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OPTION: Jake Meginsky

  • Experimental Sound Studio 5925 North Ravenswood Avenue Chicago, IL, 60660 United States (map)

Walk-ins welcome; reservations recommended

Jake Meginsky performs a set of solo modular improvisations. His sound is described by poole records as:

"pointillist minimalism: stark, oblique, cerebral, fluid. It’s free music in both form and function, liberated from rhythm, pattern, or expectation. Abrupt flurries of metallic reverberations ping and echo against charged silences like avant-garde morse code. Textures clang and hang in low-lit air. Presence and absence commingling in elusive ballets of resonance and negative space"

This performance and interview are presented in the ESS garden, and will be premiered online on ESS's YouTube.

The OPTION series is curated by Ken Vandermark, Lily Finnegan, and Andrew Clinkman.

About Jake Meginsky

Composer/filmmaker Jake Meginsky, a New Music USA award winner and Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in both music and film, has collaborated and performed with an extraordinary range of musicians including Milford Graves, Pat Thomas, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Kim Gordon, Vic Rawlings, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Paul Flaherty, John Truscinski, Arthur Brooks, and Bill Nace.

Meginsky has been reviewed extensively in leading contemporary music, art and culture publications worldwide. In 2018 Artforum Magazine wrote, "On recent releases, Meginsky juggles off-kilter patterns of undulating bass, prickly sine pulses, and shards of white noise to build rhythmic worlds of dizzying density, depth, and textural variety." Art In America Magazine says, “Meginsky’s digital concrète takes percussion to outer extremes.” Critic David Keenan called Meginsky’s 2014 solo record, L’appel Du Vide, “a hallucinatory electro percussion masterpiece”.

In 2018 he directed and produced the award-winning feature film, Milford Graves Full Mantis. The New York Times called the film a "stunning documentary" and wrote, "this movie gives you the man’s heart, and it’s a beautiful one."

About OPTION

OPTION is an ongoing music salon curated by Chicago musicians Andrew Clinkman, Lily Finnegan, and Ken Vandermark and presented by Experimental Sound Studio. Its programming explores contemporary perspectives on improvisation and composition in a 'salon' format, enabling local, national, and international artists to publicly discuss their practice and ideas as well as perform.

Parking

Street parking can be found easily around ESS on streets such as W. Thorndale. There are three parking spots directly in front of ESS on Ravenswood. On weekends, parking is also available along the front of Weber Furniture; please do not block the garage doors. Behind ESS through the alley, there are also two parking spots which we are happy to reserve for anyone with accessibility needs. Please get in touch with info@ess.org to reserve a spot.

During the OPTION series this summer, diagonal parking is available in the alley directly south of ESS and Weber Furniture Service.

Accessibility

ESS has wheelchair seating and accessible bathrooms on both floors.

Please note that once on one floor, there is no ADA-accessible path inside the building to switch between floors; you will have to exit the building and reenter from the respective floor entrance. Our front entrance on Ravenswood leads you to our 1st floor (Audible Gallery, Studio A, Live Room), while our alley entrance leads you to the basement/garden (garden shows, Creative Audio Archive, Studio B).

To reserve accessible seating or parking, request other accommodations, or ask us any accessibility-related questions, please email info@ess.org.


The performance is sponsored in part by Sketchbook Brewing