Events

Art Credit: Zor Zor Zor

10/25-Sunday BMC Music Educational Lecture Series presents: Indonesian Gamelan Music Workshop with Friends of the Gamelan

**LOCATION:  3622 S Morgan at the Morgan Arts Complex

2:00-3:30

$0-15 suggested donation 

This series features styles of music from across the world in an accessible and educational format for all ages and musical backgrounds. This concert presentation pairs lectures by an expert in the field with complimentary musical selections performed live. This series is supported by Chicago DCASE and is free to attend, with a donation taken to support the series. 

Friends of the Gamelan will offer a hands-on workshop where participants will learn how to play a traditional piece of gamelan music from Central Java.  The workshop will be led by Artistic Director, Alex Yoffe.  Participants will sit on the floor and have the opportunity to play a number of traditional instruments from Indonesia and learn about the cultural significance of the traditional music. There is no experience or musical background required to participate.

Tuesday 11/3

Open Rehearsal: Mariachi Flor De Primavera

7-9 PM 

Free event, all ages

Our Open Rehearsal series supported by DCASE grant funding invites our community to observe musicians and ensembles in their rehearsal process.  On Tuesday 8/4, join us for an open rehearsal with Mariachi Flor de Primavera, an ensemble of young, talented musicians bringing the heart and soul of Mexico to the Windy City since 2023.

Sunday 11/15

BMC Classical Series Presents: Pilsen Classical

Doors 3:30

Show 4 PM

BMC Classical Series features south side classical musicians along with national guests in concerts that share the international histories and futures of classical music.  Supported by Chicago’s DCASE Neighborhood Access Program grant.

Pilsen Classical is a chamber music collective co-founded by violinist Alejandra Switala and cellist Everardo Sánchez, dedicated to making classical music more accessible, inclusive, engaging, and frankly, fun. Featuring a rotating roster of extraordinary musicians, Pilsen Classical reimagines the concert experience through creative event programming, unconventional spaces, and a welcoming, community-centered approach. Rooted in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, the collective brings together artists, audiences, and neighbors through a shared love of music and collaboration. Whether experiencing classical music for the first time or the thousandth, everyone is invited to feel at home, connect with others, and be part of the community.

"Naranja Dulce, Limón Partido" is the title of our concert. It honors and explores the rich history of 20th-century Mexican classical music with childlike play. Bringing together children’s folk songs, recognizable Mexican Nationalistic dances, and romantic gestures, consider this program a belated Dia de los Muertos celebration, as it invites all of us to revisit childhood memories, honor the traditions we carry with us, and celebrate the loved ones and friends who continue to shape our lives, both here and beyond.

Learn more @pilsenclassical

Friday 11/20 

Third Friday Series Presents: Marvin Tate/ Jon Hannau 

Doors 7 PM

Community Music 7:15-7:45

Concert 8 PM

$15 suggested donation

Marvin Tate is an intredisciplinary artist and a 2026 recipient of a 3Arts award for music. Presently, he is the Author of '4th Shift' his third book of poetry

and "Controlled Burns" his new solo album out on Amalgam Records.

Marvin Tate, Controlled Burn (Amalgam)
Experimental jazz sound artist and deep-voiced Chicago spoken-word doyen Marvin Tate has made a formidable, three-decade career out of mean Ornette Coleman–inspired improvisations, deconstructed crunk collages and shoegazing, rhythm-driven walls of woe in collaboration with his art-assailing D-Settlement ensemble and likeminded noisemaking Chi-Town composers/multi-instrumentalists such as LeRoy Fredrick Bach and Ben LaMar Gay.

For Tate’s newest trick, the aptly incendiary themed Controlled Burn, Bach and occasional guest Gay concentrate their slithering, free electronic jazz-scapes and dank, cymbal-smashed bottom end on Tate’s open-throated, phlegmy Ken Nordine-meets-LeRoi Jones–like poems.

With prophetic phrases touching on booze, po-tay-toe chips and “penchants for curvy girls” (“Went for a Run”), punk-rock dancing (I love the line “Your soul is like a mosh pit”), brotherly competition (the bell-bonging “Baller”) and the surprisingly delicate, synth-jazz hum behind “Love Bass” and its hard, sensualistic rhetoric, Tate — again — proves to be the Windy City center’s most prominent wordy rapping-hood, the spoken-word answer to that town’s avant-garde jazz history uniting Black artists young and old.

Jonathan Hannau is a Chicago-based composer and pianist devoted to the surreal, minimal, and abstract possibilities of music. 

As a pianist he has been praised for his delicate, refined touch, his capable handling of the extremes of dynamic shape, and his uncanny knack for navigating complex polyrhythms.

Jonathan's recorded music is available online, including four full-length LPs and several collaborative EPs and singles.

Jonathan plays piano in two chamber groups: Mycelium New Music and Flannau Duo, which was awarded a Chicago DCASE grant for 2023-2024. He’s collaborated with Ensemble Dal Niente, ~Nois Saxophone quartet, Chicago Composers Orchestra, as well as numerous artists throughout the city of Chicago and abroad. In early 2024 he made his Chicago classical music radio debut on WFMT (98.7) where he performed works by Janacek and Bacewicz with violinist Hannah Christiansen. He currently holds the position as Artistic Director of the Chicago Composers Orchestra.

Keir GoGwilt is a violinist and composer whose work often interfaces with material histories of performance, especially regarding string playing, acoustics/tuning, and Baroque aesthetics. Recent projects include The Zarabanda Variations (Carrier Records / [Name] Publications / Wesleyan University Press) - a collection of songs and dances reflecting Baroque histories and futurisms of New Spain, and described as “a thrillingly original dive into colonial history” (The Guardian) which "ping-pongs between eras and iterations with almost hallucinogenic vitality” (Bandcamp). He continues to tour his album with Ruckus Early Music, “The Edinburgh Rollick,” comprised of music from the Neil Gow collections, and featured in Joel Coen’s forthcoming film, Jack of Spades. In recent seasons, GoGwilt has been composer-in-residence with the JACK Quartet, a resident fellow at the Copland House, and a commission grantee of the Barlow Foundation (writing a piece for the Bergamot Quartet and harpist Jacqueline Kerrod). A founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), he has long worked in the space of collaboratively-devised and interdisciplinary productions. As a violinist he has soloed with groups including the Basel Sinfonieorchester, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Chinese National Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He received his PhD in Music (Integrative Studies) at UCSD, where he was awarded the Chancellor's Dissertation Medal for his work on an aesthetic history of string pedagogy. His work is published in the Bach Journal and Current Musicology among others.

Sunday 11/29

BMC Ed Presents: Perspectives on Classical Music with Shi-An Costello & Missing Piece

Doors 3:30

Workshop 4 PM

Free (donations welcome)

Our BMC Ed series features styles of music from across the world in an accessible and educational format for all ages and musical backgrounds. This concert presentation pairs lectures by an expert in the field with complimentary musical selections performed live. This program features pianist and composer Shi-An Costello and BMC's resident ensemble Missing Piece presenting a history of Western Classical Music from a global perspective. This series is supported by Chicago DCASE and is free to attend, with a donation taken to support the series. Appropriate for all ages.