CLEAT is proud to present an intimate evening of music by the internationally acclaimed composer Annea Lockwood. Included in this evening's concert will be the composition Thirst, which was commissioned in 2008 by Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, to be played back through a multichannel system nearly identical to the CLEAT system. The program also contains Lockwood's Spirit Catchers (1974), performed by Stephan Moore, Senem Pirler, Nevo Shinaar, and Kari Watson, with Lockwood herself live-mixing into the CLEAT system

“Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive. We must rest.”
― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

The 2025 Dark Matter Series season kicks off with “Rest and Resist”: a powerful offering from 2024 Dark Matter alum sun Lynn Hunter.

The times ahead will require much of us—but we’ll need to take periods of respite in order to move forward. Rest and Resistance are not opposites—they work in tandem, and they are both essential to survive.

In the spirit of both, this event will be a casual gathering for a radical film screening followed by a sound healing session.

We’ll be kicking off the evening with a performance by 2023 Dark Matter alum Carissa Lee and soundscapes by returning Dark Matter Series artist Noise Shrine.

Doors at 7:30PM, program begins at 8

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

This month’s CLEAT Series is packed with unique approaches to spatial audio, featuring four performances from a diverse range of composers.

Please join us to celebrate Jeff Kimmel and Jack Langdon’s release “The other side of the air” on the ambient label Dinzu Artefacts.

Followed by an open jam session.

IMS brings the double trio trouble — up-and-coming players bring a fresh spin on the piano trio format, followed by a chamber trio whose amplifications promise to push their instruments to the edge.

It's melodic and harmonic. It's percussive and smooth. It's old as hell, and sometimes, it's just furniture. We're talking about one of the most versatile instruments out there, the piano. Hosted by composer Sharon Udoh, a pianist of 40 years, the series "A Pianist and a Partner Perhaps" highlights 3 or 4 genre-spanning musicians for whom the piano has been a long-time love. Each pianist can choose to bring one additional musician in a duo offering, if they wish (thus, "a partner perhaps"), or, they can go at it solo. Piano players, lovers, and nerds everywhere, come join us as we celebrate this magnificent instrument!

At this second edition of PPP we have Justin Dillard w/ Anisha Rush, Anaiet Soul, Julian Davis Reid w/ Tramaine Parker, Angelo Hart, and hosted by the one and only Sharon Udoh. Sharon will perform a short set with experimental turntablist Allen Moore to open the night!

It’s always a pleasure to have our friend Allen Moore present audio work in our space, so it’s a great pleasure to host his exhibition Sunday Mourning throughout February in celebration of Black History Month. His recent body of work investigates both the audio and visual element of black death and black grief. His conceptual premise is to analyze the signifiers of Blackness through performative Improvisation and experimentation. Moore is driven to nurture and expand the agency of the Black Imagination.

We’ll open doors at 7pm and Allen will present an audio/visual performance at 8pm.

Shake Shook Shaken is a 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. By playing with these concepts using our bodies, voices, words, and each other, we will explore our own awareness and sensitivity as artists and people. 

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 Joey Meland and Julie leading on the topic of CONVERSATION.

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

Presenting two bands crafting the perfect high-intensity balance of jazz and rock energy!

Join us for one last chance to see the beautiful exhibition The Intimacies of a Clover from Lee Romero! The show brings together the intricate webs and weavings of Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and sewist, Lee Miko Romero. Through drawings, quilts, and functional objects, Lee’s works present a timeless story of their own, of slowing down and rest, of slow labor, of interconnectedness. Framed by moments of catching oneself getting lost in thought, or dreaming of a flourishing spring in the dead of winter, the show is meant to capture the feeling of a cunning fox prancing through moss covered rocks to find a gem long-lost in the thicket.

Join us for this closing reception on Sunday, January 26th, from 2pm-5pm. We will have light snacks and refreshments.

Elastro is back with an exciting first event of 2025 featuring Chris Pitsiokos, Anti-Soul Organization, and BAKUDI SCREAM! Chris will present a piece titled Irrational Rhythms and Shifting Poles which is an evolving project for saxophone and laptop that explores 4-channel audio, subjective listening, rhythms generated by irrational numbers, and polarity shifting. Aesthetically, the project is hard to pin down, but draws on minimalism, noise, free jazz, ambient music, and dance music.

Rohan Chander (a.k.a BAKUDI SCREAM)’s work considers questions of postcoloniality in the diaspora through hindoo historical research and speculative fiction. Built on the creative practices of DJs and long form composition, his work manifests as cyberpunk performance art pieces with costumes, dance, music, and light.

Anti-Soul Organization is an industrial noise and techno trio based in Chicago, Illinois. Join us!

Unique collaborations abound tonight, in the style of the uniquely Chicago blend of free jazz and rock: First, Three Grebes (Kalamazoo/Chicago) and Floating Cave join forces to create a mixture of improvised songs and drones, expanding a singular guitar and tuba-driven rock sound with exploratory electronics. Then, a quartet assembled by saxophonist Gabriel Heinemann combines up-and-coming forces in Chicago jazz with some of its’ most stalwart legends.

Please join us for Soft Power- A Deep Listening and Rest Session led by Angela James w/ Emily Beisel, Sarah Clausen, Veronica Anne-Salinas, and Mai Sugimoto. This new offering by Angela James combines guided meditation, simple movement/breath work, and improvised ambient sound for deep communal relaxation. Participants will bring their own yoga mat and blanket to lie down comfortably on the floor and rest together. No experience or skill necessary, the goal is to unwind together and tune the parasympathetic nervous systems through breath and gentle sound.

Many Hands Make Light Work is a day-long community quilting event facilitated by Stevie Emrich in which participants will learn and develop fundamental hand-quilting techniques while collaboratively completing a whole-cloth quilt. Sometimes called a ‘frolic,’ community quilting events like this have been held throughout history with the understanding that labor shared between many hands expands the boundaries of care and connectedness. Quilters, sewists, and fiber-curious crafters are invited to take a seat around the quilting frame and bind a quilt in the span of one day  - work that might otherwise take one person weeks or months to do alone. The finished quilt will be raffled off in March of 2025 to benefit Chicago-based mutual aid organizations in conjunction with Stevie’s continuing quilt project, Quilt Church. It's an especially rare opportunity to sew in community surrounded by the quilts and fiber work on display in Lee Romero's solo show, intimacies of a clover. Come by to see their work and push some stitches with friends.

Masks strongly suggested by event organizers. Air purifiers will be running courtesy of the Clean Air Club. Snacks and drinks provided - but potluck is encouraged! Please label allergens if you bring food.

J e l l o Performance Series presents The Ooze, a night of dance curated by Mya McClellan. This event brings together talented artists to share their unique solo works and dive into a collective improvisation led by Mya. Expect an evening of creativity and experimentation.

Cast:
Alex Kinard
Hermiz Da God
Janiah Cooper Charles
Brittany Bradley
Hasani Cannon
Sandy Perez

IMS welcomes a group featuring Jorrit Dijkstra accompanied by a quintet of Chicago improvisers along with trio set by Emily Biesel, Ro Lundberg, and Norman W. Long.

Welcome to 2025! After an amazing 2024 for our Pleaides Series, we’re ready to take on another year of excellent programming. But first, we jam.

Tonight’s the night for all femme/trans/non-binary artists to join us at Elastic and participate in an all-night jam session! We’ll get your name on a list and decide upon small ensembles on the spot. You can sign up by emailing pleiades@elasticarts.org or just show up. All levels of musicianship welcome! We can’t wait to see you for the 3rd Annual JAN JAM!

$FREE$

How can a musical community come together to emotionally process life in a changing and forever-changed environment? The three compositions premiered in this performance explore responses to this question by composers Scott Rubin, Alissa Voth and Ben Zucker, and videographer Zack Sievers. Performers seek to create a shared musical space for reckoning with themes of nature, loss, nostalgia, erosion and erasure on multiple planes. Interspersed between these pieces are short film clips exploring themes of ritual, healing, and environmental change in which both the musicians from the trio and some of their friends engage with the rapidly changing ecosystems of the Warren Dunes.

It has now been 5 years since the CLEAT multi-channel speaker system was installed in Elastic Arts. The CLEAT has proven to be one of the most versatile, exciting, accessible, and fully experimental instruments we have for our artists community to utilize. Huge thanks to Stephan Moore, Sam Clapp, and Matt Test for holding down this series for 5 beautiful years (with a short bug break, of course). We hope the system continues to be the most accessible spatial audio system in the world.

To celebrate 5 years, we have a very special January CLEAT Series planned. trace/play is a collaboration between interdisciplinary performance artist Chrissy Martin and interactive artist Owen Lowery. The work offers multi-sensory experiences for audiences through live processing with AI body tracking, sonification, and generative visualization, all imbued with a sense of curiosity and serious play. Chrissy and Owen play with the traces of change through the collaborative manipulation of physical performance and multiple tech elements. The audience is invited to contemplate, experiment, and move through the space, creating a collective artwork that is printed as a poster they take home at the end of the show. We can’t wait to see how this work translates on the CLEAT in our space.

The very first CLEAT Series show featured the legendary Chicago sound artist and organizer Jason Soliday. It seems appropriate to welcome him back after 5 years as part of the celebration, and we can’t wait to hear what he has up his sleeves! Jason will be using eurorack modular and computer synthesis to tickle the speakers with incredibly dynamic sounds.

Hatcher/Giallorenzo/Kirshner is a collaborative trio that has worked in improvised music of a free jazz character and is now beginning to delve into its members’ interests in repertory work and original composition. Their set will include pieces by Frank Wright and Cecil Taylor as well as original work and improvisation. Following their set we are having a New Year’s Open Jam led by series curators Ben Zucker and Ishmael Ali! Bring your instrument to jam! We’ll break off into small ensembles / short sets so everyone can play a bit. All ‘jam’ participants are admitted $free$ to the event!

8:30 Hatcher/Giallorenzo/Kirshner Trio

9:30 New Year's Jam led by Ishmael Ali and Ben Zucker, bring your instrument!! All welcome!

Dal Niente teams up with composer and multi-instrumentalist Macie Stewart for a free evening of music at Elastic Arts. This is the fifth in a series of shared programs between Dal Niente and other respected Chicago artists, supported by a DCASE Chicago Artists Recovery Program Grant. 

For the past year and a half, Macie has been working on new solo material involving prepared piano, field recordings, and string improvisations/compositions. For this performance, Lia Kohl, Whitney Johnson, and Zach Moore will join Macie to perform some of this unreleased material, as well as excerpts from Mouth Full of Glass alongside members of Ensemble Dal Niente. 

Getting the Detroit band back together has been difficult.. but this is the first time we're doing this in Chicago. So what better way to close out the year with extended family! 

We are also returning to the scene from last year's event at Elastic Arts, and we'll be using the CLEAT System   CLEAT Listening and Performance Series,  showcase where artists present work in an immersive, multichannel audio format. This series places the audience inside the sound, through a system of 16 omni-directional Hemisphere speakers conceived and built by Isobel Audio. 

This is also a sneak peek into next year's line up into Excursions Detroit 2025. Let's GO and let's celebrate 2024!

Elastic Arts is very happy to welcome back the legendary collaborative ensemble DKV Trio for the longstanding holiday concert that they’ve done in Chicago for many years. This fantastic pairing of journeymen Chicago improvisers found its roots in the mid-1990’s and has worked actively since that time.

Ken Vandermark - reeds
Kent Kessler - bass
Hamid Drake - drums

Elastic Arts is very happy to welcome back the legendary collaborative ensemble DKV Trio for the longstanding holiday concert that they’ve done in Chicago for many years. This fantastic pairing of journeymen Chicago improvisers found its roots in the mid-1990’s and has worked actively since that time.

Ken Vandermark - reeds
Kent Kessler - bass
Hamid Drake - drums

The Improvised Music Series concludes 2024 with a pair of duos demonstrating the strength of the scene across generations.

We gather during the holidays once again to celebrate Elastic Arts, our community, and the great things that have happened with the organization over the past year. This event is free and open to members, or you can show up and sign up to be a member on the spot! We’ll have beverages, snacks, and some music! Join us!

Music at 8pm. Sign up to be a member HERE

This event is supported by our friends at Illuminated Brew Works!

NYC based label Modern Tapes will present a screening of their short documentary Between Sets in which experimental musicians, noise makers, and performance artists from all over the world share their thoughts on artistic identity, creative process, and community during the 2023 Ende Tymes Festival in New York City. Label tapes honcho Patrick Scott then peforms a live set with their project Closing followed by a solo set from Sarah Lutkenhaus and a duo of Theo Katsaounis + Kat Borderud. We’ll get things started at 8pm!

The final Elastro of 2024 will host three sets of electro-acoustic performance. Choir Siren is an experimental electro-acoustic duo from Louisville, KY, made up of TJ Cole (synthesizer & processed vocals) and Emily Ravenscraft (processed violin). Both classically trained, they mix improvisation with live processing to create unpredictable, immersive performances that break the rules of traditional music. Their sound pulls from a mix of avant-garde classical, ambient, and noise, but it’s always evolving, changing with each show depending on the space and the vibe.

Edward Breitweister will perform ‘Ecotonus For ARP-2500 synthesizer and computer’. Using the works of pioneering French composer Éliane Radigue (b. 1932) as a point of departure, Ecotonus draws from improvisations that he recorded on the ARP-2500 that was custom-built in 1971 for the Electronic Music & Recording Studio at Washington University. The 2500 was Radigue's primary instrument and is known for its uniquely noisy "matrix switch" design, which can result in quirky, unstable interaction between sounds. While improvising, Breitweister sought simple sounds that would behave unpredictably and evolve into unexpected complexity through the beauty of this rare machine.

In their new collaborative project, Liz Flood & Hunter Whitaker-Morrow use methods of radio and television scanning to create diffusion, slippage, and emergent signification.

We’ve had a wonderful year of CLEAT Series events and we’re wrapping up with a dynamic night of spatial audio work. Bakantez formed in 2022 as the solo electronic project of Chicago based experimental composer Hanna Elliott, former member of the industrial duo HOGG. The project sonically consists of electro-acoustic sampling, sequencing, synthesis, and processed vocals reminiscent of sound collage, minimal wave, and noise.

Kari Watson plays modular analog synthesizers with a customizable software they built in MaxMSP that allows them to perform with a variety of different spatial speaker arrays. The software also allows control several inputs from the modular with filtering effects, customizable algorithmic spatialization trajectories, and individualized amplitude control.

Brought up on the sonic transmissions of the underground, interdisciplinary artist, DJ, and producer PANTY (they/them) is happy to report that hardcore will never die. Enmeshing sonic landscapes from seemingly disparate ends of global bass & leftfield dance music into a cohesive and experimental whole, PANTY’s punk at heart performance antics are only enhanced by their anti-capitalist, DIY-or-die ethos, and a passion for carving out spaces for ecstatic release.

We’ll get started at 8pm!

An evening of powerful protest in song and dance, and an ensemble full of multicultural, cinematic grooves.