que, and solo set from the inimitable Kikú Hibino.

Ortman is in town for a couple site specific performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, so we’re so pleased they’re able to present work with us here at Elastic Arts.

This month’s Pleiades Series features a collaboration with the transatlantic ChicagoxFrance collaborative organization The Bridge! Céline and Katie are part of the this iterations *touring band* and will be playing in quartet with Chicagoans Caroline Jesalva and Al Kolot.

After the planned sets we’ll return to the classic Pleiades Open Jam where any/all femme/trans/nonbinary artists are invited to bring an instrument and get in on some improvisations with Celine / Katie / Caroline / Al + other attendees. You can sign up for the jam at pleiades@elasticarts.org or at the door when you arrive. Any jam participants are offered free admission to the show1

We’re excited to host a record release party for an Elastic friend close to our heart. Many of you know Eli Sabbagh as the charming MC of our series Freedom From and Freedom To and a drumming participant. His band Outburst on the 66 has created a new record titled The Spaceship Has Come for the Father’s Son which traveres the spaceways of jazz, funk, rock, and all the things in between. A handful of Elastic family members special guest on here as well! Tonight we’ll have two experiences for you to listen to the new album alongside a video art visual accompaniment. There will be playthroughs at both 7pm and 8:30pm, some food, some drinks, some good times. Join us as we celebrate this radical record!

HEAVENSWARE is an audio//visual experience in Logan Square featuring the best in live hardware music.

MUSIC:✶ easygoingtech✶ Padlock✶ Shadow Work (Jace Inman + Venosci)✶ WFXR (Fess Grandiose + RMM)

VISUALS:✧ Ashton Simeon

Elastic Arts, in partnership with Funkadesi and Strategic Inclusion Consulting, through a generous #HealingIllinois grant, is hosting this FREE experiential 3-hour workshop in Spring 2024. Led by Dr. Rahul Sharma & The Rhythm Ambassadors of Funkadesi, it combines multicultural drumming, self-reflection, & facilitated dialogue. The goals are to deepen self-awareness on racism’s impact, experience the joy of inclusion, and commit to collective action. No musical talented required. Registration is open!

Participants in this workshop and/or the Storytelling & Spoken Word workshop (April 13) will have FREE admission to a Celebratory Concert & Drum Circle on May 11, featuring Funkadesi & more. Also, stay tuned for a pop-up community celebration in late May/ mid-June!

Join us for an evening of community, film and conversation as we unveil a new film series and festival called Flex Obscura!

Flex Obscura Series & Festival celebrates the breadth of creative modes of visual expression and film.  We love weird and things that live in the in-between spaces.  The event is structured to allow for expansive play across a season of visual, sonic and film exploration. We curate 4 events that offer audiences an unique experience, each with a particular focus in collaboration with Elastic Arts’ existing programming.  Our passion is to celebrate new voices and new vocabulary in visual and sonic forms that are expansive and experimental with a focus on fostering inclusivity and promoting emerging talent. Flex Obscura Series and Festival embraces a wide range of genres, styles, and perspectives. It acts as a catalyst for change, inspiring a new generation of filmmakers to challenge conventional norms and push the boundaries of storytelling. From each series emerges juried and audience choice winners who are invited to a culminating festival event showcase and highlighting the best of the series. 

Improvised Music Series is excited to welcome the Sun Ra inspired collective 9th Gate Sonic Research Society (N.G.S.R.S.), and amazing performance artists Kezia to the series!

We’re excited for Visual Gallery Curatorial Resident Zoey Dalbert’s second exhibition. We’ll be hosting work from two artists Zoe Gac and Karla Biery as they present Night Vision. The work focuses on the present – emotions, relationships and experiences that are grounded in a particular moment. Both Gac and Biery use their art as a reflection on the dynamics of intimacy and attachment. Join us tonight for a first look at the exhibition and a chance to speak with the artists and curator.

2020 Elastic Arts Achievement Awardee Nicole Mitchell is a professor at the University of Virginia and teaching a class on telematic performance, a live performance (art, dance, music, etc.) which makes use of telecommunications and information technology to distribute the performers between two or more locations. In this class she has connnected with Elastic Arts to organize rehearsals and a culminating performance tonight! Nicole and students will connect with Adam Zanolini, Avreeayl Ra, and Muso here in our space over the airwaves from their location in Charlottesville, VA. Join us for this experiment in sound! We’ll start promptly at 7pm with a set of just around an hour. Please do note, Nicole Mitchell will not be here in our Elastic space physically, but will indeed be here sonically!

Jandek at Elastic Arts. SOLD OUT.

corwoodindustries.com

Today’s Storytelling & Spoken Word workshop will be led by Emily Hooper Lansana and Dr. Rahul Sharma, and will provide participants with activities to share in both written and verbal form. In this session we will share, listen and reflect on stories . We will reflect on our personal experiences and collective memories. We will consider how our unique, racial and cultural identities are disparate and connected. Much of who we are is grounded in the multiple stories that inform our perspective and outlook. Registration is live.

Participants in this workshop and/or the Multicultural Drumming workshops (Apr. 6 or Apr. 20) will have FREE admission to a Celebratory Concert & Drum Circle on May 11, featuring Funkadesi & more.

Shake Shook Shaken is a monthly theater/movement workshop series produced by Julie Meckler. The series is designed for people to gently bring body awareness, allowing participants to open up, explore outside of their comfort zone, bond with each other, create and show.

Shake Shook Shaken is a dream of what a safe space could allow. A vision of a place for everybody to gather, look at each other, play and create in a non judgmental, trauma-informed way. It’s an invitation, a journey within and out, a surprise. Each workshop is unique. This month we’ll have Ivan Pyzow and Julie leading on the topic of TIDE

No prior dance or acting experience is necessary, just willingness to move and exhale. This workshop series is for anyone and everyone.

April’s CLEAT Series will present three sets from artists all close to the Elastic community. Dark Matter 2023 resident Carissa Lee will offer up their first performance on the CLEAT system where we’ll hear her use of field recordings, writing, Black southern culture (that includes medical histories, stories, music etc.) and voice to materialize emotions of grief, and isolation. Old friends and collaborators Regina Martinez and AJ McClenon work together on the CLEAT to present voice recordings, electronics, and abstract tape music textures. The artists parse through voice memos sent over the past five years. "How can the sonics of a friendship be pieced together through disembodied communication that's full of laughter, full of sighs and what we ate today? How have we held space for each other in between the pauses, in between the aparts while listening to the same weather?” Christophe Preissing will present Deconstructivism I: Plume, his first foray into combining cut up texts, phonemic deconstruction, and vocal tics, materials often left on the cutting room floor with recordings made inside a piano and detritus from various other projects. The CLEAT Series focuses on work composed for the 16-channel speaker system in our space, allowing audiences to experience different approaches to spatial audio.

Two sets of musical exploration at its most intimate — solo and duo — with artists visiting and new to Chicago’s scene! Featuring Drew Wesley, solo guitar (NYC); and Caroline Jesalva and Aaron Kaufman-Leivine on violin and saxophone.

Two sets, starting at 8:30PM

$15/$10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door

EARLY SHOW at 3PM + LATE SHOW at 7PM

Queer Dance Freakout is an interactive choose-your-own-adventure-spectacle, inspired by the Neo-Futurists Infinite Wrench. Our company is composed of queer, trans, and/or nonbinary artists & storytellers, who perform an array of devised performance art pieces. We aim to have audiences booty shaking, grooving, and connecting with the larger queer community.

Each of our original pieces are around 4 minutes in length, and the audience queues the order of these pieces from our “playlist” by verbally calling out the next piece they want to see. Queer Dance Freakout is ever changing; every piece and performance the company writes and choreographs is created from our own life experiences! No Freakout performance is the same as we devise new work every season (and repeat some of our favorites). We can't wait to freakout with you!

FFFT returns for its first iteration of sound and movement collaborations for 2024! Freedom From and Freedom To is an exploration and celebration of artistic circumstance. Movement and sound improvisors from all around Chicago gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Each group performs an improvised set. We fuse diverse artistic backgrounds and practices to create unique and fleeting worlds. There will be a headlining set from Kiku Hibino + Keisha Janae.

Elastic Arts, in partnership with Funkadesi and Strategic Inclusion Consulting, through a generous #HealingIllinois grant, is hosting this FREE experiential 3-hour workshop in Spring 2024. Led by Dr. Rahul Sharma & The Rhythm Ambassadors of Funkadesi, it combines multicultural drumming, self-reflection, & facilitated dialogue. The goals are to deepen self-awareness on racism’s impact, experience the joy of inclusion, and commit to collective action. No musical talented required. Registration is open!

Participants in this workshop and/or the Storytelling & Spoken Word workshop (April 13) will have FREE admission to a Celebratory Concert & Drum Circle on May 11, featuring Funkadesi & more. Also, stay tuned for a pop-up community celebration in late May/ mid-June!

Queer Dance Freakout is an interactive choose-your-own-adventure-spectacle, inspired by the Neo-Futurists Infinite Wrench. Our company is composed of queer, trans, and/or nonbinary artists & storytellers, who perform an array of devised performance art pieces. We aim to have audiences booty shaking, grooving, and connecting with the larger queer community.

Each of our original pieces are around 4 minutes in length, and the audience queues the order of these pieces from our “playlist” by verbally calling out the next piece they want to see. Queer Dance Freakout is ever changing; every piece and performance the company writes and choreographs is created from our own life experiences! No Freakout performance is the same as we devise new work every season (and repeat some of

At this week’s Improvised Music Series we welcome Lao Dan in from Hangzhou, China to perform two sets with a Chicago-based quartet. The band will feature Mabel Kwan on piano, Joshua Abrams on bass, and Michael Zerang on drums. Instead of pursuing the conventional career path as a professional conservatory flutist inside the “system”, after leaving SYCM, Lao Dan became an independent musician. With his unique understanding of the woodwind instruments through two decades of playing, Lao Dan sticks to his own vision and approach to the Chinese flute and its sounds. We can’t wait to hear two sets from this quartet! Music at 8:30pm

At our second event of March with our friends at Asian Improv aRts Midwest the organization is presenting two duo sets. First up will be an acoustic duet from longtime friends and collaborators Tatsu Aoki and Jim Baker. These two have been stalwarts of the Chicago creative music community for decades through numerous ensembles, solo work, and organizing. Headlining the evening will be Nireus, an electronic new music duo including violist Clara Takarabe and composer / synthesist / multi-instrumentalist H. Anton Riehl. Their broad musical style is influenced by their shared history in classical music, with deep ties to electronic and experimental music. You can hear influences from Palestrina to Shostakovich, Penderecki to Tan Dun, or the music of the medieval Andalusia running through their cinematic expressions. It’ll be a great night. Join us! Music at 8:30pm

March’s Elastro Series bring artists Henna Chou and Alison Wilder in from Texas, then solo sets from Liv Mershon (of nunn + Who is the Witness?) and Mallory Qiu on the 16 channel CLEAT System. Qiu presents Venus, Moon, and Whispers on the Road East, a poetic journey through live synth and piano improvisations, spoken word readings, accompanied by mesmerizing video projections. The piece invites audience to explore themes of love, loss, and liberations, creating a spellbinding fusion of sight and sound that”Qiu presents Venus, Moon, and Whispers on the Road East, a poetic journey through live synth and piano improvisations, spoken word readings, accompanied by mesmerizing video projections. The piece invites audience to explore themes of love, loss, and liberations, creating a spellbinding fusion of sight and sound that transcends physical boundaries. In this solo performance, Mershon combines her current explorations into noise with the song-writing of her recent past and home videos from her youth. Inspired by the psychedelic experience of aging, Mershon combines these nostalgic and emergent practices in an attempt to witness her own changing but static self. More info TBA

This Thursday’s Improvised Music Series will have a solo set from percussionist Alejandro Salazar, a solo set from Sidaka with his project Resurgence of the Bliss, and a performance from the Best Day Ever Duo

Dark Matter Resident Jarius “Man of God” King returns for his culminating presentation of the developing work For The Record at Elastic Arts.

For The Record is a multifaceted project that explores Afro-Sino relations and identities through art, documentation, and examination of Jarius’ personal experience as a Black man and artist dealing with global anti-Blackness.

 Utilizing the marking traditions of Chinese calligraphy and U.S. graffiti, he seeks the shared spaces between these distinct artistic realms. In addition, he weaves in the movements from martial arts and Black dance forms (Street Dance), forging connections that challenge cultural barriers.

This evening’s iteration is an artistic experience of storytelling, visual art, movement, battling, partying, and music.


Collaborators for this evening include AMS/DJ VADER, Tre Daniels/DJ Salem, and Jasmine

Every Tuesday in March, Homeroom Residency presents SPECTRALINA: The audio-visual performance project of Dan Bitney and Selina Trepp. There will be special guests that join Spectralina for four multidisciplinary performances. Working in an improvised format, Spectralina creates an image-sound relationship that treats each medium equally, resulting in performances in which projection and sounds come together as visual music. In Spectralina, Dan uses a computer, synthesizers, drums, voice, and analog processors to create sounds. Selina sings, animates, and plays the videolah, an instrument that creates real-time animated projections. At the fourth and final night of their residency they’ll be joined by Chér Jey and Mabel Kwan. Doors at 8pm!

Dark Matter Residency artists Carissa Lee and Muso have been with us this last year consistently bringing incredible work to our orbit. Each of them have such a dynamic and multifaceted practice that it’s been such an honor to experience. Their Residency is coming to a close, but we can’t wait to follow along with their journey for years to come.

Muso and Carissa are collaborating for their Dark Matter Residency capstone performance, inspired by earth shaking femme strength, rage, despair, survival, blood and soil. Both these artists worked with memories collected in Zambia, The United Kingdom and the United states to develop sounds and songs that speak to their Black femme experiences. Hers Is Mine is an exploration of femininity through geography, space, time, generations and family ties. The show includes music, poetry, spatialized sound collage on the 16-channel CLEAT system, and performative actions that chronicle the wounds accrued while on the ancient path to ‘womaness’. At times Indie, at times psychedelic, Hers is Mine is a place where screaming and laughter hold hands as sisters, where joy and sorrow dance together in the dark. You do not want to miss this.

Collaborators for the evening include Paige Brown on piano, Torstein Johansen on bass, Naydja Bruton on drums, and Jaden Esi on guitar.

This March the Pleiades Series is excited to welcome prolific guitarist Jessica Ackerley to Chicago for their first visit in a long while. Now based in Honolulu, HI working as a professor, the guitarist’s work is influenced by Black American Music and avant-garde improvisers, as well as the culture of the thriving New York City rock and noise scenes where they spent a decade before their current locale. Tonight we’ll hear a solo performance from Jessica followed by a trio with Chicago’s equally prolific saxophonist Mai Sugimoto and drummer Tim Daisy. We’re really excited to hear this trio! After the planned sets we’ll return to the classic Pleiades Open Jam where any/all femme/trans/nonbinary artists are invited to bring an instrument and get in on some improvisations with Jessica / Mai / other attendees. You can sign up for the jam at pleiades@elasticarts.org or at the door when you arrive. Any jam participants are offered free admission to the show!

At this week’s Improvised Music Series there will be a trio from Christopher Riggs, Peter Maunu, and Braeden Rodriguez. Preceding the trio will be a duo from King Sophia and Chad Kouri.

Every Tuesday in March, Homeroom Residency presents SPECTRALINA: The audio-visual performance project of Dan Bitney and Selina Trepp. There will be special guests that join Spectralina for four multidisciplinary performances. Working in an improvised format, Spectralina creates an image-sound relationship that treats each medium equally, resulting in performances in which projection and sounds come together as visual music. In Spectralina, Dan uses a computer, synthesizers, drums, voice, and analog processors to create sounds. Selina sings, animates, and plays the videolah, an instrument that creates real-time animated projections. At the third night of their residency they’ll be joined by Amalea Tshilds and Lia Kohl. Doors at 8pm!