<\/p>\n
The CheckOut, a new contemporary music venue founded by a Loyola professor, opened in the Graceland West neighborhood located at 4116 N. Clark St.<\/p>\n
Housed in a former 7-Eleven, the venue aims to serve the neighborhood and provide a new home for classical music on the North Side.<\/p>\n
The non-profit, Access Contemporary Music (ACM), which owns The CheckOut, also runs a music school which teaches guitar, piano, voice, strings and composition in Avondale, Uptown, Ravenswood and Rogers Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ACM runs classical music festivals such as Thirsty Ears Festival<\/a> and Sound of Silent Film Festival<\/a>, both of which are annual events.\u00a0<\/p>\n Loyola computer science and music professor David Wetzel has worked as the technical director of ACM for seven years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wetzel worked on several projects with ACM including Thirsty Ears Festival, Sound of Silent Film Festival and as a sound technician and producer for the PBS docuseries \u201cSongs about Buildings and Moods,\u201d which is a project by ACM exploring the connections between architecture and music.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis place was a 7-Eleven, before that it was a White Hen Pantry and was abandoned for like 10 years,\u201d Wetzel said. \u201cIt was a pretty famous eyesore.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The idea for the CheckOut came from founder and executive director of ACM and host of \u201cSounds about Buildings and Moods,\u201d Seth Boustead. It came to him on a bike ride past the location, where he said he saw a \u201cfor rent\u201d sign.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI knew we could make the CheckOut work, so I called the landlord, the alderperson, the city and a bunch of other community councils,\u201d Boustead said.<\/p>\n Boustead said when he started renovating the venue, it was a lengthy process. From gutting the building to adding sound boards, creating The CheckOut took nearly 18 months from start to finish.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe piano came to us as a donation, along with the lights, the chairs, the sound gear \u2014 all of that stuff came from the Nevermore Theater,\u201d Wetzel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The CheckOut is hosting a Grand Opening Festival Sept. 13-28, which will feature Chicago-based pianist Matthew Hagle, cabaret performer Carla Gordon and COOL Friends in: \u201cAin\u2019t Our First Caba-Rodeo!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe did a couple preview concerts where we had people in the space, and it was almost a nightmare,\u201d Wetzel said. \u201cYou could not hear anybody, it was so boomy and loud, so we\u2019re trying to tame that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The acoustic panels which line the ceiling were installed the same day as the opening performance, providing a full sound with no echo or boom.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first event featured the Amos Gillespie Quartet performing music from Chicago-based composers, including a piece by Boustead. The sold-out event featured photographs from Bob Rehak, a photographer who documented Uptown from 1973-1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n The jazz-classical quartet named after Saxophonist Amos Gillespie, also includes clarinetist Richard Zili, flautist Priya Fink and cellist David Keller. Together, their performance was a flowing love-letter to Uptown and Chicago\u2019s jazz traditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marcia Mizushima, an event attendee and parent of a piano student at ACM, said the show was very moving.\u00a0<\/p>\n Guests were invited to stay after the performance to chat, drink, and listen to records. With casual seating, tables and ambient lighting, the Checkout intended to be a hub for the community and a place for musicians to work together and share their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n The CheckOut is a multipurpose venue, with the ability to hold performances, music classes and surprisingly, a wedding booked for October \u2014 planned long before the venue was completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have anything like this, a place to bring music on an intimate scale,\u201d Mizushima said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source loyolaphoenix.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The CheckOut, a new contemporary music venue founded by a Loyola professor, opened in the Graceland West neighborhood located at 4116 N. Clark St. Housed in a former 7-Eleven, the venue aims to serve the neighborhood and provide a new home for classical music on the North Side. The non-profit, Access Contemporary Music (ACM), which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2028853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2028852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Professor-Opens-New-Music-Venue-in-Former-7-Eleven.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2028852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2028853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2028852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2028852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2028852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}