CHICAGO—In the summer of 2005, four young percussionists gave their first performance as a standalone quartet at Northwestern University, where they’d all studied. Twenty years, a Grammy, and a couple lineup changes later, that group has become one of the country’s leading ensembles of its kind: Third Coast Percussion, Chicago-based but heard everywhere.

On June 28, the group marked that milestone with Rhythm Fest, an epic, all-day bash at the Epiphany Center for the Arts on the city’s near west side. For ten hours, collaborators new and old took over the converted church complex, from original Third Coast members (Jacob Nissly, now of the San Francisco Symphony) to recent collaborators (Salar Nader, a tabla virtuoso).

Though working with a fraction of the budget of major summer music festivals like Lollapalooza or the Chicago Jazz Fest, Rhythm Fest set a high bar. Operations were smooth, even elegant: A wristband combo—one signaling admission, the other 21+ status—allowed one to enter and exit at will for snack runs, though a first-floor bar also whipped up tasty finger foods all day. Performers took over one of five indoor spaces, all less than a minute’s walk from one another, with a video installation by famed drummer Glenn Kotche mounted in a sixth. All the while, those wanting to give their ears a break could soak up the sun in Epiphany’s courtyard.

That’s not to say Rhythm Fest fully conquered the everything-everywhere challenge. I chatted with several attendees who complained that schedule overlaps made it impossible to catch everything they wanted to hear. Then again, is there a higher programming endorsement than that?

I encountered my own schedule thatches zigzagging around the proceedings. At 2 p.m., I caught the transition from Machado Mijiga—a gifted young drummer whose polyrhythms coast breezily over propulsive, self-made beats—to Third Coast and The Crossing collaborator Ayanna Woods, joined here in close harmony by vocalists Eva Supreme and Tiana Sorensen. After that, it was off to the main hall to hear Michael Burritt, the Third Coasters’ teacher at Northwestern—or so I thought. Due to illness, Burritt bowed out of that booking, as well as his scheduled appearance later that evening. Instead, percussionist Ivan Trevino and Nader, a protégé of the late Zakir Hussain, played a set of their own music, with help from Mijiga and Nissly.

The Epiphany “catacombs”—so named for their subterranean location and cryptlike appearance—hosted three electronic acts. Tyondai Braxton’s industrial noise set evinced the same grittiness as Sunny X, his 2023 Third Coast commission, and the same daring that surges through the music of his father, composer–saxophonist Anthony Braxton. Speaking of saxophones, I left to catch a sliver of ~Nois, which had just embarked on Emma O’Halloran’s rippling Night Music at the time I entered the greenhouse-like Chase House stage. The quartet proved every bit as elastic and cohesive with two fresh faces onstage: Natalia Warthen, its newest alto player, and founding member Brandon Quarles, guesting on soprano.

The festival also gave a much-deserved platform to those who power Third Coast behind the scenes. Nick Zoulek, the group’s preferred videographer, thrilled in a ghoulish, relentless solo saxophone set. So did Hot Second, the fresh and vivacious new duo of violinist Dylan Feldpausch and percussionist Rebecca McDaniel, also Third Coast’s development manager.

Those attending in the wee hours were treated to back-to-back sets by performers who seemed to exude music: pianist–composer Conrad Tao and composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Clarice Assad. A onetime child prodigy on piano and violin, the mature Tao doesn’t parade his talents—he romps through them. He started his Rhythm Fest set by tossing magnets into the body of the Epiphany Steinway, then improvising based on the random notes they dampened. From there he flowed, more or less unbroken, in and out of John Adams’s China Gates, the piano’s magnetized pitches clanging like a makeshift hi-hat.

Upstairs in the Epiphany Sanctuary, Clarice Assad confessed she was also improvising: Her toddler had destroyed her set list that morning. You would have never guessed, given how easily and joyfully she mixed originals with Jobim and Nascimento standards, plus a Piazzolla aria thrown in for good measure (“Yo soy Maria” from Maria de Buenos Aires). Throughout, Assad showed off her signature scatting—she’s written and performed a concerto for scat singer—and invited audience members to try out other extended techniques in her set: multiphonic singing, gargles, and even an imitation of Nader’s tabla. Most astonishingly, at one point, she played piano while singing at a minor second above the piano melody, creating a queasy, quarter-tone feel. Finally taking the stage for the festival’s blowout finale in Epiphany Hall, Third Coast Percussion ranged from John Cage’s Third Construction—one of the oldest pieces in its repertoire—to Zakir Hussain’s Murmurs in Time, recorded just before the tabla player’s passing in December. The group also paid tribute to its recent choreographed collaborations: street-dance artist Cameron “Midas” Murphy brought otherworldly, anti gravity movement to Jlin’s (Jerrilynn Patton’s) Derivative, while a large-ensemble arrangement of “Madeira River” from Philip Glass’s Águas da Amazônia nodded to its recent tour with Twyla Tharp Dance. Afterwards, attendees and artists alike stayed to boogie the night away with Jlin’s throbbing electronic set on the Epiphany Hall stage.

All night long, the 500 Rhythm Fest attendees became active participants in the proceedings. Stations around the Epiphany Center invited guests to submit favorite Third Coast memories, sign a commemorative drumhead, or tinker with an outdoor petting zoo of percussion instruments—including a flock of rubber chickens, a nod to Assad’s 2023 concerto for Third Coast, PLAY!

“This is the best music festival in North America,” Nader declared during his and Trevino’s set. Watching kids and the young-at-heart alike all gleefully rat-a-tat, ding, honk, tweet, and rattle in the Epiphany courtyard, and festival musicians drink in the sun as they relaxed between sets, I agreed wholeheartedly.

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