Omaha Under the Radar emerged from a desire to support innovative performers, arts educators, and creators living and working in the Midwest, and to connect this community to audiences other performance communities throughout the United States.

Since the first festival, held in 2014, Omaha Under the Radar has presented over 400 artists of divergent backgrounds and disciplines. We work to represent a multiplicity of genres, ideas, and identities through performances, talks, group discussions and educational opportunities.

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SOUNDRY, the organization’s education program, was launched during the 2015 festival at KANEKO, and has presented yearly, multi-day workshops in composition, instrument building, improvisation, sound art, electronic music, and graphic score creation. The program has now expanded offer programs throughout the year through KANEKO.

In 2017, in partnership with KANEKO, the organization launched Generator Series – a concert series that presents today’s most innovative musicians and investigates music’s relationship to our physical world, seeking the connections between sound and architecture, sound and natural landscapes, sound and the human body, and more. Focusing on music by living composers, including sound improvisation and experimental composition, the Generator Series will be an outlet for non-commercial music that asks questions about how we listen, and how we interact with sound in the 21st century. In its first season, the series presented Ensemble Dal Niente, Roomful of Teeth, Aaron Hynds, Hannah Mayer, Stacey Barelos, The Afield, Alejandro Acierto, tbd Dance Collective and Obelus Movement, members of the Omaha Symphony, Quince Ensemble, and more.

Our newest partnerships are with Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago and Film Streams in Omaha, who will both be streaming live events with Omaha Under the Radar performers while in-person events are suspended.

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Omaha Under the Radar is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization. To make a tax-deductible donation in support of our programming efforts, visit our SUPPORT page.

Ensemble SonLingua (Jane Rigler, flutes; Colin McAllister, guitar; Haleh Abghari, voice; Andrés Carrizo, (piano and composition) and its collaborative work with Indigenous American poets writing in their native languages. The ensemble will premiere three new movements composed by Carrizo for the ensemble, whose texts consist of poems written by poets Mikeas Sánchez (Chiapas, Mexico) and Sabino Esteban (Guatemala).

One of the ongoing effects of colonialism in the Americas is the relentless linguistic assimilation suffered by Indigenous groups. Many Indigenous languages are considered endangered, due to the lack of educational opportunities afforded these groups in their native tongues. In light of this, there are several Indigenous American poets who write poetry in their native language, as both a gesture of defiance and a means of preservation.