When Mike Reed had the idea in 2005 for what would become the Pitchfork Music Festival, he pitched it to three guys in a basement. “Let’s do a street festival, but cooler,” he recalls telling the team behind Pitchfork Media, which at the time was producing its influential website in Chicago. “Not with Dave Matthews cover bands, but with original music artists that my friends and I are interested in.”
Last November, when the plug got pulled on Pitchfork, the call didn’t come from a basement. It came from the New York City offices of publishing behemoth Condé Nast, which had acquired the entire Pitchfork operation in 2015. After a 19-year run in Union Park, where as many as 20,000 fans a day converged for a long weekend of alternative rock, hip-hop, and electronic music, the festival met what Reed describes as an “abrupt and ungraceful” demise. Though attendance had dipped last year, he still was caught by surprise; his production company had already been at work on the 2025 incarnation. “You drive the thing until the wheels come off,” Reed says. “But when the wheels come off, it’s not fucking fun. It’s pretty bumpy.”
This created something of an existential crisis for the less lucrative parts of Reed’s enterprises, which include the bar Hungry Brain and the nonprofit arts hub Constellation. Both North Side venues are treasured by adventurous listeners and artists operating on the fringes. But without Pitchfork — “the mother ship,” as Reed calls it — to help keep them afloat, he had to get busy on creating a new fest, one closer to his original concept behind Pitchfork.
“I want to keep doing music the way I want to do it, outside the desires and the trends of the popular culture.”
The result is Sound & Gravity, a five-day, six-venue event with a more intimate and esoteric appeal. Running September 10 to 14, it features headliners like Drag City troubadour Bill Callahan and Nigerian desert-blues shredder Mdou Moctar. They’ll share stages with Chicago jazz mainstays Michael Zerang and Ken Vandermark, plus more than 50 other acts from around the world — a wide-ranging mix of rock outliers, free-jazz improvisers, and contemporary classical performers that reflects Reed’s varied interests. The lineup expands on what Constellation does year-round. Says Reed: “I want to keep doing music the way I want to do it, outside the desires and the trends of the popular culture.”
A prominent avant-garde jazz drummer himself, Reed learned to juggle the parallel lives of being a musician and an entrepreneur by watching Fred Anderson do both at his legendary Velvet Lounge. Reed grew up in the South Loop venue, soaking up what he could: “I was there all the time. The spirit of the Velvet Lounge is the influence. The DIY spirit — that ethos — is present with these types of self-made artists.”
In pulling Sound & Gravity together, Reed recruited other venues close to his, in west Lake View and nearby Avondale, to host shows on either side of the river. The goal: to encourage festivalgoers to “choose their own adventure,” as he puts it — walking between locations, including Beat Kitchen, a restaurant and concert hall, and Judson & Moore, a distillery. The venue sizes reflect the cozy ethos: Constellation and Beat Kitchen, among the bigger host spaces, both have a capacity of 250. Tickets range from $25 for the closing concert to $240 for an all-festival pass.
“Mike approached us late last year with this idea to incorporate all the venues on Belmont,” says Beat Kitchen’s Eric Olsen. “For me, this vision of all of us supporting each other was a no-brainer. He doesn’t have Pitchfork anymore, and he can home in on the artists he wants to book.”
Even after two decades of work behind the scenes, Reed admits to still getting a rush when he hears the roar of the crowd as a headliner takes the stage. For Sound & Gravity, the roar won’t be quite as loud as it was before — but that’s all right with him.
Who to See at Sound & Gravity
Some recommendations from Mike Reed:
Mary Halvorson and Anna Webber’s Simple Trio
September 12 at Constellation
“I had to beg them to route their tours so they could hit the festival. Mary is one of the great instrumentalists in jazz and improvised music of this generation.”
Chicago Underground Duo and Jeff Parker Expansion Trio
September 12 at Beat Kitchen
“That Friday night is sort of an homage to the mid-2000s era of jazz and improvised music. If I were going as a fan, I’d be there that whole night.”
Andreas Røysum Ensemble with Marvin Tate
September 14 at Constellation
“Røysum is a fantastic clarinetist, part of a crew of Norwegian jazz musicians in their early 30s. They’re doing a collaboration with [Chicago poet and singer-songwriter] Marvin Tate. I’m excited to see what’s going to happen.”