Artists are listed here in alphabetical order by first name. Playback schedule will be published on this page July 28, 2025.

Angel Bat Dawid & Eyeisha Sistrunk
Liberation in Sound: A Sonic Tribute to Maya Angelou’s Seminal Work “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”

This piece weaves sonic narrative into an immersive, multi-layered soundscape that embodies the essence of Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” exploring the juxtaposition of confinement and freedom, echoing the architecture’s cage-like design and the ecological landscape of the Pavilion’s lawn.

This project also highlights the importance of mentorship in supporting emerging Black sound artists as Composer/Sound Artist Angel Bat Dawid will mentor high school graduate Eyeisha Sistrunk in sound design, recording, and composition. The collaboration promotes Black women’s representation in electronic arts.

—

Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American composer, improviser, clarinetist, pianist, vocalist, educator, and DJ celebrated for her influential contributions to contemporary jazz and Black cultural expression.

She leads the ensemble “Tha Brothahood”, whose 2020 album “LIVE” was named one of NPR Music’s “Best Albums of 2020,” and is a member of the all-women group Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty. Her collaborations span notable artists including André 3000, Bilal, Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), Melanie Charles, Naima Nefertari, Theaster Gates, and Chassol.

Beyond her performance career, she is dedicated to education, teaching “Great Black Music” at Imagine Englewood and Simpson Academy for Young Women through the Old Town School of Folk Music’s Moves Program.

She is the current Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University’s Black Arts Consortium. Her international performances include appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and numerous festivals worldwide. In 2025, she was named a United States Artist Fellow in Music.

Eyeisha Sistrunk is a 2025 Dark Matter Artists in Residence at Elastic Arts and founder of Earthy Essence, where she blends her passion for natural living, herbalism, and community-building to empower women—especially mothers—to reconnect with their bodies, rhythms, and inner peace through herbal remedies, intentional meals, and shared experiences.

An accomplished musician with a background in choir and composition, Eyisha’s artistic journey seamlessly integrates her love for music, creativity, and holistic healing. She recently celebrated her high school graduation as salutatorian and is currently gaining hands-on creative experience as an intern at The Blk Room, a Chicago based organization and co-creation studio that facilitates opportunities for BIPOC artists and creatives across the city.

Anna Friz & Jeff Kolar
The Other Spectrum

Drawing inspiration and material from archivist Rick Prelinger’s personal radio listening archives and the artists’ own collections of recordings, The Other Spectrum evokes a radiophonic world of conversations between people and between devices. We tune and detune the ordinariness, the urgencies, and the intimacies of everyday radio communications, exploring the musicality and the geographies of transmission ecologies by spatializing Chicago-area overheard radio, such as air traffic control chatter from O’Hare, as well as historical and recent radio recordings that reveal ways that radio is implicated in systems of state command and control.

—

Anna Friz is a radio, sound and media artist. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, and won the Karl Sczuka Prize in 2024. She is currently Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. Anna has presented work internationally since 1998; recent venues include The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Sonandes Bienal Internacional de Arte Sonoro (La Paz, Bolivia), Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro (Valparaíso and Santiago, Chile), Bienal Sur (Argentina), Heroines of Sound Festival, Berlin Germany), esc Medien Kunst Labor (Graz, Austria), Donaueschinger Musiktage 2024 (Donaueschingen, Germany), Radio Art Zone (Esch-Zur-Alzette, Luxembourg), Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria), RE:SOUND Festival (Aalborg, Denmark) and more. Her radio artworks have been commissioned by national public radio in Canada, Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Denmark, and Spain, and heard on public and independent airwaves all over the world.

Jeff Kolar is a sound artist, composer, and founder of Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010. His work, described as “wonderfully strange” (John Corbett) and “characteristically curious” (Marc Weidenbaum), activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways. His solo and collaborative installations and performances often investigate the mundane sonic nuances of everyday electronic devices. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Museum of Arts and Design, Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro (Valparaíso, Chile), Radio Revolten Radio Art Festival (Halle/Salle, Germany), and reviewed in The New York Times, The Wire Magazine, Red Bull Music Academy, and more. He has ongoing collaborations with Anna Friz, Jennifer Monson, Zeena Parkins, Lia Kohl, jonCates, and NRRF Radio Collective.

David Bird
Aleatoric Tilt

Drawing inspiration from Chicago’s industrial past and its culture of mechanical ingenuity, this piece transforms the Pavilion’s overhead loudspeaker array into an enormous, kinetic sound field, an imagined pinball machine, toy box, and circuit board all at once. Aleatoric Tilt places the audience at the center of these systems, allowing them to witness the rolling of cascading marbles, spinning reels, connections of electrical circuits, and items cycling and ricocheting across the spatial field.

—

David Bird is a composer, producer, and multimedia artist. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and multimedia environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual. Bird’s compositions have been performed at venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as well as festivals including the Gaudeamus Festival, Wien Modern, SPOR Festival, MATA Festival, Musica Electronica Nova Festival, Festival Mixtur, and more. He has collaborated with groups such as JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble intercontemporain, Mantra Percussion, Vortex Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Black Page Orchestra, AuditivVokal Dresden, loadbang, Bozzini Quartet, lovemusic, and andPlay. His work has been released on labels such as Oxtail Recordings, New Focus Recordings, Carrier Records, and TAK Editions, and has received praise from outlets such as The New York Times, The Wire, Textura, and Best of Bandcamp.

Glenn Kotche
Love Beats All

Love Beats All is about the intersection of rhythm and movement.

It is comprised of the 64-second evolution, realization, and dissolution of 10 rhythm-based compositions occurring in succession. Each composition is realized concurrently in four ways: as a drumbeat, on pitched percussion, as a collage of Chicago field recordings and with human voices – specifically those of Laurie Anderson, Yuka Honda, Nathalie Joachim, Cate Le Bon, Gabriela Da Silva-Riley, Elena Setien, Jonna Tervomaa and Amalia Tshilds, —singing the word LOVE in a variety of languages in a nod to the great diversity of our city. Each realization is orchestrated over 6 speakers with the work playing out over the 24 speakers in an engaging ebb and flow of rhythmic based events that will be right at home in downtown Chicago, a place of constant rhythm and motion.

—

Glenn Kotche is a Chicago based drummer and composer, best known for his involvement in the band Wilco since 2001. He was included in Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Drummers of all time list and named the 40th greatest drummer of all time by by Gigwise in 2008. Kotche is involved with several other projects including the long-time duo with Darin Gray – On Fillmore, Saccata Quartet with Gray, Chris Corsano and Nels Cline, recording with artists as varied as Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway, Jim O’Rourke, Neil Finn, KD Lang, Sam Beam, Neko Case, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, ongoing collaborations with Ate/9 Dance, the writer Karl Ove Knausgård, sound installations for MASSMOCA and Art Park and compositions for many groups including Kronos Quartet, Chicago Youth Symphony, Silk Road Ensemble, Carnegie Hall, Third Coast Percussion, Bang On A Can Allstars and Eighth Blackbird.

Myles Emmons
Cloud Listening

Cloud Listening is analogous to cloud gazing. This work uses generative synthesis and spatialized audio to provide a dynamic experience based on where the listener is positioned on the lawn, similar to the different shapes we see in clouds. Dark and light, airy and heavy, fluffy and electric are just a few examples of cloud qualities this piece explores as it moves through all ten cloud classifications, expressed in playful lyrical bursts, rhythmic entanglements, and detailed textures.

—

Myles Emmons is a Chicago-based multimedia artist, composer, and designer. His practice is about exploring interdisciplinary approaches to craft dynamic audio/visual ideas. He has contributed A/V for installations at MoMA, Typeforce, as well as music for shorts produced by Adult Swim and MSCHF. He co-leads the Chicago based sound system, Rave Approved Sound System, which often deploys large speaker set ups in non-traditional spaces.

Paige Alice Naylor
Currents

Currents is a composition for Chicago’s new experimental choir (lead by Chris Wood) of 30-40 members. In this recording (Constellation, 2025) performers circled around the microphone to sing assigned melodies, with the freedom to vary in speed and intensity throughout. By not prescribing a tempo, time dilates, and we float together. The spatialization mirrors this circular image, starting at the perimeter, and like waves flowing in and out, the voices slowly expand and retract, eventually dissolving into nothing.

—

Paige Alice Naylor is a Chicago-based experimental vocalist, sound artist and educator. Through sound-making, installation, and performance, she investigates time, perception, the breakdown of language, themes of death, and transformation. Her direct and interpersonal approach creates live sonic environments which feel vulnerable and intimate. She recently released her solo album, The Unearthing, through Chicago label Monastral in 2024. Paige has exhibited work at Museum Villa Stuck (Germany), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Recess (NYC), New Media Contemporary (Dallas), Baltimore Theatre Project, D.C. Arts Center, amongst others. She has performed at Rewire Festival (NL), Variations Festival (FR), Public Records (NYC), The Lab (SF), Chicago Cultural Center, and others. Her work has been featured in The Wire, NPR, Longform Editions, NewCity Art, and Sixty Inches from Center.

Saapato
Ponds Appearing Overnight

Ponds Appearing Overnight immerses the listener in a system of New York’s vernal pools and woodland ponds across a season and the delicate lives of the amphibians that inhabit them.

Beneath and between these natural voices, evolving synthesized textures act as the ‘water’ in which these amphibian voices live. Amphibians are among the most sensitive indicators of climate change and ecosystem health. Their presence or absence tells a story. In a highly urbanized setting, this piece invites reconnection with seasonal time, wild sound, and the fragile nuances of the biosphere.

—

Saapato is the moniker of Brendan Principato, a sound artist based in upstate NY. His work focuses on the intersection of ecology and music, often using a blend of manipulated field recordings and lush electronic soundscapes to encourage listeners to reconsider their place within nature.

He spent August 2023 in residence with the Alaska State Park Service recording bird migrations and the salmon run outside of Juneau. In September of 2022 he was in residence with the National Park Service on Fire Island, NY documenting “shoulder season” in rare and rapidly disappearing swale and dune habitats. In 2020 he founded the Virtual Ambient Quarantine Concert Series as a way to raise money for charitable organizations during the COVID-19 epidemic.

His most recent album Decomposition: Fox on a Highway was released via Constellation Tatsu and features collaborations with Laraaji, Nailah Hunter, Patricia Wolf, and KMRU among many others.

Zouning Anne Liao
Dust Storm

Inspired by the visceral force and delicate granular detail of dust storms, this piece captures their paradoxical nature: violent yet intricate, monumental yet ephemeral. Layers of turbulence spiral and fracture, then are swept away by wild, unpredictable winds. Dust Storm unfolds the distant, forgotten journey of dust grains—eroded sands shaped by ocean waves along shorelines, particles lifted from the Sahara and carried across continents by shifting weather systems. These restless grains are sculpted by water, heat, and time before converging into a fierce and fleeting atmospheric tempest.

—

Born in Guangdong, China, Zouning Anne Liao is a composer and sound designer whose music reflects her fascination with nature, malfunctioning machines, distorted noises, and the interplay between refined and raw timbres. Driven by a curiosity about the expressive potential of electronic circuits, she is passionate about DIY electronics, building her own sensor instruments to explore new sonic possibilities shaped by physical gestures. Her compositions have been showcased across the United States, Europe, and China. Now based in Chicago, Zouning is in her second year of a PhD program in Music Composition and Technology at Northwestern University. Outside of her academic work, she can often be found in the woods capturing field recordings or at the post office, collecting stamps.

About Chicago’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Designed by Frank Gehry, and featuring a 120-foot proscenium of rippling stainless-steel ribbons, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion is a highly sought-after location in Chicago for a wide range of cultural acts. The Pavilion’s superstructure forms a steel lattice with an integrated overhead sound system covering the 95,000 square foot Great Lawn, providing music and sound experiences for over 10,000 individuals. This cutting-edge audio system, a pioneer of its category globally, was engineered to replicate the acoustic properties of an enclosed performance hall. It does this by evenly dispersing amplified sound throughout both the permanent seating area and the open grass, therefore simulating the phenomenon of reverberation. The trellis’s 60 loudspeakers are divided into 24 zones for playback, enabling the sounds to be imaged and moved along the entire surface of the trellis. The result is a “canopy of sound” composed as a fluid sonic architecture superimposed onto the Pritzker Pavilion site. These creations enlivened the Pavilion, engaging the ever-present ambulatory public with a surprising, dynamic, and immersive experience, somewhere between the focus of a live performance and the majesty of the surrounding cityscape.

About ESS

Experimental Sound Studio is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to artistic evolution and the creative exploration of sound. As an international hub for sonic experimentation, ESS nurtures artists, heralds new works, and builds a broad, supportive community of makers, enthusiasts, and creative partners through production, presentation, education, and preservation.

About the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events

The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) supports artists and cultural organizations, invests in the creative economy, and expands access and participation in the arts throughout Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. As a collaborative cultural presenter, arts funder, and advocate for creative workers, our programs and events serve Chicagoans and visitors of all ages and backgrounds, downtown and in diverse communities across our city — to strengthen and celebrate Chicago. DCASE produces some of the city’s most iconic festivals, markets, events, and exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Park, and in communities across the city — serving a local and global audience of 25 million people. The Department offers cultural grants and resources, manages public art, supports TV and film production and other creative industries, and permits special events throughout Chicago.

For details, visit Chicago.gov/DCASE and stay connected via their newsletters and social media.

About Millennium Park

Millennium Park is the #1 attraction in the Midwest and among the top 10 most-visited sites in the U.S. It is also the anchor of an urban cultural campus (Millennium Park Campus) that includes the Chicago Cultural Center, Maggie Daley Park and The Art Institute of Chicago. Millennium Park is located on Michigan Avenue, bordered by Randolph St. to the north, Columbus Dr. to the east and Monroe St. to the south. The Park is open daily from 6am to 11pm.

Plan your visit at MillenniumPark.org | Facebook @MillenniumParkChicago | Twitter & Instagram @Millennium_Park | Join the conversation with #MillenniumPark