It’s only the new Downtown Sound: News Music Mondays series, which offers free Monday evening performances from up-and-coming national and local acts. Downtown Sound, a renamed and newly time-slotted version of last year’s Audible Architecture music series, joins Dusk Variations: A Chamber Series and Edible Audible picnic as one of three new music series at Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion this summer. It’s the combination of local and national acts, low key Monday nights and early evening start time that makes Downtown Sound: New Music Mondays so appealing to many Chicago music fans.

“I didn’t really expect the Pritzker Pavillion to become a medium for up-and-coming ‘indie’ bands, but it’s an interesting idea,” 26 year-old grocer and music educator Tony Gilbert-Davis says. “I do enjoy seeing shows [at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion]. It’s easy and open to walk in and up towards the stage, and the acoustics are phenomenal.”

Downtown Sound came about this summer because more were funds available this year, although the overall Millennium Park performance budget is in a decline. The Monday night music series has already offered free performances from Pitchfork.com indie-favorites St. Vincent and the Dirty Projections as well as a highly anticipated reunion show from seminal New Jersey punk/rock act The Feelies. Additionally, most performances include opening spots from local Chicago groups such as Alla and The Sea and Cake.

“I feel like Millennium Park should always have one foot in Chicago and one foot outside in terms of constant support of the Chicago music scene,” Chicago Cultural Affairs Senior Program Director and Downtown Sound co-curator Mike Orlove says.

Though this is Downtown Sound’s initial run, contemporary music at the now five year-old Jay Pritzker Pavilion is nothing new. A number of big name acts have rented the facility for shows including Tori Amos, Wilco and Death Cab For Cutie. But when the Department of Cultural Affairs turned down Radiohead’s bid to play two shows at the Pritzker Pavilion in 2005 because it would have conflicted with an orchestra rehearsal, controversy and protests ensued.

Orlove, who co-curates the Downtown Sound series with Mike Reed and is responsible for booking all non-classical music for the park, insists that regardless of that isolated incident, there has never been an aversion towards booking more popular styles of music.

“I think the press in general have a real hard time figuring out what’s popular music and what isn’t. So if it’s labeled as world music, then it can’t be popular music,” Orlove says. “I presented one of the most hard-hitting, loudest, edgiest concerts ever four years ago -- Goran Bregovi? And The Wedding And Funeral Orchestra. But because it’s not written about in Rolling Stone or not on the hipster rock scene, then it’s not considered pop music. We had 10,000 people there, and it’s as punk rock as you’re going to get.”

Downtown Sound: New Music Mondays is currently in it’s mid-summer break but will return August 10th at 6:30 p.m. with performances from African vocalist Rokia Traoré and Texan art-rock trio Shearwater. While Downtown Sound has seen its share of popularity and success already this summer, financial concerns mean that there is no guarantee the music series will return next summer. Orlove hopes that additional sponsorships will help ensure that free concerts remain in Millennium Park’s plans for the near future.

“We’d like to have something going every minute of the day. But there’s a reality check there,” Orlove says. “The goal is that we can continue all the programs that we’re doing that are successful. This has certainly been a big success. We’ve been thrilled with the people coming out, the enthusiasm, the music, the reaction from the groups, everything.”