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, […]

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R. Brent Decker plays bass in Racetraitor and works as chief program officer for Cure Violence Global, a Chicago-based nonprofit that takes a public health approach to reducing violence. As a college student in the mid-90s, Decker cofounded Chicago hardcore band Racetraitor with childhood friends from the north suburbs. The group quickly attracted a passionate […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Caroline Patton is the faceless giant behind the Chicago Weekly Show Calendar, an Instagram account and weekly email newsletter that tries to detail all the concerts happening in the city at a range of venues. Launched in August 2021, the account has nearly 6,000 followers, and weekly posts average around 350 likes.  Patton graduated with […]

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Chicago native Mare Ralph has been a board member at Girls Rock! Chicago since 2021 and a camp organizer since 2019. From 2014 till 2018 they lived in Louisville, where in 2015 they began working with Rockshops, a weekend-long music camp that had launched the year before as part of the festival Louisville Outskirts. In […]

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Dan O’Conor is best known as the Great Lake Jumper, but he’s also a Chicago-based artist and owns T-shirt company Dtox Designs. Raised in the north suburbs, O’Conor began going to concerts in the city in the early 80s, and his passion for live music led him to a career in the music and media […]

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Chicago producer, DJ, and promoter Jermaine Collins, aka Composuresquad, has been part of the city’s dance scene for the past decade. He hooked up with local dance collective and record label Them Flavors in 2013, and the following year he joined the crew. In 2021 he issued his debut album, Auto D., through the Issa […]

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Among the local venues to fall victim to the COVID-19 pandemic in its first terrible year was beloved Bucktown dance spot Danny’s Tavern. The bar had been home to several popular DJ nights, including Night Moves, a cosmic disco monthly that ended its 12-year run (after a few lineup changes) hosted by Ross Kelly and […]

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Michael and Helen Cameron launched Uncommon Ground in 1991 as a tiny coffeehouse at Grace and Clark near Wrigley Field, eventually expanding it into a full-service restaurant and music venue. In 2007 they added a second location on Devon, which they recently closed to spend more time with family. In 2014 the original Uncommon Ground […]

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I met DJ Intel in 2010 at Bad Meaning Good, a monthly trashy movie night at the Burlington that he hosted with fellow DJ Jarrett Spiegel. In the years since, I’ve frequently run into Intel (real name Jason Deuchler) at hip-hop shows and horror movie screenings, and I’ve ended up at plenty of concerts and […]

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Amanda Flores is a Chicago musician, DJ, event promoter, and licensed massage therapist. While fronting metal band Rosaries in 2017, she launched Flores Negras Productions to help create new inclusive spaces in the local music community. Soon after, she began DJing, also under the name Flores Negras. During the pandemic, she’s grown a following for […]

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If you’ve ever been to a show at Thalia Hall, you’ve walked right past Anna-Michal Paul’s work. She creates the hand-drawn chalk art that greets concertgoers as they ascend the stairs to the second-floor venue. Her detailed, textured portraits and stylized lettering, which she catalogs on Instagram at latenightchalkshow, are as much a part of […]

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Patrixia reigns supreme in digital clubspace. It’s where the 29-year-old DJ feels empowered to be her spookiest, silliest Latinx self. Locally, she’s known for DJing goth and industrial parties at venues such as Berlin and House of Vans, but online she has a rabid Twitch following who tune in three days a week to hear […]

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Jessica Risker is an experimental singer-songwriter and a licensed clinical counselor. After the COVID-19 pandemic sent Chicago into lockdown in March 2020, Risker merged those pursuits for a podcast called Music Therapy, where she speaks to artists, industry professionals, and fellow therapists about their work, creativity, and mental health. She initially imagined the podcast as […]

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Multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist Sam Thousand moved to Chicago from Texas in 2009, and within a year he’d joined hip-hop fusion outfit Sidewalk Chalk. He’s since become deeply embedded in several overlapping arts communities, gaining increased visibility under his previous stage name, Sam Trump—I first saw him perform solo in 2018, during a cross-genre Steppenwolf […]

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There’s a lot that makes going to shows magical besides the live music, and no one knows this better than Empty Bottle art director Bill Connors. The Illinois native never expected to be guiding the aesthetic of one of Chicago’s most beloved independent venues, but the job has proved a natural fit: Since high school, […]

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Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus […]

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Chicago native Paul Natkin is a prolific concert and portrait photographer who’s shot more than 4,300 musicians and celebrities since he started his career in 1975. He’s also worked as road manager for the likes of Brian Wilson and Alice Peacock and tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. His images have appeared in so many […]

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Eli Schmitt, 20, moved to Chicago a couple years ago to attend DePaul, where he studies journalism and art history. In that time he’s become a crucial connector in an emerging youth arts movement best known for its bands, which include Lifeguard, Post Office Winter, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Horsegirl. Schmitt wears a lot of […]

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Celia Rose is one of the three founders of What Up Pitches, a music agency that combines a production house and a sync-licensing operation. Her colleagues, Mariela Arredondo and Pei Pei Chung, are both based in Los Angeles, but Rose lives here in Lincoln Square. They launched What Up Pitches a little over two years […]

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To friends and family, they’re Del Hale, a 23-year-old Chicago native finishing their English degree at East-West University. But in the electronic-music community, they’re Miss Twink USA, a dandy bimbo bringing viciously fun party poetry to the DJ booth. Since starting out in the DIY rave scene six years ago, Hale has been playing music […]

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Angel Day, 23, is a visual artist, pop musician, and show promoter. They make eclectic underground tracks that draw from experimental dance and hip-hop, using the name Yesterdayneverhappened; they also organize a party called Daybreak, which showcases Black and Black trans artists. In January the Empty Bottle hosted the most recent Daybreak, titled “Frostbite,” whose […]

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It’s romantic to imagine a DJ dropping a track so profound it can save your life, but what about a DJ who can open up possibilities away from the dance floor? Jeremy Alvarez, founder of a dark electronic DJ night called Research & Development, is known as much for his skill at connecting disparate people […]

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Jill Hopkins is a Chicago broadcaster, DJ, writer, musician, and storyteller. After an eight-year stint at Vocalo Radio, Hopkins kicked off 2022 by joining the Metro family of venues (which also includes Smart Bar and GMan) as their new media and civic events producer. As told to Jamie Ludwig I was always a big radio […]

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Elton Chueng, 33, began his career as a professional recording engineer with an internship at Classick Studios in 2011. He’s since worked with some of the brightest stars to emerge from Chicago’s hip-hop scene in the past decade, including Saba, Noname, Smino, and Chance the Rapper. In November his contributions to Yebba’s 2021 debut, Dawn, […]

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DJ collective Agua de Rosas spread the gospel of reggaeton, and though they’re based in Milwaukee, they have an evangelist in Chicago too: Karen Valencia, better known as Karennoid. In November, the trio (Valencia, Julio Cordova, and Gabriela “Chanchita” Riveros) played their first Chicago gig at emerging underground dance haunt Podlasie Club. They opened for […]

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Van Paugam, 36, is a DJ who specializes in the 70s and 80s Japanese jazz, disco, funk, and fusion records collectively known as City Pop. In 2015, he started a YouTube channel that helped renew popular interest in the genre, which in turn allowed him to move his musical activities into the offline world when […]

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Aline Kaze is a freelance audio engineer and DJ affiliated with multidisciplinary arts platform AMFM. Kaze, who performs as DJ Bonita Appleblunt, has spun records around the city with the likes of EvieTheCool, DJ Skoli, Ron Trent, Duane Powell, and Ryan, the Person. Earlier this year Ace Hotel Chicago booked Kaze for a monthly residency; […]

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David Weathersby is a filmmaker and founder of video production company City Vanguard, which focuses on documentaries about underrepresented communities of color. In 2018, he received a Black Excellence Award for The Color of Art from the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago, and in 2019, his documentary Thee Debauchery Ball won the audience award […]

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“There’s a satisfaction in knowing that our work will survive us by generations. That’s something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.” Pipe organ conservator Jeff Weiler, 62, founded what became JL Weiler, Inc. in 1983. The company’s workshop near 18th and Canal employs ten people, who work to restore, […]

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In April, violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery was named the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery will split her time between New York and Chicago throughout her residency, which started July 1 and runs through June 30, 2024. She gave this interview while in town to prepare for the first concert of the CSO’s […]

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Julia Dratel, 30, is an events producer, curator, radio DJ, activist, and visual artist. She’s taken photos for album artwork by Circuit des Yeux and Devouring the Guilt and created music videos for Health & Beauty, Mind Over Mirrors, and Spirits Having Fun. She’s also curated night two of the Elastro A/V Fall Festival at […]

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“Being in the room and feeling the heartbeat of the people that you’re with, that’s really a large part of what makes the music what it is.”

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“We weren’t only honoring Professor Dorsey—this was a major event introduced by the first Black mayor of the city, and it needed to be outstanding.”

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"Once I started playing piano . . . I felt like I had complete control over something for once, and it allowed me to be a more confident version of myself."

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“I want to assemble things as if I'm storyboarding in my head. In a way, I feel like a casting director for sound.”

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“A lot of the most fascinating audio that I’ve found has been things that most people would just skip over.”

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“A year without music venues, without audiences, without seeing other people play has really made me realize how important that is for me.”

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“I try and make the music for the dancers—like Teklife, Beatdown House, everybody in the footwork community. It's all for them.”

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“I've always written more than people can keep up with. I write a lot of plays and I write a lot of lyrics. I just write all the time.”

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“For so long, people didn’t know anything about Asian Americans. Showing who we are and being proud of who we are, it’s really important during this time.”

The post Jennifer Phạm, cofounder of Haibayô and Celebrate Argyle appeared first on Chicago Reader.

“The focus is not as much on the bands as it is on communal life and the weird things you get up to when you’re making minimum wage and you’re bored.”

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“A music community is a group of individuals that create music because they love doing it, and I think that's the most important thing for me.”

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“You bring people together and something will always happen. . . . The how is pretty easy, but the why is more important to me.”

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“When someone reads you those Hans Christian Andersen stories when you’re young, this is the music that’s playing in your mind.”

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“When I was working in politics, we always went to the community for answers. Community organizations are going to be around a lot longer than any politician.”

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“For a couple months, I was just DJing for tips. Luckily the community that I have around me, they were pouring into me as much as I give out to them.”

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“I named my business Screwball Press with no thought that I’d still be working at this 30 years later. . . . I didn’t want the name to suggest that I knew what I was doing.”

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“Something about a recording studio, I think it’s always overlooked as a place for community.”

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“When you look around your community, it's easy to help the people around you. And once you start doing that, it's easier to understand how we can effect change.”

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"I started my zine when I moved to Chicago. . . . I thought, 'What is something I can do by myself yet still contribute?'"

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“I was just livestreaming myself from my room for eight hours a day, just to see what it felt like. It was weird.”

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“I’ve been on this journey to be able to present within the jazz community. . . . To be a union of creative beauty.”

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“Our city is just exploding with creativity and music and art, and all of these truly irreplaceable spaces are in danger of closing.”

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“I love that I can share the music that I love, and that once people hear it they're gonna love it too.”

The post Sandra Treviño, DJ and founder of Latin-music site Enchúfate appeared first on Chicago Reader.

“A lot of musicians around this time are suffering from the thought of not being able to perform. There’s a certain level of anxiety.”

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“All of us have been put on pause, where we’re forced to go sit down and think about our lives, because things can be taken away just like that.”

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“Something with the culture just instantly made sense, coming from a punk background. I think footwork music is pretty subversive. It's raw.”

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“Right before the shelter-in-place got announced, we started thinking: OK, how can we help?”

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“To me that's kind of the magical part, bringing the songs to various people to work on them together.”

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“This is gonna devastate our industry. We were the first to close; we’re gonna be the last to reopen. A lot of venues aren’t gonna make it.”

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“I have a pinned tweet on my page that says, ‘“I fucked someone to that playlist you made” is the highest compliment you can give me.’”

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