November 2025 Issue: Music 45 (Digital Edition)

Music 45 2025 Who Keeps Chicago In Tune "Chicago’s music world is much brighter, bigger, louder than any screen, and it's growing all the time. In just one week this September, Mike Reed staged the inaugural Sound & Gravity Festival at venues across Bricktown, Music of the Baroque floated an orchestra performing Handel atop a riverboat downtown, Empty Bottle Presents filled the Garfield Park Conservatory with ambient and electronic music, Theaster Gates opened The Land School with performances by artists featured in these pages and Access Contemporary Music celebrated the conversion of a shuttered 7-Eleven into a new chamber music venue with a festival. Each featured musicians who, like any great artist, are world-builders themselves. So what does Chicago sound like in 2025? The algorithms will move on, but we’ll be here to help you remember." (Todd Hieggelke) Making History The first Theaster Gates museum exhibition in his hometown opens some archives at UChicago "While Gates’ has