Chicago's Rising Artists of 2024

As Chicago's art scene returns in full force post-coronavirus, we're seeing big ideas, new collaborations, and amazing new releases from all angles.

Here are 16 standout creators who stood out this year — and we'll all be watching in 2025. And some of them are pretty fun. Others grapple brilliantly with the world we live in, refusing to turn away from topsy-turvy politics and violent global conflicts.

Ayana Woods

Barely into her 30s, Ayanna Woods has built a resume as a contemporary classical composer, with notable bands like The Crossing, Chanticleer, and Chicago's Third Coast Percussion performing her music. Last spring, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented “FORCE,” a three-act opera set in a prison waiting room that paired Woods with singer Anna Martine Whitehead. Woods served as lead composer and music director for the project, which moved to stages in Los Angeles, New York and Portland, Oregon, after its world premiere in Chicago. If something about it sounds familiar, you're not wrong. Her sister is international singer Jamila Woods.

Blacknificent 7

Taking on the iconic 1960 western “The Magnificent Seven,” this group of black composers is pushing the contemporary classical genre forward, both individually and collectively. Their influence on the contemporary canon is global at this point, but fortunately for Chicago, its members maintain deep connections here. Sean Okpepolu, whose brilliant song cycle “Songs in Flight” will be released on Cedille Records in early 2025, is a member of the faculty at Wheaton College, while Jessie Montgomery just finished her term as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Completing the group are Dave Ragland, Joel Thompson, Jasmine Barnes, Damian Jeter and Carlos Simón.) The group's convener is soprano Karen Slack, Lyric Opera's resident composer and a force behind the world premiere of “African Queens,” a concert at Ravinia in August in honor of For the queens who were lost to history. With contributions from both Blacknificent 7, the performance fully showcased the breadth of the artists' talent.

Kelly O'Sullivan, Alex Thompson and Keith Koepferer from “Ghostlight”

When Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson, co-directors of 2024's “Ghostlight,” were considering casting for their new project, they started close to home, with longtime Chicago theater actor Keith Kupferer. O'Sullivan, who also wrote the film, is a former local theater actor. In 2014, she starred with Kupferer in The Humans, a critically acclaimed play produced by the American Theater Company, for which she won a Tony Award for its New York run after leaving Chicago. The cast of “Ghostlight” came almost entirely from the Chicago theater scene, including Kupferer's daughter, Katherine Malin Kupferer, and his wife, Tara Malin, founder of the Rivendell Theater. The film, released by IFC Films, has won awards on the festival circuit and is now streaming on several major platforms, including Amazon Prime Video and AMC+.

John Michael Hill

The youngest actor ever invited to join the Steppenwolf Theater Company, this Waukegan native has gone from stage to television and back again. Even amid a steady and stellar career, 2024 has been a banner year for John Michael Hill, who captured the young photographer at the heart of the world-premiere new work “Purpose” at Steppenwolf last spring. Playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins' family drama (“Appropriate”) is now heading to Broadway; In New York, Hill will reprise his role as the artistic son of a prominent black family embroiled in the ultimate theater: American politics.

Tova Wolf and Laura Winters

Director Tova Wolf co-founded Refracted Theater Company in New York before moving it to her native Chicago during the pandemic. I envisioned a theater company asking tough questions — and that's what happened this year, when it staged the world premiere of playwright Laura Winters' The Coronation. In a future where women still cannot serve as president, a frustrated group creates a new branch of government: the monarchy. The real-life saga of American politics, including President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the 2024 election, has forced a rewrite. But the play opened successfully in the final round of the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. In the days following Trump's victory, the production held post-show panels that became a conversation space for Chicagoans to talk about gender, politics and the next four years.

Jake Truilli

This rising visual artist, a former Division I basketball player, landed a big commission this year on Chicago's West Side, presenting a mural tied to the city's superstar's role in hosting the Democratic National Convention. The 30-foot-tall work, which depicts an artist wearing basketball shoes climbing a ladder of possibility, was commissioned by SkyArt, a nonprofit arts organization working to create a new arts corridor in the neighborhood. This year, Troillie's work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The solo exhibition at Monique Milosz Gallery in Chicago is currently on view until January 11.

Klaus Makela

Our city's collective fascination with this millennial successor to Riccardo Muti began last spring, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced that he had been selected as the youngest conductor in its history. The young Finnish conductor won't officially take over until September 2027, but the appointment will bring him to the city more often, including a series of concerts this spring. Still in his twenties, Makela already heads orchestras in Oslo and Paris. As for why he said yes to Chicago, he said in April: “I fell in love with the orchestra. I fell in love with the orchestra's appetite for excellence and their brilliance.

Omar Apollo

Growing up in Indiana, Apollo had something to prove to his Mexican father: that he could sing. He sure can — and his music has taken him all over the world this year, from Coachella to the Grammys to opening for SZA on her “SOS” tour. But Apollo's ambitions also took off beyond music, with a small role in Luca Guadagnino's film “Queer.” This may have been Apollo's first feature film, but it premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is making the rounds this awards season for lead actor Daniel Craig. “I've always wanted to act,” Apollo said in August. The sky's the limit for what's to come.

Myriam Baz

Chicago DJ Miriam Paz went from being the only female DJ at the Sueños Music Festival three years ago to throwing a massive “all-girls” party there in 2024. And this year, Chicago's biggest event highlighting Latin music featured female-identified artists More than ever before, Paz's Saturday afternoon set with her all-female music group Sorry Papi – billed as the world's largest touring reggaeton concert for girls – attracted a huge crowd. “I've been in this industry for a while,” Paz said in May, a few days before Soenos went public. “Like many women who get immersed in the nightlife and just want to go out and have fun with their girls or whoever they decide to go out with, there is always this constant struggle to feel safe.”

Isaiah Collier

Isaiah Collier's 2024 album, “The World Is on Fire,” doesn't pull any punches — but it also imagines the future he'd like to see. The saxophonist and South Side native's swan song project with his band, The Chosen Few, intersperses his compositions with news clippings and spoken verses, transporting listeners — whether they like it or not — back to the early 2020s. You can't miss Collier's commentary on the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, global warming and modern-day “lynchings” of Black Americans like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. It is a young artist's searing response to the world around him, and yet it is far from hopeless. “At the end of the day, art survives,” Collier said in October.

Kia Smith

What started in 2017 as a small dance group of friends and friends of friends has turned into Kia Smith's South Chicago Dance Theater: a sparkling presence in Chicago's contemporary dance scene, through new work, collaboration, and sheer force of personality. Smith has a knack for commissioning new works – in her spring show at the Auditorium Theatre, she presented six world premieres from an international roster of artists, including Taiwanese choreographer Tsai Hsi-hung. In Chicago tradition, Smith is no small plans: She is known for having a 75-year vision for the company that includes a “choreographic diplomacy initiative” to spark collaboration around the world.

Venom Sima Cunningham and Macy Stewart

Individually, Sima Cunningham and Macy Stewart are linked to a long list of musical projects across the city, from albums to audio installations. But some of their strongest work has been together, like the duo Venom. Jeff Tweedy produced their May album, “Not God,” which presents a highly innovative soundscape that reflects the city’s music scenes, past and present. Featuring songs that start pedestrian and then swell brilliantly, the album was one of our favorite full-length local releases of the year. The sound defies categorization, something Cunningham said she has come to accept. “People never know where they're going to put us,” she said in May. “It also means that the algorithms don't know what to do with us either. That can be frustrating, but on the other hand, it's great.”