There’s something special about hearing music in a public setting when it is free and unexpected. And when it is held in a train station, especially so. It’s one thing to listen to buskers on the street or on the L platform but it’s something altogether different when it’s in the Great Hall of Union Station and ten professional musicians show up to do what they do best: play music.
For one glorious hour on Thursday night, the Chicago-based nonprofit organization, Experimental Sound Studio co-produced the world premiere of celloist Lia Kohl’s Music for Union Station, a chamber work, in a site-specific performance during the evening rush hour. The other musicians were Dorothy Carlos on cello, Zachary Good on clarinet, Gerrit Hatcher on tenor saxophone, Riley Leitch on trombone, Nick Meryhew on trombone, Beth McDonald on tuba, Zach Moore on upright bass, Jason Stein on clarinet, and Macie Stewart on violin.
The music began softly as the musicians played on opposite balconies. At first no one knew quite what to make of it or where the sound was coming from. But everybody stopped what they were doing to look up. They listened. They smiled. They were surprised. They seemed pleased.
“It’s nice,” said a woman who was Boston bound on her way home to New Hampshire.
Then the musicians made their way down to the Great Hall. Commuters and long-distance travelers alike listened in silence. An Amish family watched, the children sitting patiently. Wearing dark clothing, suspenders, and the familiar broad-brimmed hat, one Amish man stood arms akimbo, seemingly in rapture. At one point, three of the musicians, sitting on a bench, started to play. A young man with long hair and wearing shorts, a long-sleeved henley, and a beanie, his hand on his chin and one foot resting on a skateboard, looked on.
People followed the musicians around, but always keeping a respectful distance. An employee walked through the crowd softly alerting travelers on the departure of the next train as if not to disturb the performance.
Like actors hitting their mark or dancers on a stage, the ensemble was all part of a seamless choreography of music. Sometimes the musicians played off each other whether sitting on a bench or standing in the Great Hall itself. Beth McDonald played her tuba while sitting on a bench. Another time the trio of Stewart, Kohl, and Carlos sat along aside each other on another bench. I admired other unexpected little details such as trombone player Riley Lietch’s colorful flat orange shoes.
Music for Union Station isn’t the first time a piece of music has been performed in a train station. Los Angeles’ Union Station has a music program that features live and recorded ambient music. London’s Paddington Station has a resident band. In 2024, the cast of the musical The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a folk-musical based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story and set in a Cornish village, performed on Platform 9 at Paddington as part of the musical’s West End run.
But for accidental and intentional listeners alike, Music for Union Station was a treat.
Toward the end of the hour, all ten musicians walked up the steps at the Canal Street entrance playing their music one last time—paradoxically, the same steps where the famous baby carriage shootout scene in the film The Untouchables took place. Then it was over. The audience burst out into spontaneous applause.
Music for Union Station did what music often does. It was a communal moment. It brought strangers together. The piece itself was tranquil, hushed, muted, and strangely moving. It seemed appropriate for the setting: bewitching music for the journey ahead.
All photos by June Sawyers.