There’s only one way to sum up the eclectic range of acts appearing at the Sound & Gravity Festival this weekend, a lineup that includes electro rockers Son Lux, ambient master Grouper and avant-jazz ensemble Natural Information Society.
“The band has either played at Constellation or should have,” said festival creator Mike Reed.
The boutique venue, 3111 N. Western Ave., is where Reed books a mix of modern jazz, contemporary classical and experimental acts year-round. And it’s one of the seven concert halls participating in the multiday, multivenue festival that returns Sept. 3-6 to the Avondale area for its second year. Other participating spots within a 2-mile radius include Reed’s other venue Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont Ave., as well as Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont Ave.; Judson & Moore, 3057 N. Rockwell St.; Guild Row, 3130 N. Rockwell; and Rockwell on the River and its adjoining patio, 3057 N. Rockwell St.
New this year is adding the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave. in Lake View. “It gives us a larger, 950-capacity theater and the chance to experiment in working with them and maybe have more Constellation or Sound & Gravity shows another time of the year,” Reed said.
Programming the festival in one centralized area of venues (where Reed also lives) is twofold. First, he said, “I wanted to get away from the festival of 20,000 people in the park, which I think has in a lot of ways played itself out, at least in Chicago.”
But the other reason was to encourage music fans to easily jump from one venue to the next and discover a new band — or a new neighborhood. Sound & Gravity’s website offers a map with eight different restaurants to check out nearby, too, like Indian street food eatery Thattu and BBQ hot spot Soul & Smoke.
“The core of our audience is people who are interested in discovery,” said Reed. It’s the same community he once attracted with the now-shuttered Pitchfork Music Fest, which he co-produced since its inception in 2006, or the acts he booked for the Downtown Sound Music Series in Millennium Park every summer.
“The artists that we’re programming are on a ‘smaller level’ than like you’d have on other summer festivals, but that’s intentional,” Reed said of the 50 Sound & Gravity acts this year, also including versatile guitarist Marc Ribot, freak folk act Woods and saxophonist/poet Alabaster DePlume. “There’s an intimacy I want to create with the audience.”
As Reed has found, audiences are hungry for that experience. The inaugural festival in 2025 drew in music fans from 36 states and six countries, including Canada and the UK, and more artists have been requesting spots on future lineups. “I have submissions for next year’s festival, and we haven’t even done round two yet,” said Reed, who’s also a career musician. His latest album with the Separatist Party comes out Oct. 23 on local label Thrill Jockey.
As such, supporting the local scene has become just as important when booking Sound & Gravity. “One of the things I wanted to do a little bit more this year was to try and get some younger [local] acts,” he said, referencing lo-fi indie rockers Leroy the Poet (featuring Pavement front man Stephen Malkmus’ daughter Lottie), DIY troupe TV Buddha and post-punk trio Uniflora. “I hope by doing so, some of the younger artists will maybe start seeing themselves in the music that’s happening here.”
Sound & Gravity Festival serves another important role in the local music economy: It’s a fundraising machine for the nonprofit side of Constellation Performing Arts, which Reed set up in 2013 in tandem with buying the former Viaduct Theatre space that’s now home to Constellation. “We just figured instead of us doing a black-tie gala or some fundraising campaign, how about we just make an event [like Sound & Gravity] that asks for a bit of a premium, but also gives a lot to choose from with these artists coming together,” said Reed, who recommends “taste testing” all the lineup has to offer with the full festival pass. Single-day and single venue passes are also available.
That funding allows him to keep offering a platform to host the city’s avant-garde music community that might otherwise fight for space. One of the benefactors is the local instrumental rock trio Black Duck, who performs Sunday at Judson & Moore.
“Events like these remind people of the vibrancy of what we have in Chicago. It’s such a different thing than what I think of as a mainstream festival, in this country anyway … and I’m glad Mike got it up and running,” said Black Duck guitarist Bill MacKay, who is joined in the group by bassist/guitarist Douglas McCombs (also of Tortoise) and drummer Charles Rumback.
MacKay likens Reed to a “great connector” who once hired him and Rumback for respective instrument tech and production manager roles at Pitchfork Music Fest and introduced the band to producer Nick Broste, who worked on their latest collaborative album, “Black Duck with Elena Setién,” released Aug. 28. “Mike’s just such a great lover of music … and it’s crazy how deep the connections go,” added Rumback.
“Spaces like [Sound & Gravity] that really make room for left of center art are important,” said Alex E. Chávez, singer/guitarist of Chicago-based Dos Santos. The alt-Latinx band that experiments with the roots of cumbia will perform Thursday at Rockwell Patio. “It really elevates the kind of homespun, organic, grassroots music cultures that exist in our communities and shows we are open to so many things.”
Chávez, a professor of anthropology by day at the University of Notre Dame, has often researched this intersection of music and community, which has become a recurring theme on the quintet’s music, including its fourth album, “Es Amor,” released Aug. 28.
“Having an event like this does the really important work of continuing to put Chicago on the map as one of the most important music cities in the U.S.,” he said. “It just takes people [like Mike] doing the work and opening up the spaces for that to happen.”