Latin Shows in Chicago

Doors: 8PM / Show: 9PM / 21+ Anna Johnson celebrates the release of her debut LP Swarm of Tongues, out October 2 on Somnimage. She will be accompanied by Paige Naylor, Ben Baker Billington, and Andrew Scott Young. Joining the night are the dark, lush art rock sounds of Facing and the haunting intensity of Louise Bock, solo project of Taralie Peterson (known from Spires That In The Sunset Rise), with experimental percussionist Michael Zerang. ~~~~ Anna Johnson's sound unites electroacoustic improvisation with backgrounds in medieval folk traditions and sacred music. Based in drone and hypnotic repetition, she is invested in vocal expression as a portal to somatic and emotional presence. Anna's performances integrate projection installations of her textural film work, and her approach to live art is ritualistic; she seeks embodied and communal experiences of vulnerability and spiritual catharsis. She is drawn to the meeting points between personal and mythical, present and ancient. Anna is based in Chicago and tours regularly in North America and Europe. She originates from Minnesota, where she was raised with Celtic and Anglo folk traditions and sacred choral music, and studied both Western classical as well as traditional Eastern European vocal polyphony. She holds an MFA from the Performance department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Studio Art from Macalester College. Anna's debut EP Unknowing was released in 2025 on UK label Industrial Coast and her debut LP Swarm of Tongues releases in October 2026 on Somnimage. She was awarded an Outer Ear Session at Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio in spring 2026 for a recording project, and selected as a finalist for National Sawdust's 2026 Hildegard Commission, which will culminate in a December 2026 concert featuring a performance of her compositional work by Trinity Choir and the National Sawdust ensemble.

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Mei Semones VIP Experience includes the below: A Meet & Greet and photo with Mei Semones One (1) VIP exclusive merch item Early Entry To The Venue Early Access To The Merch Table One (1) GA Standing ticket Mei Semones - Howl Out January 15th via Verve/Interscope On the night of the Fourth of July, fireworks over Mei Semones' Brooklyn block were competing with something more primal. Up and down the street, dogs answered each burst with a long, ragged howl of their own. Semones, alone in her apartment with her guitar while the rest of the city celebrated outside, found she didn't mind the solitude. The howling struck her less as a cry for help than as a kind of greeting: proof that she was never really by herself, not with music always keeping her company. By morning, she had the seed of the title track for her sophomore album, Howl. "Sometimes making music feels like howling into the universe," Semones says. "I make music because I like it, because it feels instinctual --- but it also connects me to people close and far. I like to think of this music as my howl." It's a title that might invite a familiar story of pressure and release, but Semones sees songwriting differently. Nothing was bottled up, she says, waiting to come pouring out. Music is simply something she does, every day, because it feels natural to her. That idea runs through Howl, an album that embraces the full range of her experiences rather than settling into a single emotional register. Tenderness and joy coexist with grief, self-doubt and memories of loss --- the same range audible in a sound that can move from delicate fingerpicking to distorted, rhythmically restless swells within a single song. At 26, the Brooklyn-based Japanese American guitarist and singer-songwriter --- already named an Artist to Watch by The New York Times and Stereogum, and Artist You Need to Know by Rolling Stone and The FADER --- has developed a sound that brings together jazz, bossa nova, samba and grungy math rock without treating any of them as separate worlds. Her bilingual songwriting works in much the same way. Few songwriters weave between languages as naturally as Semones does, slipping between English and Japanese within the same song --- sometimes the same line --- and letting both languages become part of the music itself. As she puts it, writing in both languages "felt more true to myself." Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing piano at age four on an instrument gifted by her Japanese grandmother before picking up electric guitar at 11, inspired in part by Marty McFly's performance of "Johnny B. Goode" in Back to the Future. Semones also spent summers as a child in Yokosuka, Japan --- where her grandmother lived --- attending a local elementary school for two weeks each year and spending long afternoons catching cicadas, playing soccer, building things with mud, and searching for rhinoceros beetles. Those unhurried childhood experiences would later shape her 2024 EP, Kabutomushi, named after the very beetles she would catch with her school friends in Yokosuka

Doors open at 6PM. Performance begins at 7PM. This show is for ALL AGES. House of Blues Chicago is a standing room only venue, all tickets are General Admission unless otherwise stated. *All support acts are subject to change without notice.* Upgrade Your Experience: https://www.sevenrooms.com/events/hobchicago/hobwebsite

Doors open at 6PM. Performance begins at 7PM. This show is for ALL AGES. House of Blues Chicago is a standing room only venue, all tickets are General Admission unless otherwise stated. *All support acts are subject to change without notice.* Upgrade Your Experience: https://www.sevenrooms.com/events/hobchicago/hobwebsite