Lawyers for the Creative Arts joins Ear Taxi Festival for a special discussion all about contracts for creatives. Odell Mitchell III brings his expertise to present best practices for artists when contracting or being contracted.

Ear Taxi Festival and Pleiades join forces to present a specially curated house band for the event, followed by our signature Pleiades Jam Session. The jam is open to all participants, with advance sign-up available to ensure space and avoid exceeding capacity.

Join LaRob K. Rafael in conversation with acclaimed Chicago-based composers Damien Geter and Stacy Garrop for Dissolving Paradigms, a webinar exploring the Ear Taxi Festival’s 2025 theme: The Composer’s Voice. Taking the phrase both literally and metaphorically, the discussion will dive into how today’s composers use their music to speak to our world, and how they are incorporating the human voice into their creative work. This candid dialogue will offer audiences a rare opportunity to hear directly from two leading voices shaping 21st-century music, just days before the culminating performance of the festival on October 18th featuring the world premiere of Stacy Garrop’s Invictus, Piano Concerto No. 1, and Damien Geter’s monumental An African American Requiem. Don’t miss this chance to hear from two living Chicago composers whose music confronts, uplifts, and transforms.

Join the music community for some fun pre-show networking. Get to know your fellow composers, performers, and music lovers.

Libraries are excellent partners for the entrepreneurial composer. In this collaborative discussion, librarians Marci Cohen and Greg MacAyeal will describe the many benefits of library/composer partnerships.

Grammy award-winning composer Christopher Tin will talk to local students about work as a composer, including his piece “The Lost Birds” being performed by the William Ferris Chorale and DePaul University Ensemble 20+.

Sonic Speculations in the Documents of Postwar Japanese Art introduces a sound world little known outside Japan: Japanese artists working with sound in galleries and public spaces to interrogate artistic practice and social relations during the cultural and political upheavals of postwar Japan from the 1950s to 1970s.