Thirsty Ears Festival - Chicago's Only Classical Music Street Festival Reinvented

Over the past five years Access Contemporary Music's Thirsty Ears Festival has become an unusual staple of Chicago's busy street festival scene.  The festival features the usual food trucks, craft beer and vendor tents but the music is entirely classical.

But 2020 is not the year of gathering safely in large numbers, even outdoors, and so a creative solution was needed. ACM has partnered with innovative tech startup Gesso and VIN312 to reinvent Thirsty Ears as a hybrid walking tour and live concert.

Ticket holders are invited to explore ten sites in Ravenswood and Lincoln Square chosen for their historical and cultural significance. At each site you’ll hear about its history, hear from a composer about how the site inspired them musically and then hear a one-minute piece composed especially for the site performed by ACM musicians.

Each time you complete a site you unlock incentives to support neighborhood businesses like Hazel, Nomadic Ant, the Carbon Arc and more!  Your ticket includes one 90-minute block of live music, chosen at ticket purchase.