Lily Glick Finnegan is a Chicago born and based drummer, composer, improviser, and organizer. She leads her own quartet, Heat On, which is releasing their debut album in 2025 on Cuneiform Records. Finnegan is also a member of Ken Vandermark’s Edition Redux, punk band Cucuy, and the Sarah Clausen Trio. She co-leads an improvising duo project with violinist gabby fluke-mogul. In 2024, Lily and gabby released Throw It In the Sink on Sonic Transmission Records. Lily also plays with various singer-songwriters including Hannah Frances and Julia Blair. In addition, she has collaborated with artists including James Brandon Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Macie Stewart, Fay Victor, Sylvia Bolognesi, Ed Wilkerson, Shanta Nurullah, Dave Rempis, Kirk Knuffke, Jason Stein, Devon Gates, Lia Kohl, Katinka Kleijn, and Christof Kurzmann.

In 2021, she completed a Masters of Music from Berklee College of Music. She received a full scholarship to participate in the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. At Berklee she was part of the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice where she was mentored by Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, and Linda May Han Oh. She has worked on projects with Carrington including “Music for Abolition” as part of the Visualizing Abolition Exhibit at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her thesis project was entitled “Music and Abolition: Creating a World Without Policing— Music’s Role in Imagination, Experimentation, and Collectivity”. Prior to attending Berklee, she earned a Bachelor of Arts double major in Sociology and Music from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her studies fueled her interest in the confluence between power structures, history, and social movements within music.

Lily co-curates the Option Series, a showcase of contemporary approaches to improvisation and composition held at Experimental Sound Studio. She was spotlighted as a “Chicagoan of Note” by The Chicago Reader for her musical organizing work in the city. In 2025, she became a member of the independent music cooperative Catalytic Sound. She is a drum teacher, with openings for new students. 

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