For our South Side episode of Tonia Ko’s Plain, Air (premiered earlier this season at the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve) we move this musical illustration of the Lake Michigan shoreline indoors to enhance its intimate sound world through Rockefeller’s sumptuous acoustics. In the bustle of city life, it can be easy for the natural elements around us to pass unnoticed, and here we have for you an enchanting space – mental and physical – in which to relish the beauty of our natural environment.

Then we turn our thoughts skyward with the US premiere of Gloria Coates’s String Quartet No. 7, “Angels.”

What you will hear are not the docile angels of grocery store sympathy cards, but potent and enigmatic creatures that Gloria conjures with colossal chords from the organ and serpentine slides in the strings. Prepare to be deliciously awash in sound, and considering what might exist outside the realm of sight.

We are delighted to have organist Mary Pan on this bill, performing on the largest instrument in Chicago, built by the illustrious E. M. Skinner.