MUSIC

KELLEY DAVIDSON

Option Series is a showcase of improvising, avant-garde jazz musicians from across the world, but we mainly have funds for American musicians. And giving them a space to either do a solo work—in the past there have been larger groups, but this summer we’re limiting it to a trio, and most sets have been just solos or duos. So it’s giving them a showcase for a nice, fair-paid show, which never happens. It’s well-funded enough that I feel like people make more of what they deserve.

It’s honestly better than any gig I’ve ever played. For a local’s fee, if it’s solo, they make $500. And if it’s a group, they make $1,000 total. So a duo or trio will make $1,000. If it’s a traveling group, we cover everything—flights, where they stay, everything. And then if it’s a solo show, it’s $800, and a group traveling fee is $1,200.

Another big part about [Option] is that we have the interview, the conversation. And that’s in a way just as important, because there’s not many shows where you get to actually hear the artist talk. I like when you have to talk about something—it kind of solidifies it and makes it more real.

CHICAGOANS OF NOTE Lily Glick Finnegan, drummer and Option Series curator

“Power should be more equally distributed—it should be a wide variety of people. It shouldn’t just be one person deciding this is what jazz is and this is what improvised music is.”

As told to PHILIP MONTORO

Lily Glick Finnegan, 25, is a drummer, composer, improviser, and curator. A Chicago native, she returned to the city in 2022 after completing a master’s degree in music at Berklee. She manages the online record store for nonprofit artists’ collective Catalytic Sound, a job she took at the invitation of local reedist Ken Vandermark, who cofounded the collective in 2011.

Finnegan plays in Vandermark’s quartet Edition Redux, which has an album due this fall; the lineup also includes keyboardist Erez Dessel and tuba player Beth McDonald. She drums for saxophonist Sarah Clausen in her trio with bassist Katie Ernst, as well as in Thwartet with Clausen, Dessel, and bassist Tyler Wagner. She’s part of Christof Kurzmann & El Infierno Musical alongside Vandermark, saxophonist Dave Rempis, and cellists Lia Kohl and Katinka Kleijn, and that group has plans to record soon as well.

Perhaps most significant, Finnegan’s trio with Clausen and bassist Jakob Heinemann has an album coming in the fall that consists entirely of her own compositions—her first release as a bandleader.

This spring, Experimental Sound Studio invited Finnegan to come aboard as one of three curators for its Option Series, whose salon-style programming focuses on contemporary improvisation and composition. This year’s series runs every Sunday through September 3.

The artist’s conversation and everything is archived. The performances are video recorded and audio recorded; everything will be put on YouTube. Experimental Sound Studio has an insane archive already—like, the biggest Sun Ra collection and stuff. Getting to put people who are currently making music in that same archive is really important. In ten, twenty, thirty years or whatever, whose stories get told? It’s not going to be everyone’s, but if you can have a better archival system and documentation of what’s going on, then these people won’t be forgotten.

That kind of segues into what I think should be transformed about [Option]. The curators are me, Ken Vandermark, and Andrew Clinkman. For a few years it was Tomeka Reid instead of me, and then before Tomeka, it was Tim Daisy. They’re clearly trying to make it more representative, at least genderwise. It’s not really representative at all racewise at the moment. What I’m trying to make, for me to change it, is promoting women and nonbinary people and queer folks and people of color. And people who haven’t really had the recognition they deserve.

I think Ken said to me that we want to get younger people in the series. I have di erent connections to younger people than he does, or even Andrew. For example, my friend Devon Gates is going to be coming in August, and she’s younger than me. She’s, like, 21, probably, and she’s an amazing bass player and vocalist. They would have never known about her if I didn’t connect them, because it’s just di erent scenes and ages.

But then I also feel like on the older side, people can get forgotten as well. Obviously Ken and Andrew are conscious of that too. Another person I’m really excited is gonna play is Shanta Nurullah. She’s a sitar player and a storyteller. She’s completely overlooked by a lot of people in the music community, and she’s a Chicago person. She was in the AACM [the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians]. She’s a legend and somehow just gets kind of forgotten. And I don’t really know why. I mean, I do know why—it’s because she’s a Black woman, and that’s not the narrative that gets the attention.

I’ve listened to some of the talks that Ken has done, and they’re great—I don’t think he’s shy at all talking about more political things. But I want to get into that with the interviews, especially because the people I’ve been wanting to come are very into that as well. We can depoliticize art and music, and this kind of music, which is supposed to be cutting-edge, experimental, avant-garde, et cetera. But then we can’t really talk about how our gender or race and queerness all flows together with it.

When these spaces become run by white men, you’re not gonna want to even bring up those aspects. Power should be more equally distributed—it should be a wide variety of people. It shouldn’t just be one person deciding this is what jazz is and this is what improvised music is.

A lot of it has to do with how are the resources being distributed. This is such a small thing that I’m doing, honestly. But for example, Francisco Mela, he was my teacher at Berklee and the most amazing guy, and he really makes me feel lucky to be able to call him a friend and a mentor. [Booking him for Option] is just one small thing I could do for him. When I was in Boston, I was like, “Yeah, I’ll bring you out to Chicago.” I kept saying