After a COVID gap year, the Frequency Festival returns on February 22. The six-day event is an outgrowth of the Frequency Series, which is programmed by former Chicago Reader staff music critic Peter Margasak and hosted by Constellation. Founded in 2013, shortly after drummer and promoter Mike Reed opened the north-side venue, the series presents […]
Tag: Peter Margasak
Posted inMusic
New-music feast the Frequency Festival returns after taking a COVID year
Former Reader staff writer Peter Margasak has been programming the Frequency Series at Constellation since 2013, bringing in artists from across the wide spectrum of experimental and new music for weekly showcases. Since 2016 Margasak has also booked the annual Frequency Festival, which skipped 2021 for obvious reasons; the festival will return for its sixth […]
Posted inMusic
It beats dancing about architecture
The Chicago Reader debuted October 1, 1971—almost two years before DJ Kool Herc threw the very first hip-hop party in the Bronx in August 1973, nearly three years before the Ramones made their first appearance onstage at CBGB in August 1974, and more than five years before Frankie Knuckles first spun at the Warehouse in […]
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Chicago’s September jazz festivals cope with COVID
The city is replacing the Chicago Jazz Festival with a slimmed-down online event, while the smaller, nimbler Hyde Park Jazz Festival plans to try pop-up in-person shows.
Posted inCity Life
The Reader’s stay-at-home chronicles: day 53
What we’re reading, watching, listening to, etc., to pass the time.
Posted inMusic
Jacob Wick’s trumpet playing proposes some queer notions
Trumpeter Jacob Wick grew up in the Chicago area and now lives in Mexico City. Like his contemporaries Birgit Ulher, Peter Evans, Axel Dörner, and Nate Wooley, he employs extended techniques that enable him to produce sounds very different from conventional brass playing. His vocabulary encompasses coarse-grained ribbons of frayed wind, rhythmic puffs that resemble […]
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Oren Ambarchi and Crys Cole open the Frequency Festival with entrancing sound worlds
Sound artists Oren Ambarchi and Crys Cole have both had thrilling careers. Ambarchi has run experimental label Black Truffle for more than a decade, and he’s collaborated with a wide array of avant-garde luminaries, including Sunn O))), Keiji Haino, and Keith Rowe and John Tilbury (both veterans of long-running UK improvising group AMM). Last year, […]
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The 2020 Frequency Festival announces a lineup of world-class experimental music
Highlights of the 2020 Frequency Festival include a fusion of Carnatic music and jazz, a solo vocal piece for Diamond Reynolds, and programs of work by Eliane Radigue and Annea Lockwood.
Posted inBlogs
Music critic Peter Margasak says farewell and thanks to the Reader and to Chicago
A sign-off and an appreciation—plus some favorite stories from the past 25 years
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The world catches up to iconoclastic composer Julius Eastman
Iconoclastic composer Julius Eastman died homeless almost three decades ago, and his work was nearly lost. But classical music finally has room for a queer black voice in the minimalist pantheon.
Posted inBlogs
From the archive: The Chicago preacher and gospel musician who ran a pyramid scheme
Pastor T.L. Barrett is beloved by music fanatics and rappers eager to sample throwback gospel; he also defrauded thousands, as the Reader reported in 1989.
Posted inBlogs
This week’s Frequency Festival finds points of contact between classical, jazz, and the avant-garde
The concert series booked by the Reader‘s Peter Margasak throws its second annual six-day festival of boundary-erasing music.
Posted inBlogs
The Frequency Festival kicks off six days of top-shelf contemporary classical tonight at the MCA
Reader writer Peter Margasak celebrates three years of his Frequency Series with a festival of adventurous new music.
Posted inBlogs
Reader’s Agenda Sun 9/21: Aahh! Fest, Design Harvest, and Wand
What’s on the Reader‘s Agenda for Sunday, September 21
Posted inBlogs
Reader’s Agenda Sat 9/20: the Breeders, the Chicago Wandelweiser Festival, and Apple Festival
What’s on the Reader‘s Agenda for Saturday, September 20