Olivia Junell, 33, has been codirector of Experimental Sound Studio since 2015 and managing director of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival since 2014. In 2015 she joined the board of Afro-feminist troupe Honey Pot Performance, whose research and outreach efforts include the Chicago Black Social Culture Map. On March 21 she helped launch the Quarantine Concerts livestream series with ESS codirectors Adam Vida and Alex Inglizian, drummer Ben Billington (who books the Resonance series), and guitarist Daniel Wyche (who curates the Elastro series at Elastic Arts).
When the pandemic hit, you saw canceled gigs, and then you saw artists being super quick to respond and set up livestream shows. Right before the shelter-in-place got announced, we started thinking: OK, how can we help?
We can get so many different types of lineups together, audiences from all over the world—ESS can’t fit even 40 people in our space. We most nights have twice that. We’ve gotten up to over 1,000, which for experimental music ain’t bad. We’re at 157,895 views so far.
There’s definitely still space for this type of platform after live music returns. Maybe it’s for commissioning artists—how can you get really experimental with the act of streaming? We have our gala coming up July 17, 18, and 19—Laetitia Sonami is working with two artists, Sue-C and Paul DeMarinis, to engage with that task.
