Susan Salidor is an award-winning children's music composer, performer and teacher. Her five recordings for children and their families enjoy a national audience of young and old alike and have garnered a long list of prestigious awards.

Little Voices in My Head (1995) was Susan's first release of mostly original songs and was honored with an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award. The Chicago Tribune called Little Voices "a gem of a recording."

Susan Salidor: By Heart (1996), Susan's second release, was honored with a Parents' Choice Gold Award for Excellence and received unanimous praise in the Chicago Tribune, Nashville Parent, Parents Magazine, ALA Booklist, and Family Fun Magazine, which called By Heart "an album to savor.

Color Me Singing, Susan's third kids' recording, was released in December 1998 and was chosen as a selection in Book-of-the-Month Club's Sound Review Catalog, which reaches an estimated 1.6 million people monthly. Color Me Singing received a 1999 Parents' Choice Gold Award, an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Audio Award 2000, as well as a 'Listen Up' Award from Publishers Weekly.

Playing a unique blend of folk, pop, bluegrass and country styles, the Greenleaf Band is fast building a fan base in Chicago. Since forming in early 2010, the band, made up of Paul Larson, Arielle Luckmann and Amberlee Sheehan, has played at such local venues as Uncommon Ground, Goose Island, Sylvie’s, Gallery Caberet and the Grafton. The Greenleaf Band plays original music, with an occasional cover tune.

With Larson and Sheehan trading off on guitar and mandolin, and Luckmann playing fiddle, the band offers distinctive three-part harmonies and music that is fun, engaging and energetic.

Michaelson’s grassroots sensibility has worked like gangbusters: Her music, often about love and relationships, has wafted out of your television in handfuls of Grey’s Anatomy episodes (not to mention countless other series since such as American Idol, Parenthood, and So You Think You Can Dance), in an affecting Google Chrome ad, and on VH1 as an artist You Outta Know. The New York Times marveled that she was “singing her way from obscurity to fame.” Billboard trumpeted her as the face of the new music business. NPR declared, “Ingrid Michaelson is everywhere.” As an independent artist she has sold over 750,000 albums and 3 million singles.

Human Again is a triumph in aural range. The music veers from orchestral (Kahne’s specialty) to percussive, while her accompanying voice swells from contralto to soprano, expanding on her melodic roots. And it’s an ambitious move for Michaelson, one that’s even surprised her parents. “My father said, ‘Where are all the ditties?’” she recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Well, I think I’m past the ditties, Dad.’ I’m done with that part of my life. I’m ready to think a little bolder.”

Such artistic ambition has always percolated in the blood of this singer-songwriter—who’s also co-written and starred in a semi-autobiographical, comedic pilot that she and improv-actress Rebekka Johnson are shopping around to TV networks. (The show is still untitled.)

Michaelson’s music can be found sound-tracking the romantic-surgical debauchery Grey’s Anatomy with songs such as the cascading “Breakable” and the melancholic lullaby “Keep Breathing.” A music supervisor for Old Navy just happened to catch the episode featuring the latter and snapped up the cooing, calypso-inflected “The Way I Am” for one of the company’s commercials. (The song ultimately went platinum.) Radio play followed, just in time for the release of her 2007 full-length debut, Girls and Boys (out on Cabin 24 Records, her own imprint). This all happened in about a year.

The Pickin' Bubs are a Chicago acoustic trio whose sound is rooted in traditional music, from country blues, to gospel, to old time and folk ballads and carried on in the originals penned by them and the songwriters they enjoy. They focus on vocal and instrumental arrangements on the guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo.

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BBU is the Chicago-based, four-man crew made up of MCs Epic, Illekt, Jasson Perez and DJ Esquire, whose sound place the listener in the middle of a Chi-town juke party. Following the release of their self-released first mixtape, Fear of A Clear Channel Planet, BBU performed across the country with names like Mos Def, MF DOOM, and J. Cole, been on the Lollapalooza and South by Southwest (SXSW) stages, and featured in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, URB, The Chicago Tribune and TimeOut Chicago. The Chicago Reader named BBU as one of the “Best New Musical Groups,” and Pitchfork hailed their anthem, “Chi Don’t Dance” as one of the “Best New Tracks” of 2009. In early 2011, BBU teamed up with friends Das Racist and The Hood Internet for a collaboration titled “Please, No Pictures,” which debuted on Prefix Magazine and became one of the hottest singles of the summer.

Now the guys are set to release their second mixtape, bell hooks, in February 2012. Presented by Mad Decent and Mishka and mixed by DJ Benzi, bell hooks provides a refreshing take on hip-hop from a group whose alternative inspirations have them tossing out sounds along the lines of M.I.A. and dead prez, with a hint of Bad Brains. As the crew puts down the final touches on bell hooks, which includes features by Das Racist, Mic Terror and more, the men of BBU remain on the artist-activist grind. They are all helping to grow a culture connected to a People’s Movement by working as community and union organizers, health care providers, legal counsel and educators. They are creating a soundtrack for the people, by the people.

The 3rd Sunday String Band – have been playing in and around the Chicago area for nearly nine years. They play predominantly Old Time music -- Appalachian and Midwestern fiddle tunes and songs, as well as a selection of early County, Folk and Bluegrass songs.

Offering a new twist on traditional folk, country blues and all things Americana, with some originals weaved in, Half Baked Goods combines fine picking with sweet harmonies, making memorable sounds to linger on. Together, Jay Voss, Randy Burgess, and Lizabeth MacDonald delight in live music making, bringing listeners to a new sensory experience.

Birdy is a Chicago-based acoustic quartet featuring outstanding vocals and harmony, creative musical arrangements, impressive covers, and fine originals. With an eclectic repertoire that draws from both traditional and contemporary influences, Birdy has quickly established itself on the Chicago music scene and beyond, and is a regular performer throughout the Chicagoland area.

The Pickin' Bubs are a Chicago acoustic trio whose sound is rooted in traditional music, from country blues, to gospel, to old time and folk ballads and carried on in the originals penned by them and the songwriters they enjoy. They focus on vocal and instrumental arrangements on the guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo.

Sleepy Lou is a fiddle and banjo duo made up by Maria McCullough and Jonas Friddle. Maria hails from sunny California and Jonas from the mountains of North Carolina. The two met in Chicago, Illinois where they both teach at the Old Town School of Folk Music. When they aren't teaching, Maria and Jonas join up to play traditional dance tunes and songs from the U.S. and around the world. Despite the sleepy name, the music is lively and the times are good.

A duo doing original and lesser known covers. The music is often a blend of folk, country, and blues. These are the guys who began the successful One Mike Stand series in Chicago and St. Charles

David Choi is a native Los Angeles singer/songwriter/producer whose songs and tracks have been heard on NBC, VH1, MTV, E!, Travel Channel, PBS, Food Network, as well as in national commercials overseas. He has worked on several major online campaigns including Starburst and JC Penney. On YouTube, he has over 150,000 subscribers and over 40,000,000 total video views.

In 2004, Choi was the grand prize winner for David Bowies Mash-up contest which Bowie himself chose. Following that, he was the grand prize winner for USA Weekend Magazines John Lennon Songwriting Contest for teens and appeared in USA Weekend Magazine with recording artist Usher.

Choi also has a song on the album State of Survival called This is Your Life on upcoming Interscope group Flipsyde, which he co-produced.

In October of 2008, David released his self produced album Only You worldwide.

From the greater Athens-Atlanta-Asheville area, the four have been playing music since the beginning of recorded history, but playing shows as Reptar since December 2008. Since then, Reptar has created quite a sensation around the Southeast and just wrapped up a 7" recording with producer Ben Allen (Sean P. Diddy Combs, Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, Beastie Boys Matt and Kim) to be released on Allen's label Make Records Not Bombs available for purchase at http://mrnb.bigcartel.com/

Reptar likes to dance and have been likened to The Talking Heads, Animal Collective, Prince, Marky Mark, Lake, Air, and the Jackon 5. The band is made up of Andrew McFarland, a Brazilian native, classically trained snare drummer, and sophmore at UGA, Ryan Engleberger, who currently attends Dartmouth College in the Artic Circle majoring in Jaco Pastorius’ fretless bass, Graham Ulicny, a hernianted African Soukous guitarist and AstroBioElectroPhysics student at the University of North Carolina in Asheville, and William Kennedy, greatgodson to Herbie Hancock’s ARP 2600 and connosiour of fine chocolate (85% cocao or above) and sophmore at UGA. With Reptar's powers combined, they can topple small buildings, smaltzy restaurants, and shmuppy next-door-neighbors with our devastating wall of synthesizers and samples. Dig?

Birdy is a Chicago-based acoustic quartet featuring outstanding vocals and harmony, creative musical arrangements, impressive covers, and fine originals. With an eclectic repertoire that draws from both traditional and contemporary influences, Birdy has quickly established itself on the Chicago music scene and beyond, and is a regular performer throughout the Chicagoland area.

After months of testing their limits and trusting their instincts, Bear in Heaven will emerge in April 2012 with I Love You, It's Cool, an album so vivid and visionary that it meets and even exceeds the confidence and calm its title suggests.

In 2010, Beast Rest Forth Mouth delighted listeners with the unexpected-futuristic rock music that didn't sound alien or bound to ostracize. Taking these songs from coast to coast and continent to continent, they learned that having fun with this music was copacetic, that they could delight a crowd while defying musical binaries. I Love You, It's Cool turns that realization into a peerless set of instant anthems.

Indeed, some of these songs are ready for the floor. In one a perfect guitar figure spirals through colossal drums and slabs of synthesizers. Elsewhere bliss booms in icy keyboards reflecting off a relentless throb. It's inescapable.

The intricacy and edge of Bear in Heaven's music is sharper than ever before. The programming is both complex and compelling, whether in the refracted rainbows or woven noisy matrices. Certainly, in places it feels like a hit, with hooks that instantly catch and bridges that curl a finger-lyrically, stylistically, temptingly-toward the dance floor. Bear In Heaven's mix of nostalgia and need is immediately relatable, too, bringing the band's exploratory sounds a little closer back to home before they exit in momentary space-rock ascendance, a readymade rock-club banger that erupts into a bold new direction.

I Love You, It's Cool is the first time Bear in Heaven has sounded so unapologetic and so evolved, so risky and so redeeming, so focused and so finessed. After years of restless exploration, this feels like a definitive arrival. I Love You, It's Cool is music written in the present tense but ready to speak to the future. The work is its own rarified reward.

I Love You, It's Cool, is coming out via Dead Oceans/Hometapes

The Pickin' Bubs are a Chicago acoustic trio whose sound is rooted in traditional music, from country blues, to gospel, to old time and folk ballads and carried on in the originals penned by them and the songwriters they enjoy. They focus on vocal and instrumental arrangements on the guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo.

Americans have an undeniable and insatiable appetite for voyeurism. Readily feeding them hearty portions is front-man Ezra Furman, who makes no qualms about peddling the deeply personal to the public and draws no drapes between himself and an audience thanks to his pulsating, confessional songwriting style. Through his eponymous Chicago-based quartet, Ezra Furman & the Harpoons, Furman employs the same open-chest honesty that drew ire for Ginsberg’s Howl and spawned speculation of Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel as he pines for his Wild Rosemarie and recounts bouts of transience during the making of the band’s upcoming third studio LP, Mysterious Power.

Furman gallops and crashes around the stage like an asylum-bound Buddy Holly complete with endearing hiccups and frightening tics. He not only christens every tour with a nom de rock, but also titles each individual gig. Furman’s witty and effusive conversations with the audience, along with his heightened attention to the crowd’s prevailing mood and the shows named like children, creates an extremely personalized feel for every performance. The band grinds out riffs stoically and belts out harmonies spiritedly as they lay the aural ties to support the verbal locomotion of Furman as he careens and caroms about, filling the room with the boiling-hot emotional steam of a fully bared soul.

Offering a new twist on traditional folk, country blues and all things Americana, with some originals weaved in, Half Baked Goods combines fine picking with sweet harmonies, making memorable sounds to linger on. Together, Jay Voss, Randy Burgess, and Lizabeth MacDonald delight in live music making, bringing listeners to a new sensory experience.

The Pickin' Bubs are a Chicago acoustic trio whose sound is rooted in traditional music, from country blues, to gospel, to old time and folk ballads and carried on in the originals penned by them and the songwriters they enjoy. They focus on vocal and instrumental arrangements on the guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo.

Offering a new twist on traditional folk, country blues and all things Americana, with some originals weaved in, Half Baked Goods combines fine picking with sweet harmonies, making memorable sounds to linger on. Together, Jay Voss, Randy Burgess, and Lizabeth MacDonald delight in live music making, bringing listeners to a new sensory experience.

Maria McCullough & Yahvi Pichardo - Maria and Yahví teach and play traditional music from all over México. Both are on the teaching faculty at Old Town School of Folk Music. They perform for audiences of all ages.

Our goals at the School of Rock Music are: to help our students realize their potential as artists, to put them on stage in front of as many people as possible and to help foster a new generation of incredible musicians.

From the moment a student joins one of our schools they are PLAYING music; loud, on professional equipment with other musicians. Before long, our students are playing live rock concerts. These are not your old fashioned wait -through-fifty-other-students mangling-their-songs- until-your-child’s- turn-arrives recitals, but real rock concerts at real rock venues in front of real rock audiences.

Shows are picked for their educational merit and content (for example: Queen teaches harmony, punk develops performance and stage presence and Zappa offers a crash course in musicianship). Thus, if they fail, they fail at aiming at the best. And, when they succeed, which is more often than not, they have accomplished something extraordinary.

Each year our students play over 500 concerts to more than 200,000 people, at such legendary venues as CBGB's, The Trocadero, Cafe DuNord, The Knitting Factory, Cervantes Ballroom and BB Kings in Times Square. We are always looking for grander stages to put our students on, and to date our students have played Lollapalooza and other festivals from California to Germany, opened for national acts coast to coast and performed live on television and radio countless times.

Our goals at the School of Rock Music are: to help our students realize their potential as artists, to put them on stage in front of as many people as possible and to help foster a new generation of incredible musicians.

From the moment a student joins one of our schools they are PLAYING music; loud, on professional equipment with other musicians. Before long, our students are playing live rock concerts. These are not your old fashioned wait -through-fifty-other-students mangling-their-songs- until-your-child’s- turn-arrives recitals, but real rock concerts at real rock venues in front of real rock audiences.

Shows are picked for their educational merit and content (for example: Queen teaches harmony, punk develops performance and stage presence and Zappa offers a crash course in musicianship). Thus, if they fail, they fail at aiming at the best. And, when they succeed, which is more often than not, they have accomplished something extraordinary.

Each year our students play over 500 concerts to more than 200,000 people, at such legendary venues as CBGB's, The Trocadero, Cafe DuNord, The Knitting Factory, Cervantes Ballroom and BB Kings in Times Square. We are always looking for grander stages to put our students on, and to date our students have played Lollapalooza and other festivals from California to Germany, opened for national acts coast to coast and performed live on television and radio countless times.