"Harris...[maintains] a firm pulse while jabbing his partners with sputtering lines that suggest he could keep time even as he and his kit tumbled down a flight of stairs." - Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

Bill Harris is a percussionist, sound artist, improviser, and audio engineer in Chicago. He also operates and produces for Amalgam, a Chicago-based label and collective, and co-operates Chicago recording studio and performance space Marmalade.

(B. 1987, Pittsburgh, PA)

Bill is a prominent Chicago-based percussionist, sound artist, improviser, audio engineer, and curator working in areas of improvisation, jazz, noise, rock, and bluegrass. Presented both nationally and internationally, Bill's work focuses on a number of dedicated groups, ad hoc groups, and solo work, with over three decades of studying, practicing, and creating music. His work has been presented at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Moody Center for the Arts (TX), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Hammer Museum (LA), Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago), Relincha Festival (Valdivia, Chile), Ragdale (Chicago), to name a few.

Additionally, Bill focuses on solo work incorporating acoustic and electronic material, using feedback and timbral manipulation. He has recorded four solo records: Atropa (2025), MACRODOSE (2024), Blinking Glue (2022), and ONOMAT (2021).

In 2015 he started Amalgam, a 100% artist-run collective and label dedicated to showcasing works of improvised and experimental music in Chicago and elsewhere, with a bi-monthly series at Cafe Mustache. Amalgam has been widely recognized in publications such as The Wire, and has been a vital tool and resource for promoting both emerging and established artists from Chicago and elsewhere, drawing from and representing the hugely diverse and collaborative music scene of Chicago. Bill is also an audio engineer working in both studio and live contexts, and operates an independent studio in Chicago with engineering, mixing, mastering, and production credits on labels such as Astral Spirits, Aerophonic Records, Clean Feed, Trost, No Index, 577 Records and Ears&Eyes. In 2020 he started and co-operates a recording studio and performance space Marmalade, where he also curates performances for local and traveling artists.

Press Quote

"Bill Harris is a community builder first and foremost. As one of the founders of the Amalgam collective, he has helped to keep Chicago's storied improvised music scene together through the dark ages of the 2020s. Additionally, his studio space Marmalade has hosted performances from some of the most boundary-pushing voices of contemporary experimental music - artists such as Charmaine Lee, Brandon Lopez, Sandy Ewen and more - during a time in which such spaces are becoming fewer and further between. Even when performing solo, Harris maintains that same community-driven ethos. Though he brings an intense layer of attention to detail, (as he always does), his solo performance is marked less by the kind of isolation and insularity that many would associate with improvised solo music and more by an open-ended adventurous sensibility. In this context, the solo performance becomes more of a challenge; how can one extend their technique creatively enough to make up for the empty space?"

Levi Dayan, 2025

Press

Bill Harris, improvising drummer and community platform builder, Chicago Reader, 2023

Amalgam feature for Global Ear: Chicago, in The Wire, 2023

Hearsay: The Chicago trio's improvisations combine slow evolution with sculptural and archeaological turntablism, The Wire, 2023

Adventurous local label Amalgam throws itself a tenth birthday party, Chicago Reader, 2025

Best collective of artists and musicians that turns ten in 2025, Chicago Reader, 2025

Drummer and composer Bill Harris on a Chicago iconoclast who can make an album feel like an epic film, Chicago Reader, 2018