MISSION
HEAR CHICAGO is a call to engage with the vast multiplicity of styles and traditions that constitutes Chicago’s expansive musical identity in the 21st century. It expresses our firm belief in the vitality of Chicago’s musicians of color, and especially the contributions of Black musicians, as a significant part of the city’s complex history. As our society takes steps to heal from the multiple tragedies it is currently experiencing, as well as its centuries-long legacy of injustice, inequity, colonialism, and violence, it is most importantly an invitation to challenge, collaborate, and change together as artists and listeners. We remain committed to doing the steadfast work necessary to progress towards a just society.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
The history and present of Chicago new and experimental musics is as complex, nuanced, non-linear, and fraught as that of the city itself. The word “sprawling” comes to mind; Chicago’s music is irregular, improvisatory, incomplete, unlikely; while it interacts with them, it ultimately evades traditional genre markers. (Sometimes I stubbornly insist on using the cumbersome word “musics” rather than the more friendly and familiar term “music.”) These musics are truly diverse, and in multiple senses of this loaded and often unsatisfying term. I want us to eschew a seductive but false (and potential dangerous) universality, and for us to be ever-aware that we’re dealing with a multiplicity of traditions that are both interrelated and autonomous, a sort of musical Venn diagram.
As a festival, Ear Taxi does not and simply cannot claim to be a comprehensive representation of all Chicago musics. However, it does hope to be as inclusive as we can manage with the resources we have available—to “HEAR CHICAGO” as our 2021 Mission Statement exhorts—and we strive to create unlikely encounters. Quite simply, we want you to bump up against some local music, music by your cultural peers, music about your location and of your life—in short, your music—that you may nevertheless not have come upon otherwise. We hope you will discover some things that are familiar and comfortable, that are new and surprising, that are nonsensical and zany, and—perhaps most importantly—that are challenging and disruptive.
Speaking of which: in the face of all this genuine positivity, the inspiring people we collaborate with, the remarkable work being made here, we also need some real talk. Let me speak here only from my personal positionality. I’m a white cis-male from the South who works largely in a field that is often called—depending on who you ask—contemporary classical music or new music (and these are heavily litigated terms). This field is a branch of, or maybe historically descended from, the US classical music industry, which is among the most imperialist and oppressive fields in contemporary culture. If US culture were on trial, charged with being what bell hooks calls the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” the classical music industry would be Exhibit A. Classical music institutions are supported by generational wealth of the sort systematically denied to Black citizens in the US for the entire history of the nation. Classical music requires highly specialized training that is expensive, and therefore primarily available to white people from an upper- or middle-class background. Asian-Americans also show up in these spaces, but they are often caricatured and typecasted (including physical stereotypes regarding their suitability to certain instruments) via the racist and de-humanizing discourse of the “model minority,” which, in our field, simply re-centers whiteness. In addition to being associated with economic status, this exclusionary training privileges a highly specific kind of virtuosity and instills submissive attitudes towards authority (whether the conductor, the score, the composer, the private teacher, etc.), in addition to habituating a perfectionism that can lead to pathological self-loathing. It is also ableist; there are many great musicians with disabilities (including deaf musicians), however, the nuances of their experiences are rarely centered. And while there are scholars doing excellent work in the fields of music and disabilities studies, the discriminatory social practices disabled musicians face in all kinds of various environments—educational, recreational, professional—are not a common part of our discourse.
Simultaneously, our industry under-compensates musical workers of all races (include lower- and lower-middle-class white people) who are not associated with high-status institutions. Within higher education, schools of music, departments of music, conservatories, etc. tend mostly to be schools of classical music (though many have jazz programs as well, normally less well-funded) without, as Loren Kajikawa has written (1), naming and owning their colonialist exclusion of other modes of knowledge and expression. The hierarchical, privileged, and patriarchal structures of these institutions not only enable abusers to have long careers that mostly avoid accountability but protect and reward them. Schools of music, concert halls, and other musical institutions are located on land stolen from Native people that these institutions mostly do not even take the very bare-minimum step of acknowledging.
However, as George E. Lewis has written (2), “the primary remit of new music and new noises [is] to declare that change is possible.” Elsewhere (3), Lewis quotes Carribean authors Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphael Confiant in support of what Lewis describes as the “condition of créolité” by which 21st century music finds itself marked: “[we] will be torn between several languages, several histories, caught in the torrential ambiguity of a mosaic identity. To present creative depth, one must perceive that identity in all its complexity. He or she will be in the situation of a Creole” (4) (In Praise of Creoleness, p. 112). Lewis goes on to say (p. 446) that “[t]he mobile musical subject becomes reconfigured in ways that pluralism cannot hear, resulting in new musical forms that exceed the limitations of postmodern pastiche.” Indeed pluralism cannot hear this. We reflexively double down on exclusionary historical practices, reify contingent procedures, stubbornly holding onto neoliberal logics of the “marketplace of ideas,” hide behind a putatively objective (but in fact subjective, often arbitrary) quality metric in music; but these are all choices to deny, erase, and misunderstand the complexities and contradictions of lived experience. It’s not merely that our old spaces need to make room for voices the classical music industry has othered and excluded (especially Black voices), though this is certainly necessary—and we probably need some redistributive and reparatory processes for that. It is that we need to engage in a project of creating liberatory spaces for future musicians and our future selves. Every music these days reflects what Lewis calls a “mosaic identity,” and embracing and holding multiple meanings simultaneously is a step towards freedom.
Artist Samson Young puts it less grandly but more snappily: writing in a different context (5), he describes a particular cultural item as “a communal invention, a strange [...] but beautiful glitch that we share;” this sure sounds a lot like the music in my world. I’m looking for beautiful glitches—accidental truths, productively disruptive mistakes, the truly unexpected—in Ear Taxi Festival 2021, and I hope you’ll find some with me. Maybe they’ll be the glitches that facilitate some change. We must keep in mind, though: we’re talking about glitches, and this doesn’t imply a facile solutionism that sees easy or technocratic fixes to complex problems. To paraphrase Lewis, we’re still at the point where we’re making the declaration that change is possible—my sense is that we’re only seeing the beginnings of actual change itself. We all have healing to do, and that takes time.
Speaking of complex problems, by way of ending, I want to acknowledge a necessary incompleteness and imperfection. To be honest with you, this statement has gone through several iterations. I’ve updated it as my thinking has changed, as I’ve learned, as I’ve made new connections, formed new relationships, and become a better listener. I don’t plan on arriving at a finalized version of this, and will continue to change it as I grow. Feel free to check out previous versions here. I also invite any feedback (michael@newmusicchicago.org) on the current version of this statement by way of holding myself to my communities—I have made mistakes and I will make surely continue to make them.
- Michael Lewanski, Curatorial Director
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(1) Kajikawa, Loren. "7. The Possessive Investment in Classical Music: Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in US Schools and Departments of Music." In Seeing Race Again, pp. 155-174. University of California Press, 2019.
(2) Lewis, George: “Interview.” In Cassidy, Aaron, and Aaron Einbond. Noise in and as Music, p. 121. University of Huddersfield Press, 2013.
(3) Lewis, George, “The Situation of a Creole.” In Clarke, David. "Defining twentieth-and twenty-first-century music." Twentieth-Century Music 14, no. 3, pp. 442-446 (2017).
(4) Bernabé, Jean; Chamoiseau, Patrick; and Confiant, Raphael. Éloge De La Créolité, trans. M. B. Taleb-Khyar (édition bilingue français/anglais), p. 112. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.
(5) Citation coming: this is part a text in an exhibition of his work I saw at the University of Edinburgh in August, 2019.
BACKGROUND
Ear Taxi Festival 2021, a presentation of New Music Chicago (NMC), is a citywide, multi-day celebration of new and experimental musical traditions that will feature approximately 600 Chicago artists in dozens of hours of programming, the vast majority featuring recently created works by Chicago composers, improvisers, and sound artists. Reaching estimated audiences of over 10,000 through in-person and live-streamed performances, workshops, and receptions, Ear Taxi Festival 2021 elevates Chicago as an internationally recognized center for extraordinary musical and cultural innovation.
New Music Chicago advocates for the importance of a vital, vibrant music scene in our city. NMC is a member organization supporting a passionate community through online and in-person services, including a calendar, social media presence, networking opportunities, professional development, and performances. Out of this advocacy for Chicago artists grew the inspiration for the Ear Taxi Festival 2021 Mission Statement. The statement below highlights the need for ongoing commitment and work, for which Ear Taxi Festival represents only the first steps of a much longer journey.
HEAR CHICAGO is a call to engage with the vast multiplicity of styles and traditions that constitutes Chicago’s expansive musical identity in the 21st century. It expresses our firm belief in the vitality of Chicago’s musicians of color, and especially the contributions of Black musicians, as a significant part of the city’s complex history. As our society takes steps to heal from the multiple tragedies it is currently experiencing, as well as its centuries-long legacy of injustice, inequity, colonialism, and violence, it is most importantly an invitation to challenge, collaborate, and change together as artists and listeners. We remain committed to doing the steadfast work necessary to progress towards a just society.
This commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion – and decolonization of the field -- has been foundational to Ear Taxi Festival 2021 planning, organization, and programming. NMC will carry this intentionality forward into board member recruitment and committee structure, programming and opportunities, as well as membership.
NMC has a significant history of presenting and facilitating festivals, series, and one-time programs featuring members’ work. In October of 2020, NMC celebrated its 15th anniversary featuring its members in a live-streamed concert at the new Epiphany Center of the Arts. In 2006, NMC organized Sonic Impact, a two-day festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and in 2009 NMC presented Mayfest, showcasing the city’s thriving art music scene. In 2011, several NMC ensembles collaborated to present Terry Riley’s In C in Millennium Park, followed the next summer by a collaborative performance of John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit, and a collaborative 10th Anniversary Celebration in 2015.
In 2016, NMC served as the fiscal sponsor for the first iteration of Ear Taxi Festival, created and spearheaded by Augusta Read Thomas, who remains among the most highly respected and sought after composers and arts advocates of our time. The festival was a joy-ride through Chicago’s new music scene co-curated by Thomas, Stephen Burns, and a curatorial committee of Chicago’s leading artists and intellectuals and supported by festival Director Reba Cafarelli. Ear Taxi Festival presented over 350 musicians and 54 world premieres in over six days of concerts, lectures, and sound installations.
Building upon the growing momentum of NMC and the success of the 2016 Ear Taxi Festival, NMC launched two new concert series in 2018 featuring its members: Impromptu Fest, an eight-concert festival at the Chopin Theater and Guarneri Hall, and New Music Chicago Presents... an ongoing free, monthly series featuring 21st century music by living composers at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Simultaneously, Melissa Ngan and Dan Visconti began planning towards the next Ear Taxi Festival, now fully a presentation of NMC. In 2019, the leadership changed to the current team: Jennie Oh Brown, Executive and Artistic Director, Michael Lewanski, Curatorial Director, Jessica Wolfe, Managing Director, LaRob K. Rafael, Director of Community Engagement (beginning in spring 2021), and Justin Peters, Production Manager (beginning in summer 2021). This new version of NMC’s Ear Taxi Festival is designed as a repeatable model, each future iteration to be led by a new leadership team. Plans were well underway for Ear Taxi Festival to be held in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced all gatherings to be canceled. The leadership team made the swift decision to postpone the festival a full year to 2021 and continued to work together virtually throughout the quarantine to ensure its success.
The New Music Chicago and Ear Taxi Festival 2021 leadership teams are thrilled to highlight the great art taking place all throughout our city and borne from Chicago’s complex history. As symbolized in the new Ear Taxi Festival logo created by artists Ana María Bermudez and Milo Hopkins of Studio Ibid Design, Ear Taxi Festival will be a point of intersection where a multitude of traditions and histories meet and where new and ongoing connections will be forged and shared.