Side Yard Sounds is excited to present a special duo set from the band Finom: Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham

photo by Audrey Palumbo

Sunday, July 20th

6pm to 8pm

$15 https://www.ticketleap.events/.../side-yard-sounds...

Please reserve your tickets online as space is limited!

BYOB

Light refreshments provided

Macie Stewart is a musician and multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Heralded for their versatility, Stewart works with piano, violin, guitar, voice, and synthesizers, effortlessly traversing styles and scenes. Stewart is a distinguished, go-to collaborator who Pitchfork credits with “making some of the best tracks of the past five years transcendent.”

As a composer, Stewart’s work continues to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines. Aside from her debut record, “Mouth Full of Glass” released in 2021 on Orindal Records and rereleased in 2022 on Full Time Hobby Records- Macie also composed a piece for Hubbard Street Dance’s film, “Half of Us,” alongside Sima Cunningham in 2021. That same year, they worked with Sima Cunningham and Alex Grelle to produce a performance piece paying homage to Kate Bush. In 2022, Stewart/Cunningham composed the score for a 50-piece orchestra premiering the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Before I Was.” And in 2023, choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams enlisted Stewart to create a sound installation for her dreamlike performance piece, Hisako House. Most recently, Stewart was invited to compose a site-specific piece for the ESS Florisonic Installation at Lincoln Park Conservatory. As part of the longest running sound installation in North America, their twenty-minute composition titled “The World Doubles in Size” played in the conservatory’s fern room from September through November of 2024.

Sima Cunningham is a Chicago-based songwriter, musician, producer, and presenter.

Over the past 15 years she has worked as a recording and touring musician with Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Iron & Wine, Chance the Rapper, Twin Peaks, and been featured on over thirty records. She co-owns a recording studio in Chicago, Fox Hall, where she produces records for her own projects and other artists.

In 2015 she co-founded the experimental indie-rock band Finom (fka OHMME), which has been celebrated as “the heart of the Chicago music community”. Finom has since released four records including a self-titled EP and the acclaimed LPs, Parts, Fantasize Your Ghost, Not God (Joyful Noise Recordings). The band has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, Pitchfork, Paste, Chicago Tribune, Spin, Interview, and Rolling Stone. Over the past 15 years, she has released LPs, EPs, and singles as a solo artist and released her solo album, High Roller, in 2024 via Ruination Records.

An Armenian-American artist and descendent of genocide survivors she has focused much of her work on building connections and healing divides through music. Over the last ten years, she has traveled to Armenia and the Caucasus to perform, participate in workshops, and foster creative cross-cultural opportunities between artists in Armenia and the United States. Her work as an artist-presenter includes founding a small music festival, Postock, that will celebrate its 18th year in 2025; curating and hosting the I Hear Voices series in Chicago at Constellation; and working as a lead organizer for the Pitchfork Music Festival.