There is no doubt that the inaugural Ear Taxi Festival is going to be the marquee new music event of 2016/17 in Chicago. 54 world premieres are slated across 6 days during this mammoth event, and our addition to this mountain of new work centers on three composers who we’ve been particularly keen on for years. One of our favorite people, former Vermeer Quartet violinist Mathias Tacke, will be in the second violin seat for this one!

George Lewis is one of the most fertile musical minds we know and his perspective-altering book titled “A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music” is essential reading for anyone identifying as “human” (seriously, add it to your list immediately). Tomeka Reid is an elastic performer and composer that we’ve frequently admired in concert and who recently released her debut record, Tomeka Reid Quartet. And you all know Samuel Adams as one of the two recently-appointed CSO Mead composers-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony – a pair currently taking the CSO’s MusicNOW programming in tasty new directions.

We don’t want to give too much away before you hear them, but George’s commission is an ecstatic bit of business that has us bonking our instruments with super-balls, Tomeka is going deep on the quartet groove, and Sam has us accompanying ourselves with sounds sent through snare drums. Yep. It’s going to get real new-music-pants at Ear Taxi, folks.

Tomeka Reid Quartet live at Chicago Jazz Festival, August 31, 2014

George Lewis and Vijay Iyer in concert

Samuel Adams: Tension Study #2 (Featuring Deanna Hammond)

PROGRAM
Samuel Adams: Quartet Movement (World Premiere)
Tomeka Reid: Prospective Dwellers (World Premiere)
George Lewis: String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (World Premiere)