The CheckOut/Photo: Access Contemporary Music and Google Earth
A new venue, music school and music festival are kicking off all at once on September 13. Situated in a repurposed 7-Eleven at 4116 North Clark, Chicago’s newest venue—The CheckOut—could (slightly tongue-in-cheek, but also genuinely) be the coolest possible place to pass time for the hippest possible hipster. The new venue was built by Access Contemporary Music (ACM), a Chicago non-profit committed to expanding modern classical music education and performances.
Among the features of the new venue: a chamber music area with seating for up to sixty guests; a pristine Yamaha concert grand piano as its centerpiece; four teaching and rehearsal rooms; a bar that serves alcoholic slushies and lottery tickets; and remarkably esteemed intentions.
The ACM venture is launching with an affordable festival, with tickets that cost $18-$25 per night. Running September 13-28, the festival features inventive actors highly respected within classical, experimental and jazz ecosystems. Amos Gillespie, a musical theory lecturer at UIC, will play The CheckOut’s first evening with his jazz/classical hybrid quartet on Saturday, September 13 at 7:30pm.
On Sunday, September 14, the festival will feature the brilliant Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music with close to one-hundred million plays on Spotify, who will celebrate his ninetieth birthday on The CheckOut’s second night of performance—a massive pull by the small, new venue.
The Chicago-based and internationally recognized chamber music outfit Black Oak Ensemble will take over on Friday, September 19, performing ACM-commissioned works inspired by Chicago historian and radio host Studs Terkel’s “Working,” an anthology of working-class stories sourced from various members of the proletariat in the seventies.
Chicago pianist Matthew Hagle will continue the party on Sunday, September 21 with a solo recital, breaking in the venue’s gorgeous Yamaha CS-II with a performance rooted in the darkest works from classical romanticism. Shows will continue to run with a diverse offering of experimental music.
Traci Huff, education director of The CheckOut and a virtuosic violist, will manage educational programming with experience in music education at all levels. Rehearsal space is priced at $10-$30 an hour, and presumably classes will be priced affordably in line with ACM’s community-oriented mission.
For more information on The CheckOut and to buy tickets for upcoming programming, visit their website thecheckout.org.
