Dave McDonnell (photo by Karra McDonnell)
Quinlan Kircher (photo by Christel Kumpen)
Erik Sowa (photo by Ricardo Adame)
Nick Turner (photo by Ricardo Adame)
Two duo acts forefronting improvised approaches to avant-rock and electronic music, with special visiting (returning) guest Dave McDonnell.
8:30 pm - Erik Sowa & Nick Turner
9:30 pm - Dave McDonnell’s
5th World with Quinlan Kirchner
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
About the artists
Sowa and Turner are a guitar and drums duo based in Chicago, Illinois. They play improvised, instrumental music that incorporates elements of ambient, drone, and post-rock.
Philadelphia resident Dave McDonnell got his start in Chicago’s thriving rock and jazz underground. Cutting his teeth with Elephant 6 adjacent groups like bablicon and Icy Demons, McDonnell went on form the avant/synth-rock group Michael Columbia. He is likely best known in Chicago as a founding member of the group Herculaneum, a critically acclaimed unit with a five-album discography. David’s work combining afro-beat with jazz and his electronic compositions has found an outlet with Dave McDonnell Group, whose album, the time inside a year, can be found on the Delmark record label. Dave McDonnell’s 5th World is a project which combines woodwinds, computer music and modular synthesizers to create ambient textures, riffs and basslines which are synced with electronic drums and live percussion. 5th World released the album Mammals in 2023 on Astrolabe Recordings. One of the goals with this project is to place algorithm-based electronic music into the broader cultural and stylistic contexts of free jazz, electronic dance and world music.
Chicago native Quinlan Kirchner has become a ubiquitous drumming force throughout the city’s diverse music scene. He has led countless large and small groups. In 2oo6, he was commissioned by the Umbrella Music Organization to compose and perform a 4-movement piece for string quartet and percussion entitled The Quagmire String Quartets. In 2010 he was selected as a member of The New Generation, a cross-cultural exchange in Dortmund, Germany led by Georg Graewe and Tobias Delias as part of the Ruhr 2010 Cultural Capital of EU. In 2018, Kirchner released his debut album as a leader, The Other Side of Time, a sprawling 90-minute college of jazz, beats and improvisations, called “…the first great jazz album of 2018” by The Chicago Reader’s Pete Margasak. It was well received by critics, named album of the year by Bandcamp Daily, a top 5 “best debut” in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll and given 4 stars in Downbeat and All About Jazz.