EarTaxi Festival, Chicago

Extract

I so wanted to write something about how extraordinary, how diverse, how friendly, the New Music community in Chicago and environs is. About how righteous [Augusta Read Thomas's] decision was to focus on this remarkably expansive midwestern meta-alt-community. About how good the music is, and will be, and the performers and their performances. About the unique pleasure of unanticipated audition. But it is now mid-July, and the old Brecht line about ‘these times’ coils my mind like a childish superstition: ‘A conversation about trees is almost a crime’.

Seth Brodsky, EarTaxi Programme Book

This review of the EarTaxi Festival, a beautiful, vibrant, kaleidoscope of events that celebrated New Music from every corner of Chicago in six days in October 2016, was written on 10 November 2016. There were 32 events featuring more than 350 Chicago musicians performing music by 88 Chicago composers. The festival gave 54 World Premieres, and included five sound installations, a colloquium from George Lewis, numerous panel discussions and countless drinks and meals with friends old and new throughout the week. But at the moment of writing, as I was casting my mind back over the concerts, many of the same musicians and composers were outside Trump Tower in Chicago, protesting the election of a man elected on a platform that demonised, belittled and threatened the very idea of a community and festival built on diversity, the global-nature of music-making and inclusion.