{"id":232303,"date":"2025-09-16T22:08:31","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/232303\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T22:08:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:08:31","slug":"review-sound-gravity-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/232303\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sound & Gravity Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harpist Mary Lattimore had some thank-yous to make. Onstage at an event space in the Rockwell on the River complex, on the cusp of Lake View and Avondale, she paused her delicately looping set to shout out the organizers of Sound & Gravity, the festival she was appearing under. They\u2019d even helped transport her harp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very taken care of,\u201d she told the audience, smiling ear-to-ear.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the perk of headlining a festival \u2014 by musicians, for musicians \u2014 like Sound & Gravity. Earlier this year, Pitchfork co-founder and drummer Mike Reed set to work planning a new music festival that would champion Chicago, and the liminal patch of Chicago that houses his two venues, Constellation and Hungry Brain.<\/p>\n

His considerations were logistical as much as creative: Cond\u00e9 Nast had abruptly pulled the plug<\/a> on Pitchfork, the music festival he helped start in 2005, and many Chicago musicians had long counted on working the festival for some extra cash. Sound & Gravity would get them work \u2014 not only as support staff but featured talent \u2014 while doubling as a fundraiser for his venues.<\/p>\n

The festival, whose inaugural edition ran Sept. 10-14, leaned on the new Rockwell on the River complex at Belmont Avenue and the Chicago River to augment its stages. On Sept. 12, its busiest night, four different stages in the complex \u2014 an event space, the patio, distiller Judson & Moore and co-working space Guild Row \u2014 became festival stages, as well as local venues Constellation, Hungry Brain, and Beat Kitchen. Like other summer megafests, one could enter all of them freely via a bracelet ticket.<\/p>\n

Pithily summarizing what kind of music Sound & Gravity puts on is more or less impossible \u2014 though, as Reed said in recent weeks, the tagline of British music publication The Wire, \u201cAdventures in Modern Music,\u201d comes close. It encompassed the polyrhythmic rock of Nigerien singer\/guitarist Mdou Moctar, the synth-driven ballads of singer-songwriter Helado Negro, and acts securely rooted in the jazz world \u2014 like Amaryllis, a super-stacked sextet led by guitarist Mary Halvorson.<\/p>\n

\"HannahHannah Cohen performs at Rockwell on the River during the Sound & Gravity music festival on Sept. 12, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)
\n\"MichaelMichael Zerang’s Puzzle House performs at Judson & Moore during the Sound & Gravity music festival, Sept. 12, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Still, some trends emerged. Reed seems to have leaned on his drumstick-wielding network for this first go: Third Coast Percussion, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche (both Sept. 11), Michael Zerang\u2019s Puzzle House (Sept. 12) and percussionist Eli Kessler (Sept. 14) were all among the acts. If not the focus, sometimes drummers were the connective tissue between acts. Kotche appeared in both a solo set and a show with Saccata, his new quartet, and on Sept. 11, drummer Jason Nazary played as part of both Helado Negro\u2019s band and saxophonist Darius Jones\u2019 trio.<\/p>\n

Niche as it may be compared to Pitchfork, Sound & Gravity drew a huge, and hugely eager, crowd over its five-day span. A tally provided by the festival counted more than 5,000 attendees, with ticket buyers from 34 states and 5 countries. It sold out entirely on Friday and Saturday, and some gigs hit capacity, like guitarist Jeff Parker\u2019s trance-like Expansion Trio at Beat Kitchen (Sept. 12).<\/p>\n

\"FestivalFestival attendees wait in line to hear Jeff Parker Expansion Trio perform at Beat Kitchen during the Sound & Gravity music festival, Sept. 12, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)
\n\"JeffJeff Parker, from left, Jeremiah Chiu and Ben Lumsdaine of Jeff Parker Expansion Trio perform at Beat Kitchen during the Sound & Gravity music festival, Sept. 12, 2024, in Chicago. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

For the most part, though, Sound & Gravity\u2019s stylistic range helped keep attendees spread out across the seven venues. And like any music festival worth its salt, it snuck in some surprise acts, posted up at Hungry Brain on the last day: avant-rock duo Finom and The Big Gig, Reed\u2019s own band.<\/p>\n

My biggest gripe with Sound & Gravity Vol. 1 boiled down to scheduling. Of course, the perverse beauty of a music festival is that it\u2019s usually impossible to hear everything at it. But booking its two furthest venues \u2014 Beat Kitchen to the east, the Rockwell on the River complex to the west \u2014 on the same festival slots two days in a row was an especially cruel stroke. Had those shows been staggered, one could harbor some hope that slipping out of one venue for the other would be worth the shlep.<\/p>\n

As it was, one had to consign themselves to being anchored at either Rockwell on the River or the Constellation\/ Hungry Brain \/ Beat Kitchen axis. Otherwise, too much precious time was lost commuting: The walk from Beat Kitchen to the Rockwell complex takes just under 20 minutes. For all Sound & Gravity\u2019s boasts of walkability, that\u2019s not exactly an easy jaunt\u2014and the Belmont bus isn\u2019t frequent enough to plan your movement around, either. Those plotting a particularly antic path through the festival without a bike or car will probably get pooped by Act 3.<\/p>\n

\n

With Sound & Gravity, the co-founder of the Pitchfork Festival declares he isn\u2019t done yet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Festival organizers will have to mull over all of this going forward, despite a charmed first outing. Anything less than last week\u2019s gorgeous weather, and the whole enterprise might have floundered.<\/p>\n

But the perfection of the week also gave it a frozen-in-amber quality. After hearing Kotche\u2019s set at Constellation \u2014 a personal highlight for its mix of geniality and virtuoso heat \u2014 I made the peaceful walk up Belmont to Beat Kitchen. One section of Kotche\u2019s set was ringing in my ears, from a new work for percussion and electronics he called \u201cThe Third Round.\u201d At the end of the tune, the groove dropped away, and Kotche stood to twirl a whirligig-esque instrument above his head \u2014 a high, twittering sound. \u201cWhen I hear what we call music,\u201d a voice said over the loudspeaker, \u201cit seems to me that someone is talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdventures in modern music\u201d works, but the freedom to speak, and to be? That\u2019s the best elevator pitch for Sound & Gravity I\u2019ve heard yet.<\/p>\n

Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.<\/p>\n

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harpist Mary Lattimore had some thank-yous to make. Onstage at an event space in the Rockwell on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":232304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,171,5386,1818,1370,5424,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-232303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-music-and-concerts","14":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115216259817638559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232303","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=232303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}