Chicago Composer Gia Margaret Returns To The City To Sing
Photos and review by Cara Col
On Tuesday night, Thalia Hall welcomed Gia Margaret for a hometown set that felt like a toast to her return to singing and the interconnectedness of the Chicago music scene. This international tour supporting her recent album, Singing, marks some of her first vocal performances since 2019. In the meantime, her previous albums have taken on an ambient and electronic sound, as she began experimenting with instrumental music. This new era combines the indie folk sound that she started with and the atmospheric and textured instrumentals that she has developed.
The Brendan Eder Ensemble opened the show with drifting, cinematic compositions. LA-based composer Brenden Eder directed, from behind a synth, Chicago flautists Priya Fink and Natalie Marie, Chicago bassoonist Dylan Neff, and LA-based multi-instrumentalist Pat Posey. Together, they blurred the lines between acoustic and electric, and created arrangements that had the crowd swaying musingly.
Among several original compositions, the Ensemble covered “Falling,” an instrumental theme composed by Angelo Badalamenti and featured in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The sound of the woodwinds transformed the song into something more organic, highlighting the contemplative nature of the theme. Eder unveiled a new looping-based piece that stacked melodies in real time, ending the performance on a hypnotic note that lingered in the room after the applause.
Gia Margaret, then, took the stage, shifting the atmosphere into one of intimate vulnerability. Backed by her synth, fellow band members, and soft, auto-tuned vocals, Margaret performed with a delicate energy that made the performance feel close despite being in the vast auditorium of Thalia Hall. Even though this was a hometown show, there was a tentative quality to her stage presence. The personal meaning of this tour, of singing again in the city that raised her, was evident.
“It’s like this whole tour is my first,” she shared with the audience. Though her set included outstanding songs from her recent album, such as “Everyone around me is dancing,” and “Moon Not Mine,” she also included some of her older vocal songs like “Solid Heart” and “Smoke.”
Some of her strongest moments showed off her knack for unique compositions, where arrangements expanded beyond singer-songwriter conventions into something experimental. During a performance of her viral hit “Hinoki Wood,” bird sounds threaded throughout the piece, a nod to the characteristics of the “Chill Guy” meme that adopted her beautiful and bright composition.
Gia Margaret repeatedly emphasized her connection to Chicago, speaking affectionately about growing up in the city and her evolving relationship with it. “I love Chicago. I was born here, I was raised here, and I feel more rooted here as I grow older,” she told the audience, before naming Thalia Hall as her favorite venue.
This collaborative spirit of the evening became especially clear when singer-songwriter Deb Talan, who had been accompanying Gia Margaret vocally, performed her own song, “Fact is.” Gia Margaret spoke about their history together, recalling that she had once opened for Deb Talan earlier in her career. Returning the gesture by inviting Deb into her own set highlighted the reciprocal support that sustains independent music scenes across
the United States.
The concert felt unified by atmosphere: ambient experimentation, emotional openness, and a distinct sense of artistic community. It was an evening of connection, marking a wonderful homecoming for one of Chicago’s most stand-out artists.
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Gallery:
Photos © 2026 by: Cara Col
Gia Margaret Tour Dates:
Jun 20, 2026 – Fremont Abbey Arts – Seattle, WA
Jun 21, 2026 – Polaris Hall Portland, OR
Jun 23, 2026 – The Chapel – San Francisco, CA
Jun 26, 2026 – Sid the Cat Auditorium – Los Angeles, CA
Jun 27, 2026 – Pappy + Harriet’s – Pioneertown, CA
Jun 28, 2026 – La Rosa – Tucson, AZ
Jun 30, 2026 – Meow Wolf – Santa Fe, NM
Sep 7, 2026 – Cottiers – Glasgow, UK
Sep 8, 2026 – Hallé at St. Michael’s – Manchester, UK
Sep 10, 2026 – EartH Theatre – London, England
Sep 11, 2026 – Jacobikerk – Utrecht, Netherlands
Sep 12, 2026 – L’Archipel – Paris, France
Sep 16, 2026 – Genezarethkirche – Berlin, Germany
Sep 17, 2026 – Reeperbahn Festival – Hamburg, Germany
Gia Margaret Alive Inside (Official Music Video)
Gia Margaret Biography:
Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didn’t find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books.
The two largely instrumental albums the Chicago pianist and composer made at that time—2020’s Mia Gargaret and 2023’s Romantic Piano—allowed her to lose herself in the emotional possibilities of pure sound. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath on glass, the music on Singing evidences the same jeweler’s sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.
“There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself.” This feeling of intermixed alienation and rediscovery is palpable across the album. In opener “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” she watches a party from the wings, aware of how her body keeps her from communal joy while also providing new modes of self-knowledge.
Shut out from the scene, she is “closer to the ground, the planet.” In “Alive Inside,” she’s so far away from the source that she’s praying to whoever might hear (“a god, a friend that’s gone, a spirit”). As her voice rises, it seems to be trapped in a web of distortion; it’s as if in her pursuit, she’s pushing at the very boundaries of what can be said.
It’s graceful touches like this—or the crackling drum machine in “Moon Not Mine,” the sampled voices that haunt several tracks, the clouds of strings both real and synthesized in “Rotten Outro”—that give Singing its remarkable depth. Everything happening in Singing feels expertly tuned to the precise emotional pitch of the songs. “You hear a sound and it makes you feel something,” Margaret says. “That’s why we’re drawn to music. I have a very emotional attachment to every tool in my studio. Each instrument has something in it that makes me feel a certain way.”
The process of making Singing was one of learning how to trust each of those feelings. The album was partially recorded in London with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify the spree of ideas she had for “Good Friend,” an album highlight that includes Gregorian chant by ILĀ and turntable scratches, among many other things. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Margaret’s longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record.
Deb Talan, previously of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the album’s closing—and definitive—statement, “E-Motion.” “A lot of me meeting some of these collaborators (now my friends) fell completely into my lap,” Margaret says. “Almost as if they could hear something in me that I’m certain was influenced by them in the first place.” But, as she says, all of her attempts to open her music to other artists “did lead me back to myself, because I realized I really do like producing. I felt like I was missing out by not exploring those things on my own.”
Romantic Piano demonstrated Margaret’s ability to fold seemingly conflicting emotions around one another in origami melodies—the album’s “Hinoki Wood” went viral on TikTok for the way it suggested looking back fondly at innocence from a place of experience. Singing is no less evocative, thanks to Margaret’s gifts as both a producer and a composer. As in a proper natural garden, every sound has been set carefully in place without sacrificing its individual vitality.
Its songs are instantly recognizable and accessible as traditional pop, but they’ve also been shaped by the rules of ambient music, unrolling in a sanctified drift of intuition. “I don’t know until I get in there,” she says of how the songs come together. “I start tweaking and tweaking until there’s a feeling that I get. And I think I did that on every corner of this album.”
Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Across the album, she applies the lessons of speechlessness—the quasirational ways we communicate without communicating, the way formless sound can cut to the heart of things like a scalpel—to her own artistic voice. “It’s a little woo-woo,” she says, “but I felt my throat chakra opening as the process of making the record went on. By the time I got to ‘E-Motion,’ the last song, I thought, ‘This is it. This is the end of whatever cycle this is. And I’m ready to move forward.’”
Singing was recorded in London, Eau Claire, and Chicago in 2024 and 2025. It will be released on April 24th via Jagjaguwar.
Gia Margaret Links:
Official: https://giamargaret.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gia.margaret/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giamargaret/
