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!
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
Artist Bios
Jessica Ackerley is a Canadian guitarist, improviser and composer based in Honolulu and a current PhD candidate at University of Hawai’i after a decade of living in New York City. Ackerley continually develops a hybrid musical language drawing on the influences of Black American Music and avant-garde improvisers, as well as the culture of the thriving New York City rock and noise scenes. Since 2017, Ackerley has released 19 albums to much critical acclaim with features in Wire Magazine, Pitchfork, BBC Radio, and Bandcamp. They have been commissioned by Adult Swim, Mutual Mentorship, and New Music USA as well as received funding from Canada Council for the Arts and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. As an active performer, Ackerley has toured extensively throughout North America, performing at noteworthy venues like The Met Breuer, The Stone, Something Else! Festival, Coastal Jazz Festival, and countless underground venues ranging from the basements of houses to record shops.
Mai Sugimoto is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and active member of Chicago's jazz and creative music scene. Born/Raised, her debut album (Asian Improv Records, 2018), explores this cultural and musical binary, juxtaposing, among others, a jazz rendition of a Japanese children's song alongside compositions inspired by the American jazz idiom. Sugimoto is also a core member of the quartet Hanami, whose two albums similarly mix Japanese culture into creative music. Mai has performed four times at the Chicago Jazz Festival: in 2015 with Hanami, in 2019 and 2022 as a leader, and in 2018 with renowned bassist Tatsu Aoki, with whom she frequently plays, including appearances in his Fred Anderson Legacy Band. Her first solo album, monologue (Asian Improv Records) was released in March of 2021. Sugimoto’s most recent work appears on Natural Information Society’s album, Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite, 2023). Her latest album, Sunlight Filtering Through Leaves (Asian Improv, 2024) is her third album as a leader.
Tim Daisy is an American drummer and composer working in the fields of improvised and composed music. Tim moved to Chicago in 1997 and since that time has performed, recorded, and toured with many national and international improvised musicians and ensembles. He was a member of the Vandermark 5 from 2002 to 2010. He has also performed with Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams, Steve Swell, Jaimie Branch, Katherine Young, Fred Lonberg-Holm, James Falzone, Russ Johnson, Katinka Kleijn, Elizabeth Harnik, Christof Kurzmann, Ikue Mori, Rafael Toral, Mikolaj Trzaska, Per Ake Holmlander, Darren Johnston, Havard Wiik, Jason Stein and Michael Zerang.