Chicago Reader: Experimental cellist Lia Kohl submerges her sounds in Union Station’s Great Hall

by Bill Meyer

Lia Kohl moved to town to study with Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist John Sharp, but opportunities for cross-pollination within the local arts community soon lured her into more experimental practices. An inveterate collaborator, Kohl has played improvised chamber music with violinist Macie Stewart and with the trio ZRL, which she launched with clarinetist Zachary Good and percussionist Ryan Packard; she’s recorded thickly textured tunes with the quintet Honestly Same; and she’s created site-specific performances with fellow cellist Katinka Kleijn that expose the instrument to elemental forces that can be both playful and destructive. Even when Kohl shifted to working alone in a home studio during the pandemic, she incorporated field recordings and radio captures to complicate the music’s representations of space and time. On her most recent solo album, 2024’s Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph), field recordings of an ice cream truck and self-checkout chimes unite with percolating synthesizers and resonant string harmonics, situating purposeful music making within a larger realm of oft-overlooked sound. 

On Thursday, May 15, Kohl will stage a site-specific piece in Union Station during the evening rush hour. Her ten-player ensemble, which includes Stewart, Good, clarinetist Jason Stein, saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, trombonists Riley Leitch and Nick Meryhew, tubaist Beth McDonald, bassist Zach Moore, and cellist Dorothy Carlos, will disperse throughout the station’s Great Hall to play a composition that will enable intentional and inadvertent listeners to experience a onetime juxtaposition of planned and incidental sounds.

Lia Kohl Kohl performs a site-specific chamber piece called Music for Union Station with Dorothy Carlos, Zachary Good, Gerrit Hatcher, Riley Leitch, Nick Meryhew, Beth McDonald, Zach Moore, Jason Stein, and Macie Stewart. Thu 5/15, 6–7 PM, Union Station, Great Hall, 225 S. Canal, free, all ages

Original article: https://chicagoreader.com/music/lia-kohl-union-station/