The topic of the first installment of “Relevant Tones Live,” a podcast series coproduced by Chicago-based nonprofit Access Contemporary Music (ACM) and the Esopus Foundation, was inspired by The New York Times’s “Overlooked” series, edited by Amy Padnani, which publishes obituaries for people whose deaths initially went unreported in the paper.

For the event, ACM founder Seth Boustead invited five composers—Milica Paranosic, Shanan Estreicher, Gilbert Galindo, Lynn Bechtold, and Nailah Nombeko—to pick one “Overlooked” obit and write a piece inspired by it. Each of these were performed live at Symphony Space by The Overlook, a New York–based string quartet consisting of Monica Davis, Adda Kridler, Laura Metcalf, and Angela Pickett. The evening also included a panel discussion with Boustead, Amy Padnani, filmmaker Vanessa Gould (Obit), and Baltimore Sun obituary writer Jacques Kelly.