For more than 20 years, curator, producer, venue owner and musician Mike Reed has been an essential part of Chicago’s music scene, leaving his mark on multiple fronts.
Take the annual Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. As co-founder and director of the festival, Reed has worked since 2005 to keep the annual event a place to appreciate and discover cutting-edge music. Additionally, you can see his fingerprints on the Chicago Jazz Festival, where he is the chairperson on the fest’s programming committee and works as a bridge between the city’s past, present and future of the music genre.
