Category: Chicagoans of Note

Izzi Vasquez is a multimedia artist who has helped some of Chicago’s most celebrated musicians with the visuals for their visions. Vasquez has created animations and designed album packaging for the likes of Kaina, Sen Morimoto, Nnamdï, and Kara Jackson. In their art, Vasquez gives new form to the lessons they learned from their grandmother, […]

For more than three decades, Thomas Kendricks, better known as DJ Slugo, has been DJing, producing, and celebrating ghetto house, a sound he helped pioneer. Slugo grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes and began building his reputation in his neighborhood; in the 1990s, he became part of a network of underground house producers connected […]

Josh Piotrowski was born to make you scream. The 41-year-old Chicago native grew up in Albany Park as part of a family full of haunt enthusiasts, including a younger sister who worked on a haunted trail for the Park District. In his late teens and early 20s, he worked in costume shops and party-planning stores, […]

Manae Solara Vaughn is a young Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer who put down roots in the local music scene much earlier in her life than most of her peers. Daughter of Chicago house-music royalty DJ Lady D, Solara Vaughn grew up immersed in her parents’ community of music legends. She recently left her job […]

I discovered the work of videographer Josh Horton through local music-media outlet Real Ones, which began as a podcast in 2020 and evolved to produce concerts and shoot interviews with local and national artists. Horton has shot Real Ones interviews at several festivals. He immersed himself in Chicago’s overlapping hip-hop and R&B scenes after graduating […]

Lily Glick Finnegan, 25, is a drummer, composer, improviser, and curator. A Chicago native, she returned to the city in 2022 after completing a master’s degree in music at Berklee. She manages the online record store for nonprofit artists’ collective Catalytic Sound, a job she took at the invitation of local reedist Ken Vandermark, who […]

In 2012, Emma McKee taught herself to cross-stitch to make a Christmas present for her mother. Shortly after taking her talent public, she began making elaborate cross-stitched jackets for local hip-hop artists. Her first commission was for Chance the Rapper in 2014, but since then she’s worked with the likes of Lil Yachty and Saba. […]

Nataliia Kuryliak is an accomplished musician and educator working as a piano instructor at the Christopher Laughlin School of Music in Northbrook. Born in Koropets in western Ukraine, Kuryliak graduated from the Denys Sichynskyi Music College in Ivano-Frankivsk in 2015 and later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Lviv National Music Academy. In February […]

Pittsburgh native Bill Harris moved to Chicago in 2011 because he wanted to play improvisational and experimental music. Four years later, the drummer, engineer, and composer launched Amalgam, a record label that also serves as an umbrella for a loose creative collective. He’s released plenty of his own work via Amalgam, including solo recordings, a […]

Gray Schiller didn’t expect to be running a nonprofit at 26. From middle school through college, they were relentlessly focused on becoming a folk singer. After growing up in the North Shore area, they moved to New York to attend the Pratt Institute. “I wanted just to make music, but my parents wanted me to […]

In 2005, Czarina Mirani launched 5 Magazine to spread the word about the house-music scene she loves so much. Along with managing editor Terry Matthew and a pool of contributors, Mirani has published indispensable documentation of Chicago’s house history, including interviews with key players such as Frankie Knuckles, Paul Johnson, and Phuture’s DJ Pierre. Whenever […]

Molly Compton is a scene mom and mentor who founded the independent label Ur Mom Records in December 2021, using her savings and support from family. Compton is a recognizable face in the local DIY music scene: she hosts twice-monthly COVID-safe house shows for local and touring acts, either at her place or in her […]

In 2013, photographer Ash Dye moved to Chicago from Athens, Ohio, where she’d first become involved in an underground music scene. Within a few months of arriving here, Dye landed an internship at the Empty Bottle, which she used to launch an interview series called Empty Exchange; in 2014, she became a bartender at the […]

Heather Gabel is an icon of the midwestern industrial scene. As singer for Hide, their electronic duo with Seth Sher, they control the stage like a bionic witch who’s just emerged from a scrap heap to reveal truths both prophetic and profane. Offstage they’ve been a support professional in varied musical communities, working as a […]