Songs About Buildings and Moods

LIVE
8.15.21

Thirsty Ears Festival

LIVE
10.15.21

Relevant Tones Festival 2021

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FEATURED PRODUCTION
10/11/2024
 

Music and Language with John McWhorter

A live taping of our award-winning podcast Relevant Tones featuring music and conversation inspired by the evolution of language.

EXPERIENCE

Explore our upcoming
festivals / concerts

We produce a variety of festivals, digital media projects and concerts throughout the year designed to serve our mission of bringing musical creativity to life.

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LEARN

School of music
explore our classes

The ACM School of Music teaches musical creativity along with fundamentals to students age 4 through adult in three locations in Chicago and virtually.

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Film scoring class
ABOUT

About ACM

ACM or Access Contemporary Music is a non-profit organization with the mission of bringing musical creativity to life every day. We do this through our award-winning podcast Relevant Tones, by producing concerts of music by diverse living composers, by teaching musical creativity in our ACM School of Music, through exciting multi-disciplinary festivals like Sound of Silent Film and Thirsty Ears, the Sonic Walkabout musical audio walking tours, process-based innovative collaborations like Composer Alive and digital media productions like Songs About Buildings and Moods. We commission new music for each of these programs and work with our talented musicians to bring it to life.

Get To Know Us

We commission dozens of composers every year
We produce events in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and Mexico City
We teach musical creativity to more than 300 students

News

NEWS
  • Tickets Now on Sale for the Sound of Silent Film Festival in Chicago

    ACM’s popular Sound of Silent Film Festival celebrates its 18th year with an all-new program of modern silent films with scores we commissioned performed live. One night only!  Wednesday, April… Read More »Tickets Now on Sale for the Sound of Silent Film Festival in Chicago

    Volunteer to help us at the Thirsty Ears Festival September 7 and 8

    The Thirsty Ears Festival is Chicago’s only classical music street festival happening on September 7 and 8 and we need your help to bring it to life!  Volunteers work two… Read More »Volunteer to help us at the Thirsty Ears Festival September 7 and 8

    Tickets Now on Sale for the Sound of Silent Film Festival in Chicago

    Tickets Now on Sale for the Sound of Silent Film Festival on April 4th in Chicago

    Practice-o-thon begins January 17th!