At the 30th rotation
and more highlights from 2025
Greetings from the dregs of 2025.
As is pretty typical for December, things remained busy in my world ’till the end. There was the usual year-end roundup fervor; those features, most for the Tribune, are now live and linked below. Then, in a Christmukkah miracle, Breck’s mother and sister were able to spend the holidays with us after we’d assumed (and lamented) that we’d be spending them away from our families. Lastly, I turned 30 earlier this month and celebrated with a blowout bash at our place.
When I first started writing year-end lists, I’d end the year in a sour mood. Maybe I was disappointed that I didn’t listen more broadly that year, or maybe I agonized over what to include. I think the exercise always echoes my own chronic frustrations, human and professional: I can only attend a small slice of Chicago’s packed gig calendar, and can only be tapped for so many assignments. (That said, a cursory count seems to indicate I produced somewhere around 140 articles, reviews and radio stories in 2025—my busiest to date, and a privilege I don’t take for granted.)
As time goes on, I’m becoming more at peace with what I can and can’t do, while making a meaningful distinction between work and non-work listening. For instance: If Apple Music Replay is to be believed, my top artists were the San Francisco Symphony and SFS Chorus, after listening to their albums for nearly 2,700 minutes last year—very fine recordings, but more or less the soundtrack for my VAN story earlier this year.
For that reason, I found extra delight in a personal tradition, seven years strong now. Every December and January, my best friends from growing up—we met on our first day of kindergarten and stay in touch via group chat—and I put together playlists of the music that got us through the previous year, then share it with one another. I love the feeling of sitting alongside them from afar, and I find the time-capsule quality of the exercise restorative.
Now, I’ve become nosy about hearing others’ answers to that prompt—hence a Tribune article to that effect last year. So, what did your 2025 in music sound like? Sound off, or email me.
Substack does not allow Apple Music embeds (boooooo), so here’s that list, via Breck’s Spotify:
“Did You See the Words,” Animal Collective: My top song of the year, pegged to Feels’s 20th anniversary. That echoes the nostalgia which animated much of my year: I found myself gravitating to mid-2000s releases, or music which evoked that time period. This dense, layered composition reveals more of itself with each listen—and who knows how many times I spun it this year.
“Mourners,” Trupa Trupa: My No. 2 song of the year. My feature on the Polish post-punk trio was one of my favorites for the Tribune last year, and I had the good fortune of catching them in two different cities: once in San Francisco, while reporting for VAN, and again in Chicago, at the Empty Bottle. (More on the Empty Bottle in this newsletter’s byline roundup.) The entire EP of the same name is spectacular, and its antifascist message was a balm in the early months of Trump 2.0.
“WILL U STILL U,” Jeff Rosenstock: My No. 3 song of the year, a recommendation from my best friend’s husband. I’m late boarding the Jeff Rosenstock train, but I’m on it for good. Pummeling and powerful, with an epic narrative sweep—I couldn’t get enough. Listening to it, I felt 16 again.
“NUEVAYoL,” Bad Bunny: The rest of the playlist is more or less unordered. I have fond memories of boogieing in the driver’s seat whenever this came on Latino Mix (93.5 FM).
“Bet You Do,” Pixel Grip: Maybe my most-listened to song of the year. I was gripped (har har) enough by this whole album and its predecessor, ARENA, that I went to Pixel Grip’s live show in November and had a blast (even if Breck, Micah, Rowan and I were desperately out of place alongside every single goth in Chicago).
“impossible,” Wasia Project: I think I learned about this song through the YouTube algorithm, of all things — it queued up automatically after something else I watched. Gorgeous vocals meet sly instrumentation.
“Brand New Life,” Brandee Younger (feat. Mumu Fresh): I’m always locked in for whatever Brandee puts out, so I knew I’d love Gadabout Season when she teased it during a Symphony Center appearance in the spring. Still, this venture into lush R&B pastures is lyrical manna, even by the harpist’s usual standards.
“Ghost of Chicago,” Noah Floersch: No clue where I first heard this, but I’m easy to please: give me a catchy, self-referential tune about Chicago any day of the week. As an added bonus, the opening plays off the staccato closing of “Brand New Life.”
“Reverie,” Hyssop: Our good friends Hayley and Tim Fox formed this Cincinnati-based band before moving to Chicago. Hayley, a soprano you might have seen on COT and Lyric’s stages, sings not just the main vocals but the operatic intro. Absent knowing the people involved and the song’s backstory, I adore this track.
“Don’t Make Me Dream” & “Bruised Larynx,” Jeff, Unfortunately: I get all sorts of wild band names in my inbox. Jeff, Unfortunately made me chuckle, but the album itself intrigued me. Most of it is intentionally recorded so the singer, Jeffrey Gallagher, sounds remote. These first two tracks—included as one because they flow together—feature him a bit more prominently, albeit through woozy, dazed production. I love its careful unkemptness.
“Pittsburgh,” Ladybird: Another one whose origin I can’t remember. This selection by the Milwaukee-based Ladybird pays tribute to two things: a trip to Pittsburgh to bury my aunt, who helped raise me, and country music, a genre Breck valiantly tries to educate me about.
“No Images,” composed by Robert Owens, performed by Darryl Taylor and Robert Owens: This was the year of diving back into Robert Owens’ oeuvre, culminating in the University of Nebraska’s big-hearted centenary celebrations in the fall (which I covered for the Times and attended). This song in particular really gripped me this year.
Harmonium, composed by John Adams, performed by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Edo de Waart (two movements): I’m glad my dive into the SFS catalog put this recording back on my radar. Whether on the train or on foot, I found myself craving Harmonium’s craft and unabashed bigness.
“maverick,” Friend of a Friend: This is a Chicago group that landed in my inbox this year. I love the whole album, but selected this track mostly for aesthetic reasons: The music-box quality of the waltz and crackly vocals creates something at once unsettling and alluring. I’m always craving those oddball dualities in music.
“Everything That We Do Well,” composed by Ted Hearne, performed by The Crossing: I confess I’ve soured on Hearne a bit over the years—his recent music has, to me, lacked focus and inspiration. Even when I’d passed on the rest of Farming, the album from which this is lifted, I found myself revisiting this incisive, hurtling bit of musical parody.
“Technology,” Makaya McCraven (feat. Theon Cross and Ben LaMar Gay): The entire reason this newsletter exists is to curb my overwhelming feelings of dread re: social media and AI. So, it’s no surprise that Hearne’s and McCraven’s technoskeptical songs both made the cut. I love how much of “Technology” sounds electronically generated but is actually acoustic: the low bass sounds, enthralling and rich, come from Cross’s tuba. Ben LaMar Gay’s sparse lyrics sum up my Luddite attitude: Many, many years behind what we got already…
“Cure for Pain,” Morphine: I learned about this 1993 track while listening to NPR’s World Café early in the year, then promptly shouted it out in one of this newsletter’s earliest installments. Like “Technology,” I love when a low wind instrument—in this case a bari sax—propels the groove. Like “Everything We Do Well”/Farming, I can’t say the rest of the album does much for me, but this song is a keeper.
“Foxy,” Mind Shrine: While surfing an indie rock wave this year, Texas bands and musicians cropped up among my favorites strikingly often. I love everything this Houston band’s done to date, so much so that it was tough to pick one song. The confident sense of structure and beachy, Wes Montgomeryesque guitar work on this one did me in.
“Salieri,” Fishing in Japan: This origin story is sort of stupid. I was prepping to review Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff at COT and pecked “Salieri” into the Apple Music search bar. This album cover obviously caught my eye. I expected a Tom Lehrer–level gag track; what I got was breezy, pop-rock deliciousness.
“Morgen!”, composed by Richard Strauss, performed by Brigitte Fassbaender and Irwin Gage: This has long been one of my favorite Lieder, but Joyce DiDonato and the Chicago Symphony’s performance earlier this year inspired me to double down and find an ideal interpretation. Fassbaender gets closest by a country mile; Gage is absolutely essential to the atmosphere, his last lines trailing into moribund silence.
“Dreams,” Qur’an Shaheed: This album arrived in my inbox and became an early source of repeat listens in 2025. I love the ringtone hook that feels slightly anachronistic—once again, in keeping with my nostalgia for all things flip phones and chat rooms.
“The Kids Are All Dying,” FINNEAS: I am so far out of the FINNEAS/Billie Eilish universe that I had not even heard of this song until a teen ICE activist I spoke to named it as their most-listened to song of the year. I played it out of curiosity just this week and instantly understood why—it’s smart, sardonic, of-the-moment, and utterly unsubtle, with a provocatively dangling ending. A pop cannonball.
“Love in Outer Space,” Sun Ra: Many versions of this song exist out there, one of which I recently linked in this newsletter. Like my “Morgen!” search, I scoured streaming platforms for an “ideal” rendition, hoping to find a favorite that featured Ra’s bear-hug lyrics. But this solo Fender Rhodes rendition from 1980 somehow bottles the lightning much better. Listen to how the waltz pulse emerges in Ra’s left hand out of an amorphous opening. I crave these dispatches from a planet fairer than ours.
More 2025 favorites
As usual, I wrote about my favorite performances of the year for the Chicago Tribune. That list carries some caveats: I could only include performances I covered in some fashion for the publication, and of course it only includes concerts of interest to Chicago audiences.
That doesn’t, however, include albums, non-Chicago highlights, or other odds and ends worth shouting out in this very, very long year. (For example, that Detroit Opera double-bill, and two concerts I caught while reporting in San Francisco—guitarist Julian Lage playing solo at SFJAZZ, and Salonen/SFS’s Rite of Spring—would have handily cracked an overall hall of fame from 2025.)
A grab-bag of other stuff I enjoyed:
New releases (roughly chronological)
Donna Voce, Volume 3: Clara Schumann & Cécile Chaminade, Anna and Dmitri Shelest, piano; Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi
Call to Action, Kevin King Regime
Better If You Let It, The Young Mothers
Echo Still Remains, Robert Ascroft
Muzosynth Orchestra: Vol. 1, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim and Joey Chang
Solomon Diaries, Vols. I-V, Sam Sadigursky and Nathan Koci
Halo On The Inside, Circuit des Yeux
Basic Bichos, La Banda Chuska
sounds the color of grounds, three-layer cake
The Music of Calvin Hampton (1938-1984), Jeremy Filsell & The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue
Caprice Reimagined — New Works for Natural Horn, Isaac Shieh
PRO FAKE NO REJECT, Erez Dessel
Now Would Be a Good Time, Folk Bitch Trio
Forever Howlong, Black Country, New Road
Lake Heritage, Zachary Good
LIVE-ACTION, Nate Smith
Hyperglyph, Chicago Underground Duo
Oh Snap, Cécile McLorin Salvant
ATROPA, Bill Harris
TRANSMUTANCIA, Eve Matin
Rare Birds, Owls
Forbidden Flowers, Shoko Nagai
Best reads
I wish this section were beefier, but so it goes. Besides what I’ve shouted out in previous newsletters, I have to add serious kudos for 404 Media. The independent publication’s deep-dives on all things tech, AI, and cybersecurity were some of the best reporting I read this year, anywhere.
Then, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me, at the beginning of the year, that two of my favorite long-form pieces would appear in the Washington Post. But I was especially awed by two from the fall: this even-keeled, deeply reported profile of oboist and cyber-activist Katherine Needleman, and a more recent piece on conservative-pundit-turned-trans-comedian Jamie Mack. Both were gusts of nuance in stiflingly binary arenas of discourse.
🤠 Last byline rodeo of the year 🤠
I spoke to Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot ahead of her solo installation at the MCA. The interview was later picked up/mentioned by two Rachels: MSNBC’s Maddow and viral legal activist Cohen. (Chicago Tribune)
It’s been beautiful to watch the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project go from ideation to reality. I joined a walking tour of their placards in the Loop—and, because Chicago is the world’s biggest village, learned along the way that co-organizer Franklin Cosey-Gay is the brother of Ben LaMar Gay, featured elsewhere in this newsletter. (Chicago Tribune)
Three out-of-the-box Nutcrackers in Chicagoland presented Tchaikovsky’s ballet with a twist. (WBEZ, radio and print)
A business-and-birthday trip to review Detroit Opera’s Weill/Still double bill turned into a breaking news story when the company announced artistic director Yuval Sharon was prematurely ending his contract. (A seemingly blazed-through embargo by the Detroit Free Press bungled the news and cleared the way for Crain’s Detroit Business to post the first complete story online.) I wrote about the production and Sharon’s unexpected exit the following week. (Musical America, requires subscription)
An otherwise dreary late-December stretch was blessed with bangin’ Beethoven from Klaus Mäkelä and the CSO, plus a subscription debut to remember by pianist Yunchan Lim. (Chicago Tribune)
Also in December, the CSO’s sole premiere of the year, by Matt Aucoin—but I left more wowed by guest conductor Petr Popelka. (Chicago Tribune)
After Lyric Opera had to table a production a few years ago, Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up came to Chicago at a key political moment. (WBEZ, radio and print)
Speaking of big debuts, American soprano Chelsea Lehnea’s first spin as Violetta in a production in Rouen was one of the star turns of the year. (Musical America)
Sadly, legacy classical station WFMT seems no more stable now than it did when I first reported on other upheavals at the station in the spring. Now exiting is Exploring Music host Bill McGlaughlin, who claims the station has forced him out without explanation. (Chicago Tribune)
Still looking for a stocking stuffer? Corbett vs. Dempsey’s six-CD Bottle Tapes anthology, documenting the Empty Bottle’s defunct Jazz & Improvised Music Series, is perfect for the insatiable listener in your life. (Chicago Tribune)
Chicagoans, alike in excellence
Invariably, the most humbling honor of my professional year is contributing to the Tribune’s Chicagoans of the Year profiles. These have never carried a trace of the agony I mentioned above—to me, it’s always obvious who made the most of a challenging year, or made Chicago a better place to live through their ingenuity and moxie.
Hailing from Mexico City, Gustavo Cortiñas is a drummer with a knack for narrative lyricism. His inspired songwriting spoke to the immigrant experience in 2022’s Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos; this year’s all-instrumental The Crisis Knows No Borders conveyed the same empathetic urgency, without a lyric in sight. He was 2025’s Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz.
Seth Boustead has participated in—and made himself indispensable to—so many facets of musical life in the city that his Classical Music nod is, if anything, overdue. His opening of The CheckOut, a 7-Eleven-turned-venue, was an audacious, out-of-the-box move in a punishing year for the nonprofit cultural sector.
Said environment made the opening of the National Public Housing Museum all the more triumphant. This is a museum that lives its ideals, from employing public housing residents to remaining free to visitors. I left moved and inspired. If you haven’t: go.
The Pink Parlor is now open
Now that Breck and I have thoroughly tested the capacity of our condo, we’re making a 2026 resolution to host more salon concerts. We have a baby grand piano and space for chamber ensembles of varying sizes.
Have a program you’d like to test out for a house audience? E-mail me.
Perfect name...The Pink Parlor!!!