{"id":1000315,"date":"2026-08-14T13:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1000315\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:26:15","slug":"the-second-sound-gravity-festival-offers-discerning-listeners-a-wealth-of-hard-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1000315\/","title":{"rendered":"The second Sound & Gravity festival offers discerning listeners a wealth of hard choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second iteration of Sound & Gravity<\/a> will take place at eight spaces on Chicago\u2019s north side. Its program includes nearly five dozen rock, jazz, and experimental performers from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Ethiopia. The festival is an endeavor of local club owner, event producer, composer, and drummer Mike Reed. Reed is most widely known for cofounding the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2006 and producing it until its final year in 2024; that festival\u2019s demise catalyzed the launch of Sound & Gravity in 2025. Reed\u2019s curatorial efforts, which eschew mainstream choices in favor of excellent representatives of less popular subcultures, also include contributions to city-sponsored events such as Sunday! Dog\/Days, Downtown Sound, and the Chicago Jazz Festival as well as shorter-lived spectacles like multidisciplinary circus Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements. He also books talent at his venues, the Hungry Brain and Constellation, and many of the artists at this year\u2019s Sound & Gravity have performed at one or both\u2014they include Grouper, the Tomeka Reid Quartet, Sir Richard Bishop, Black Duck, Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, and Bitchin Bajas, all of whom are worth prioritizing among your must-see Sound & Gravity sets. You likewise won\u2019t want to miss Texan ensemble Water Damage, debuting in Chicago with its maelstroms of drone and roar suspended over implacable drumbeats, or Ethiopian keyboardist Hailu Mergia, who merges funk grooves with languid pentatonic melodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reed\u2019s productions tend to reflect and benefit the communities in which they take place, and the Sound & Gravity website includes information on where to park your bike and referrals to five restaurants in the festival\u2019s neighborhood of Avondale and Bricktown. Aside from the Athenaeum Center, all of this year\u2019s venues are within walking distance of one another. Most are venues that regularly host live music, and at any given hour, several will have acts onstage at around the same time. This makes it wise to approach the festival with a strategy: organizing a night around a single favored act, for instance, or staying put for the internally coherent sequence of sets at a single location. Or you could simply surrender yourself to chance and wander from one venue to the next, with the knowledge that if one is full, something cool will be happening at another nearby.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sound & Gravity day one<\/strong> Today\u2019s lineup includes Mick Turner, Dos Santos, Alabaster DePlume, and Heart Trio (William Parker, Hamid Drake, and Cooper-Moore). Complete schedule at soundandgravity.org<\/a>. Thu 9\/3, 6:30 PM, Constellation and Rockwell on the River (event room and patio), $56.99 one-day pass<\/a>, $253.88 festival pass, 21+<\/p>\n

Sound & Gravity day two<\/strong> Today\u2019s lineup includes Hailu Mergia, Resavoir, Water Damage, Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and Kalia Vandever. Complete schedule at soundandgravity.org<\/a>. Fri 9\/4, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, Constellation, Hungry Brain, Judson & Moore, Rockwell on the River (event room and patio), $93.26 one-day pass<\/a>, $253.88 festival pass, 21+<\/p>\n

Sound & Gravity day three<\/strong> Today\u2019s lineup includes Keith Fullerton Whitman, Marc Ribot, the Tomeka Reid Quartet, the American Analog Set, Adam O\u2019Farrill\u2019s Elephant, and My New Band Believe. Complete schedule at soundandgravity.org<\/a>. Sat 9\/5, 6 PM, Athenaeum Center, Beat Kitchen, Constellation, Guild Row, Hungry Brain, and Judson & Moore, $93.26 one-day pass<\/a>, $253.88 festival pass, 21+<\/p>\n

Sound & Gravity day four<\/strong> Today\u2019s lineup includes Black Duck, Advance Base, Sir Richard Bishop, Joan Shelley, Grouper, Tyondai Braxton, Yellow Swans, and a trio of Ken Vandermark, Chris Corsano, and Joe McPhee. Complete schedule at soundandgravity.org<\/a>. Sun 9\/6, 6 PM, Athenaeum Center, Beat Kitchen, Constellation, Guild Row, Hungry Brain, and Judson & Moore, $93.26 one-day pass<\/a>, $253.88 festival pass, 21+<\/p>\n

Reader Recommends: CONCERTS<\/p>\n

Upcoming shows to have on your radar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second iteration of Sound & Gravity will take place at eight spaces on Chicago\u2019s north side. Its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1000316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,4289,77591],"class_list":["post-1000315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-listings","tag-reader-recommended"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1000316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}