Hannah Edgar

6 days ago | chicagotribune.com | Hannah Edgar

While waiting for a train at Union Station recently, Lia Kohl noticed an unexpected sound echoing delicately above the din of commuters and travelers. The station’s grand, high-ceilinged Great Hall was playing background music — not exactly Muzak, but about as tame, most of it sugary pop from the 2000s and 2010s. “I’m really interested in this idea of background music. Like, what is that music for? Is it to make people happy, or calm? Is it just to fill up space?

1 week ago | chicagotribune.com | Hannah Edgar

At a Chicago Symphony rehearsal this week open to the press and orchestra donors, music director designate Klaus Mäkelä halted the orchestra while working on Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7. “We know it will be a long line, yeah?” he said to the violins.As he said it, the young conductor assumed the stance of an explorer, shielding his eyes and pointing to an imagined horizon.

3 weeks ago | chicagotribune.com | Hannah Edgar

The Chicago bands Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas have long seemed like two sides of the same, trancey coin. Both debuted around the same time, in the early 2010s. Both make visual elements a key part of their performances — trippy lighting and projections for the Bajas, harmonium player Lisa Alvarado’s hanging artwork for Natural Information Society. Most crucially of all, both make irrepressible, groove-based music that hypnotically cycles.

4 weeks ago | chicagotribune.com | Hannah Edgar

Music pours out of Matt Ulery. Since moving to Chicago 25 years ago, the Rockford-born bassist, 43, has put out 15 albums of originals, a body of work that defies generalization. He’s composed for jazz bands, classical ensembles and even berimbau, a single-stringed Afro-Brazilian instrument best known for accompanying capoeira matches. In 2020’s “Pollinator” — a 1920s-inspired brass band release — he even traded his upright for a sousaphone, an instrument he hadn’t played since high school.

1 month ago | chicagotribune.com | Hannah Edgar

For once, Itzhak Perlman was in the audience, not onstage. Years ago, the violinist, conductor and pedagogue attended Billy Crystal’s autobiographical one-man show, “700 Sundays.”He left inspired. “I thought that it might be fun to do this with my life and music,” Perlman says.