~Nois is a Chicago-based saxophone quartet that defies categorization by working between the boundary of contemporary classical music and experimental improvisation. Founded in 2016 by graduate students at Northwestern University, ~Nois (pronounced “noise”) has quickly emerged as one of the premier young ensembles dedicated to innovative and engaging performances. Known for
their “masterclass-level demonstrations of precise articulations and glowing legatos” (I Care if You Listen), “truly innovative musicianship,” and “raw creativity” (Cacophony Magazine), ~Nois has been awarded prizes at prestigious chamber music competitions including the Second Prize in the Open Division of the 2018 M- Prize International Chamber Arts Competition, the Silver Medal at the 2017 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Second Prize at the 2018 North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition, and First Prize at the 2016 Chicago Woodwind Ensemble Competition. ~Nois was invited to be an Ensemble Fellow to the 2018 Blackbird Creative Lab, where they worked closely with fellow Chicago- based ensemble, Eighth Blackbird.
~Nois’ third season features many exciting projects including a residency at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. Throughout the academic year, the quartet will collaborate with the composition department’s graduate students and Postdoctoral Researcher Tonia Ko to create an immersive experience connecting music and performance to the design and architecture traditions of Chicago. ~Nois will perform Pulitzer Prize winner William Bolcom’s Concerto Grosso with conductor Dr. Mallory Thompson and the Northshore Concert Band to open the ensemble’s 63rd season. The 2018-2019 season will also see ~Nois twice return to the Frequency Series at Constellation. The first performance in September 2018 will be a collaborative concert with F-PLUS, while the second in June 2019 will feature world premieres of works composed by members of the Chicago Composers’ Consortium. ~Nois will perform with My Brightest Diamond when the band performs at Chicago’s renowned Metro. ~Nois will also join forces with the Zafa Collective to present a collaborative concert at the Fulton Street Collective in February of 2019. Outside of Chicago, ~Nois will travel to Princeton University in November 2018 to perform Gemma Peacocke’s Dwalm at the Princeton Sound Kitchen. ~Nois will also collaborate with three New York City based composers — Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty, and Ed Rosenberg — to present concerts throughout the city including a performance at Brooklyn’s Areté.
Highlights of previous seasons include performances at the 2018 Omaha Under the Radar Festival, the 2018 Continuum Music Festival in Memphis, the Frequency Series at Constellation in Chicago, New Music Chicago’s Impromptu Fest, and the Irving Park Fine Arts Series. In March of 2018, ~Nois embarked on a five-week-long tour throughout the eastern United States with performances and master classes at Baldwin Wallace University, East Tennessee State University, James Madison University, Lee University, Manhattan School of Music, Tennessee Technological University, and the Universities of Akron, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Tennessee. During the tour, the quartet performed with the Bang On A Can All- Stars for the U.S. premiere of Michael Gordon’s Big Space at the Big Ears Festival, a multi-genre music festival in Knoxville, TN. ~Nois has also performed with members of Eighth Blackbird, flutist Claire Chase, and singer-songwriter Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond.
~Nois is Hunter Bockes, János Csontos, Jordan Lulloff, and Brandon Quarles
Free Admission
More info: https://www.noissaxophone.com/
Panic Duo is a Los-Angeles based ensemble dedicated to the performance of music of our time. Featuring violinist Pasha Tseitlin and pianist Nic Gerpe, the Duo’s performances of contemporary music have been described as “exciting”, “virtuosic”, and “irresistible”. Engaging audiences into unfamiliar music through a combination of dialogue and uncompromising musicality, Panic Duo has brought a variety of repertoire to audiences since 2009.
The B Band is a new music project from composer and percussionist Ben Phelps, specializing in new, eclectic chamber music. The B Band is a “classical band,” equally at home in the night club or the concert hall, working at the boundaries of modern instrumental music in America. The members of The B Band are all accomplished and virtuosic musicians in their own right, with performances across genres and concerts around the world. The B Band’s eclectic programming features new works by some of the most interesting composers working today, as well as iconoclastic arrangements and recompositions of music from classic film scores to Mahler.
A massive force of percussion and electronics, The Kraken Quartet is a genre-crossing group known for its highly energetic and engaging performances. Since their formation in 2012, the Austin-based group has been heralded for merging elements of math rock, minimalism, indie, post-rock, electronica, and the avant-garde. The Kraken Quartet has been featured on festivals and broadcasts including South by Southwest, Fast Forward Austin, Audiotree Live, Austin Instrumental Music Festival, WNYC, KUTX, SoundSpace, and more. Their debut full-length album, Separate | Migrate, is available now. 
Keith Kirchoff is a pianist, composer, conductor, concert curator, and teacher. Described as a “virtuosic tour de force” whose playing is “energetic, precise, (and) sensitive,” he works towards promoting under- recognized composers and educating audiences of the importance of new and experimental music. An active lecturer who has presented in countries throughout the world, his recital programs focus on the integration of computers and modern electronics into a traditional classical performance space.
Nicholas Isherwood is one of the leading singers of early music and contemporary music in the world today. He has worked with Joel Cohen, William Christie, Peter Eötvös, Paul McCreesh, Nicholas McGegan, Kent Nagano, Zubin Mehta and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky as well as composers Sylvano Bussotti, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis in prestigious venues around the world (La Scala, Covent Garden, the Théatre des Champs Elysées, Salzburg Festival, Concertgebouw, Berlin Staatsoper, Vienna Konzerthaus, Tanglewood). Directors he has worked with include Yuri Lyubimov, Tadashi Suzuki, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Sylvano Bussotti, Dmitri Bertmann, Michael Hampe, Pierre Audi and La Fura dels Baus. Operatic roles include “Antinoo” in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria with Boston Baroque, “Plutone” in Monteverdi’s Il Ballo delle Ingrate at the Angers Opera, “Claudio” in Händel’s Agrippina with Nicholas McGegan, “Satiro” in Rossi’s Orfeo and “Pan” in Marais’ Alcione with Les Arts Florissants, “Joas” in Porpora’s Il Gedeone with Martin Haselböck, “Frère Léon” in Saint François d’Assise in the last composer supervised production, “Der Tod” in productions of Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis with the Bach Akademie in Stuttgart, the Konzerthaus in Berlin and 2e2m, “Roméo” in Dusapin’s Roméo et Juliette at the Avignon Festival, Montpelier Opera and on tour, “Lear” in Hosokawa’s Vision of Lear for the Munich Biennale, the title role in Mefano’s Micromégas , “Bartolo” in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and the title role in The Mikado at the Eugene Opera, “Truffaldino” in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Long Beach Opera, “Giovanni Falcone” in Nicola Sani’s Il Tempo Sospeso di Volo at the Teatro Cavallerizza in Regio Emilia, the “Hotel Manager” in Adès Powder her Face in Lugo and at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, “Astrodamors” in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre with Zoltan Pesko and La Fura dels Baus and “Il Testimone” in Bussotti’s Tieste, the title role in Luca Lombardi’s Il Re Nudo, all at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, “General Howard” in Zender’s Chief Joseph, the 7 Attempted Escapes from Silence and Kagel’s Der Tribun, all at the Staatsoper in Berlin, several roles in Zender’s Don Quixote at the Komische Oper Berlin and “Lucifer” in the world premieres of Stockhausen’s Montag, Dienstag, and Freitag aus Licht at La Scala and the Leipzig Opera and in Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden. He has improvised with Steve Lacy, Joëlle Léandre, Sainkho Namtchilak and David Moss, recorded over 50 cd’s and appeared in three films. 
The Eclipse Quartet is an ensemble dedicated to the music of twentieth century and present day composers. The scope of their repertoire spans works from John Cage and Morton Subotnick to collaborations with the singers Beck and Caetano Veloso. Eclipse has the versatility to cross genres from works that include electronics and computer processing to the jazz compositions of Grammy award winning pianist Billy Childs. The Quartet has performed frequently on both coasts and has participated in festivals such as the Look and Listen Festival in NYC, the Festival for New American Music in Sacramento, the Scarlatti Festival in Naples, Italy, the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Festival, the Angel City Jazz Festival and the Hear and Now Festival in Los Angeles.
Canadian pianist Vicky Chow has been described as “brilliant” (New York Times), “a monster pianist” (Time Out New York) and “new star of new music” (Los Angeles Times). She is the pianist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, piano duo X88 Grand Band, New Music Detroit, and has collaborated with other ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble and Wet Ink Ensemble. Her latest recordings of Steve Reich’s ‘Piano Counterpoint’ (Nonesuch) and Tristan Perich’s ‘Surface Image’ (New Amsterdam Records) was included in the top albums of the year lists such as The Rolling Stone Magazine and Rhapsody. Her solo album AORTA (fall 2016 – New Amsterdam Records), features six new works by American composers. such as Rome prize winners Andy Akiho and Christopher Cerrone. Later this year, An EP of a solo piano work by Bang on a Can founder Michael Gordon titled “SONATRA”, will be released in l on Cantaloupe Music. As an artist frequently broadcasted on WNYC’s Q2 radio, her recorded work can be found on the ‘Nonesuch’, ‘New Amsterdam’, ‘Tzadik’, ‘Cantaloupe Music’,’ Innova’, ‘Hinterzimmer’, and ‘AltaVoz’ labels. Interviews and articles featuring Ms. Chow was published in the Huffington Post, Gramophone, The New York Times, The Vancouver Sun, and many more. Her performances of Morton Feldman and John Cage were featured on BBC3‘s documentary series ‘The Sound and The Fury’, based on Alex Ross’ book ‘The Rest is Noise’.
Known for their unique and imaginative concert programming (varying wildly in style and instrumentation from djembe and contrabass flute to Nintendo Gameboy and drum set), A/B Duo has been delighting their audiences all over the United States since 2013. The duo has performed at The Green Mill in Chicago, Spectrum in NYC, The Center for New Music in San Francisco, as well as the Eastman School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and other diverse venues such as the video game and indie music festival Rockage 4.0.