Onilu is a ground breaking percussion trio featuring Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl and Daniel Villarreal—three drummers, the instruments they play, and the music they compose and arrange. The music honors authentic Afro-cultural roots while bridging to contemporary improvisation and futuristic sensibilities.

Onilu’s debut record was instigated by Diehl, a U.S. born Yoruba priest and cultural practitioner. The recording brings Diehl together with two titans of the percussive arts, music composition and improvisation: Joe Chambers and Chad Taylor. Their self-titled debut album was recorded in 2023 and released world-wide by the Eremite record label in February 2025.

The evening is opened by a solo set and album release show from woodwinds master Ned Rothenberg, celebrating his recent Pyroclastic record, Looms & Legends—his first solo album in thirteen years.

“There are musicians who play instruments. And then there’s Ned Rothenberg. He draws entire worlds from them.” —SaitenKult

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

Onilu is a percussion trio featuring Kevin Diehl, leader of the enduring Philadelphia-based Afro-Cuban Yoruba free-jazz ensemble, Sonic Liberation Front; Joe Chambers, who began his illustrious career as the drummer on now-canonical Blue Note recordings by Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Wayne Shorter and McCoy Tyler, was a 1970 founding member of Max Roach’s pathbreaking percussion ensemble, M’boom, and continues to record percussion-centered music as a leader for Blue Note Records; and Daniel Villarreal, a widely known and beloved character on the Chicago music scene, who, on almost any night of the week, can be found DJing on bustling 18th Street in his home neighborhood of Pilsen, playing drums with Dos Santos, Valebol, The Los Sundowns or Ida y Vuelta (all bands he co-leads), or sitting in with Wild Belle or Rudy De Anda.

Composer/performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 40 years on 5 continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi – an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads a new quartet Crossings 4, with Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, as well as his longstanding trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla, and collaborates around the world with fellow improvisors like Evan Parker and Kazuhisa Uchihashi. Notable recordings include Lockdown, with Courvoisier and Julian Sartorius on Clean Feed, his Quintet for Clarinet and Stirngs with the Mivos Quartet, The World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, The Fell Clutch, and Are You Be on Rothenberg’s Animul label.