Elastic Arts

Elastic Arts The Elastic Arts Foundation (EAF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization focusing on music - art

Please join us this Monday for Soft Power - A Deep Listening and Rest Session led by Angela James w/ Emily Beisel, Sarah...
01/17/2025

Please join us this Monday 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. We hope to see you there! 2pm Monday 1/20

TONIGHT!The Improvised Music Series welcomes a group featuring saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra accompanied by a...
01/16/2025

TONIGHT!

The Improvised Music Series welcomes a group featuring saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra accompanied by a trio of Chicago improvisers. They will combine to celebrate the jazz tradition in spirit and sound while crossing stylistic and cultural borders in order to express a strong, evolving vision. Beginning the night we will have a trio set by Emily Biesel, Ro Lundberg, and Norman W. Long weaving together their distinct sounds on bass clarinet, bass, and electronics.

8:30 pm:
Emily Beisel - clarinet
Ro Lundberg - double bass
Norman Long - electronics

9:30 pm:
Jorrit Dijkstra - saxophone
Keefe Jackson - saxophone
Ishmael Ali - cello
Michael Zerang - drumset

Join us this Saturday for ‘Many Hands Make Light Work’,  a day-long community quilting event facilitated by Stevie Emric...
01/16/2025

Join us this Saturday for ‘Many Hands Make Light Work’, 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. 11am-6pm this Saturday 1/18

Masks highly encouraged 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 is BACK this Friday 1/17 presenting The Ooze, a night of dance curated by Mya McClellan. Th...
01/15/2025

J e l l o Performance Series is BACK this Friday 1/17 presenting 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

JAN JAM! Tonight’s the night for all femme/trans/non-binary artists to join us at Elastic and participate in an all-nigh...
01/13/2025

JAN 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 [email protected] or just show up. All levels of musicianship welcome! It’s FREE admission for jammers and listeners alike. We can’t wait to see you for the 3rd Annual JAN JAM! 8PM!

TONIGHT!  Join us for ‘Composing the Climate’! Composing the Climate is a continuation of pianist Cacie Miller’s doctora...
01/12/2025

TONIGHT! Join us for ‘Composing the Climate’!

Composing the Climate is a continuation of pianist Cacie Miller’s doctoral project. This set of pieces was commissioned and collaboratively prepared by Miller and Missing Piece (Dan Galat and Kelly Quesada). Each work takes a distinct approach to facing the changing climate. Rubin’s trio narrates the history of human “progress” and its destructive march in a work that interleaves notated and improvised movements. Voth’s work sensitively explores “Solastalgia,” mourning of an anticipated loss. Zucker’s piece uses the instrumentation of the piano trio to model the concept of subscendence, as the trio members shift between listening to themselves and each other as they move through Zucker’s indeterminacy-sprinkled score. We’ll get started at 7pm!

Program:

- film introduction -
Solastalgia - Alissa Voth
- film interlude -
Subscendental Etude No. 1 - Ben Zucker
- film interlude -
Ignorance, Denial, Conflict, and Abandonment - Scott Rubin

Missing Piece (Dan Galat, violin - Kelly Quesada, cello)
Cacie Miller, piano
Zack Sievers, videography

These commissions and their preparation were funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council.

After an amazing 2024 for our Pleaides Series, we’re ready to take on another year of excellent programming. But first, ...
01/10/2025

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

This Monday’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 [email protected] or just show up. All levels of musicianship welcome! We can’t wait to see you for the 3rd Annual JAN JAM!

Join us this Sunday for ‘Composing the Climate’! How can a musical community come together to emotionally process life i...
01/08/2025

Join us this Sunday for ‘Composing the Climate’! 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.

Composing the Climate is a continuation of pianist Cacie Miller’s doctoral project. This set of pieces was commissioned and collaboratively prepared by Miller and Missing Piece (Dan Galat and Kelly Quesada). Each work takes a distinct approach to facing the changing climate. Rubin’s trio narrates the history of human “progress” and its destructive march in a work that interleaves notated and improvised movements. Voth’s work sensitively explores “Solastalgia,” mourning of an anticipated loss. Zucker’s piece uses the instrumentation of the piano trio to model the concept of subscendence, as the trio members shift between listening to themselves and each other as they move through Zucker’s indeterminacy-sprinkled score. We’ll get started at 7pm this Sunday 1/12!

Program:

- film introduction -
Solastalgia - Alissa Voth
- film interlude -
Subscendental Etude No. 1 - Ben Zucker
- film interlude -
Ignorance, Denial, Conflict, and Abandonment - Scott Rubin

Missing Piece (Dan Galat, violin - Kelly Quesada, cello)
Cacie Miller, piano
Zack Sievers, videography

These commissions and their preparation were funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council.

TONIGHT! 8PM. Don’t miss this incredibly special show to kick off programming at Elastic for 2025Set I: Ensemble Dal Nie...
01/04/2025

TONIGHT! 8PM. Don’t miss this incredibly special show to kick off programming at Elastic for 2025

Set I: Ensemble Dal Niente

Works by Emma Hospelhorn and alejandro t. acierto

Emma Hospelhorn, flute
alejandro t. acierto, clarinet
Matt Oliphant, horn
Jesse Langen, guitar

Set II: Macie Stewart

Macie Stewart, piano/voice
Lia Kohl, cello/voice
Whitney Johnson, viola/voice
Zach Moore, upright bass

This Saturday Ensemble Dal Niente teams up with composer and multi-instrumentalist Macie Stewart for a free evening of m...
01/02/2025

This Saturday Ensemble 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.

Set I: Ensemble Dal Niente

Works by Emma Hospelhorn and alejandro t. acierto

Emma Hospelhorn, flute
alejandro t. acierto, clarinet
Matt Oliphant, horn
Jesse Langen, guitar

Set II: Macie Stewart

Macie Stewart, piano/voice
Lia Kohl, cello/voice
Whitney Johnson, viola/voice
Zach Moore, upright bass

The Excursions team has gotten the Detroit family back together for a very special night of dance music! There’s no bett...
12/26/2024

The Excursions team has gotten the Detroit family back together for a very special night of dance music! There’s no better way to close out the year than with extended family on the dance floor.

After an an amazing holiday party last year, the crew is switching it up a bit and using the CLEAT 16 channel speaker system, showcasing artists in an immersive, multichannel audio format. This system places the audience inside the sound, through a system of 16 omni-directional hemisphere speakers conceived and built by Isobel Audio. We can’t wait for you to hear an ecstatic night dance music on this incredible system!

This event also serves as a sneak peek into next year’s line up into Excursions Detroit 2025. See you Monday at 9pm!

TONIGHT! The final Improvised Music Series of the year! A night of two heavy duos! Opening with the fiery pianist Erez D...
12/20/2024

TONIGHT! The final Improvised Music Series of the year! A night of two heavy duos! Opening with the fiery pianist Erez Dessel and powerhouse legend percussionist Avreeayl Ra, the closing with the wonderful cellist Katinka Kleijn and violinist Caroline Jesalva! Come on out in the snow, then get cozy with us here at Elastic Arts. 8:30PM start.

Thanks all for coming to our annual holiday party last night! Fun was had! The room was absolutely floored by a performa...
12/19/2024

Thanks all for coming to our annual holiday party last night! Fun was had! The room was absolutely floored by a performance from Amyna Love, which was an incredibly special way to (mostly) end our year of programming. It was great seeing so many sign up to be Elastic Arts Members! We want everyone in our community to be a member (with an affordable $15 Bass Level tier), so please head to the link in comments and sign up today! We’ll see you soon!

The Improvised Music Series concludes 2024 this Thursday with a pair of duos demonstrating the strength of the scene acr...
12/17/2024

The Improvised Music Series concludes 2024 this Thursday with a pair of duos demonstrating the strength of the scene across generations. Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she has cultivated an exploratory, interactive practice at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and collaboration. Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts. Performing with Kleijn is Caroline Jesalva, a genre-fluid violinist and vocalist traversing the worlds of classical performance, improvisation and experimental music. Inspired by Dadaism, her music explores experimental theater, glossolalia, poetry, and free improvisation.

The duo of pianist Erez Dessel and drummer Avreeayl Ra represents an intense meeting of sonic aesthetics. Ra is a pillar in the world of improvised music music, working within the AACM, with the Sun Ra Arkestra, and with Chicago legends like Fred Anderson and Ari Brown. Dessel, a younger musician in the Chicago scene, is quickly making waves, releasing his debut solo album last year and following it with an album from his newest group endeavor “Look Both Days” out this winter on local label Amalgam records. Together, these two musicians push the boundaries of free improvisation, letting their intuitions guide them and their commitment to openness shape their music. We’ll see you Thursday!

8:30 pm:
Avreeayl Ra - Drums
Erez Dessel - Piano

9:30 pm:
Caroline Jesalva - Violin, Voice
Katinka Kleijn - Cello, Voice, Electronics

Join us this upcoming Wednesday 12/18 for the Elastic Arts Holiday Party!Next week we gather during the holidays once ag...
12/13/2024

Join us this upcoming Wednesday 12/18 for the Elastic Arts Holiday Party!

Next week 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.

We’ll have some light bites and drinks, fellowship and amazing music, barrels of comfort and joy, and new perks for membership—plus, we’ll have a solo performance by 2024 Dark Matter Resident Amyna Love!

Bring anyone you love and anything you’d love to share. We’re thankful for the support from our friends at Illuminated Brew Works in making this an extra joyous and delicious evening!

The event is free and open to members. Learn about updates to our membership program at the link in bio. Sign up or renew today! Or you can sign up at the door! Membership levels start at only $15!

We’ll start gathering around 7. Come celebrate with us!

RSVP to [email protected] so we know you’re coming! Can’t wait to see you!

This upcoming Sunday evening NYC-based record label Modern Tapes will present a screening of their short documentary Bet...
12/12/2024

This upcoming Sunday evening NYC-based record 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. It features intimate interviews with underground and avant-garde artists whose styles span from academic precision to boundary-pushing experimentation. Originally intended as a portrait of a single festival, the project grew into a broader conversation about artistic identity, creative process, and community. The film offers a candid look at the motivations and backgrounds of these artists, as well as the challenges they face in explaining their unconventional art to those unfamiliar with experimental music and performance.

Label tapes honcho and Between Sets producer Patrick Scott will also peform a live set with their project closing. followed by a solo set from Sarah Lutkenhaus and a duo of Theo Katsaounis + Kat Borderud. Combining clipped field recordings, tape hiss/manipulation/decay, slow synthesis and amplified electro-acoustic minutiae, Brooklyn, New York’s closing. weaves a coarse fabric of slow sounds accompanied by equally grimy video feedback/synthesis by photographer/filmmaker Kimberly Craven. We’ll get things started at 8pm!

We’ve got a great Improvised Music Series planned for this Thursday, starting with a first time duo of Cristal Sabbagh a...
12/10/2024

We’ve got a great Improvised Music Series planned for this Thursday, starting with a first time duo of Cristal Sabbagh and Sharon Udoh. Sharon says “I’ll be playing a Nina Simone protest song or two while Cristal, you know, holds the entire world’s suffering in her body while she moves, as she often does.”

Following Cristal and Sharon’s powerful multidisciplinary opening of the Elastic space, Matthew Davis’ quintet continues the journey with deep grooves drawing on traditions the world over.

8:30 pm:
Sharon Udoh - piano
Cristal Sabbagh - movement

9:30p: Matthew Davis Quintet
Matthew Davis - Trombone/ Bansuri
Preyas Roy - Vibraphone
Jeff Wheaton - Bass
Jess Anzaldúa - Percussion
Isaiah Spencer - Drums

The final Pleiades Series of the year is this Wednesday! The night will include a solo cello and electronics set from se...
12/09/2024

The final Pleiades Series of the year is this Wednesday! The night will include a solo cello and electronics set from series alum Erica Miller followed by multidisciplinary artist Ruby Que presenting light projection work alongside sound artist iph.

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. Sign up by emailing [email protected] or just show up with your instrument and/or body! All improvisers are admitted to the event for free.

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3429 W Diversey #208
Chicago, IL
60647

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