Access Contemporary Music, Neighbor

Access Contemporary Music (ACM) is dedicated to integrating musical creativity into everyday life by presenting the music of living composers at the highest quality, fostering musical creativity in our storefront music schools and through commissions, and partnering with composers, festivals, universities and ensembles in cities throughout the world to build a global contemporary music network.

The ACM School of Music, with its flagship location in Ravenswood, teaches musical creativity to more than 300 students in four locations throughout the city. ACM produces the Thirsty Ears Festival, Chicago's only classical music street festival every year during the second weekend in August. Thirsty Ears features two days of stellar ensembles and soloists, craft beer from Empirical Brewing, food trucks, neighborhood vendors and kid-friendly activities.

ACM also produces the Sound of Silent Film Festival featuring newly composed scores performed live to modern silent films. The festival is now in its fifteenth year and has traveled to New York, Mexico City and Austin. ACM's Live at the Davis series brings imaginative concerts of innovative music by diverse living composers to life in a beloved community movie theater where audience members can enjoy the music with a drink from the Carbon Arc bar.

ACM collaborates every year with Open House Chicago to commission composers to write music inspired by landmark spaces in Chicago and to place musicians in the spaces to perform the music every fifteen minutes for self-guided tours. We have similar collaborations with Open House New York and Doors Open Milwaukee.

ACM has produced two films that have been shown on PBS and has been featured on WNYC, WFMT, WBEZ, WGN, WTTW's Chicago Tonight and Austin Public Radio.   Find out more about ACM on our website at www.acmusic.org.

Additional ACM programs include the Sound of Silent Film Festival featuring newly composed scores performed live to modern silent films, Open House collaborations in Barcelona, Chicago and Milwaukee featuring commissioned pieces performed live in the buildings that inspired them and Global Connections, a series of partnerships with festivals and composers around the world including Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, France, Ireland, Spain and Canada among others.

Today ACM operates on an annual budget of over a half million dollars and employs twenty five teachers and staff plus countless freelance musicians in Chicago, Barcelona, Mexico City, New York and Milwaukee every year.

ACM has produced two films that have been shown on PBS and has been featured on WNYC, WFMT, WBEZ, WGN, WTTW's Chicago Tonight and Austin Public Radio.  Find out more about ACM on their website.