A few days ago, I got a question from Mick Dumke—my old pal and collaborator—that left me virtually speechless. I won’t lie—this is tough. Like trying to decide which recent Bulls draft decision was worse—trading Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris for Doug McDermott, or passing up Draymond Green to select Marquis Teague. Then he was like Captain Renault in Casablanca—oh, my God, police brutality in Chicago? I’m shocked! Quick, fire Garry McCarthy!...
A few years ago Robert Plant returned to England, where he reunited with some of his trusted bandmates and forged some new bonds. During his fruitful stay in the U.S. he immersed himself in country roots, and since going home his records have shown a kind of syncretic approach that melds the various threads his curiosity has pulled him toward over his career. Last year’s Carry Fire (Nonesuch) retains the restrained, soulful approach he’s embraced since first collaborating with Alison Krauss more than a decade ago....
James Beard Foundation It’s gotten very little attention from local food media (that was sarcasm) but the James Beard Foundation Awards for chefs and restaurants are being held on Monday night, and there are approximately 14,000,000 events related to them this weekend. Most are for industry people, but some are open to regular folks who want to mingle with chefs and such. For instance, tonight Acadia is hosting a bourbon and bluegrass party from 6 to 10 PM....
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association announced Thursday that Ken-David Masur has been named principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s century-old, 90-member training ensemble for professional musicians. And, while Kurt Masur was known to be an imposing, old-school authoritarian, it sounds like Masur 2.0 will be something else. CSO education director Jonathan McCormick notes in the announcement that “since his podium debut in 2016/2017 Maestro Masur has made an overwhelmingly positive impression on the entire Civic Orchestra family....
Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer-winning How I Learned to Drive is a stunner. A memoir of sexual abuse in 1960s Maryland, the piece emerges as the associative leaps of a digressive memory shored up by the cool technical outlook of an instruction manual for a rite of passage as common as kissing—the rules of the road, as it were. The narrator, Li’l Bit, is her Uncle Peck’s favorite niece. He’s her favorite too—the only one who seems to respect her in a family that doles out nicknames based on genitalia, declares that her credentials are on her chest, and (for the women) tends to get knocked up before finishing high school....
There’s been a lot of changeover in top leadership at Chicago theaters over the past 18 months, with more to come; we’re still waiting to hear who will be replacing Anna Shapiro as Steppenwolf’s artistic director when she leaves at the end of her six-year contract in August. (Will the company honor past tradition and draw from within the ensemble, or will they look outside the walls of the growing Steppenwolf campus on Halsted?...
There’s an elliptical quality to the lyrics on Katie Von Schleicher’s terrific full-length debut, Shitty Songs (Ba Da Bing). She assays various strains of romantic and personal disconnect, using words to underscore frayed connections and muddied communication, but her honeyed, soulful vocals and the rich arrangements that surround them fill out the otherwise moody pictures with dazzling color. Her adventurous production recalls some of the experiments David Bowie conducted with Brian Eno during his Berlin years, but replaces their urban vibe with something more rustic and folksy....
Seventeen months ago, Laura “Lulu” Callier—aka solo electronic musician Gel Set—packed up her things and moved from Chicago to Los Angeles with her steadfast canine companion, Dixie. As Callier rode out that loneliness, she began noticing doppelgängers everywhere she went: on sidewalks, at gas stations, at supermarkets, and at shows, she saw people who looked almost but not exactly like the friends and acquaintances she’d left behind. She calls them “body copies”—and they’re also why she titled the new Gel Set record Body Copy....
Chicago four-piece Dim make the kind of shoegaze that’s allergic to the daylight. The damp and brooding industrial clang of the group’s new 12-inch, Stereo 45 (Rotted Tooth), occasionally lights up subbasements with piercing strobes, but I find it hard to believe that the members of Dim could even make out the outlines of their footwear through so much fuzz. Many bands that have resurrected the style in recent years appear content with transforming the walls of sound associated with the genre into music that echoes its predecessors but drains some of its earlier color; Dim embrace grit and grim....
Lucia di Lammermoor is scheduled in Lyric Opera’s fall season between two massive new productions: the steampunk spectacle of Das Rheingold (which you can still catch on Saturday), and Les Troyens, opening next month. On opening night, Shagimuratova rose to the occasion with the agility, clarity, and power that has made her the go-to Lucia in opera houses from the Met to La Scala. Beczala was elegant as her impetuous lover and the entire cast turned in first-rate performances....
New York trio Son Lux—singer Ryan Lott, drummer Ian Chang, and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia—move easily between pop, jazz, and contemporary classical, because their dramatic, ambitious songs draw from all three. On the recent Brighter Wounds (City Slang), their craftsmanship is beyond reproach, but jazz and classical make their presence felt only as sources of harmonic complexity—and sometimes the music’s pop impulses would benefit from a shorter leash. If I’d only heard the single “Dream State,” I would’ve written the band off entirely: its wordless vocal hook is perilously similar to the dreaded “millennial whoop,” and in any case it’s so overplayed and cringe-inducing that you might peg Son Lux as opportunists who care more about sync licenses for TV commercials than they do about writing good material....
The arrival of ramps, soon to be followed by asparagus and strawberries, signals the arrival of prime season for Chicago’s farmers’ markets. We’re in the easiest time of year to shop markets, buy local and sustainable stuff, and come away with produce that tastes only a million bazillion times better than the same species flown in from South America or New Zealand. I visit a fair number of them on the north side myself, but when I was asked to do a list of the top ones alongside the Summer Guide issue, I went straight to the source: Rob Gardner, editor of the Local Beet....
Before we get to the specifics of Possibilities Theatre’s earnest, engaging staging of Jonathan Larson’s Rent, we must first get into some generalities about Jonathan Larson’s Tony-winning Rent. It’s been a solid quarter-century since I saw the musical in its initial Broadway run. If you cannot recall 1996, when Rent opened on Broadway, know this: In pre-Y2K, post-Phantom, pre-Hedwig world, the defining trend in musical theater was solidly centered on spectacle, the more over-the-top, the better....
Solidarity Cinema is a casually organized group of determined leftists who explore subversive ideology through film—most members are legitimate activists who are often busy doing other things, but still find it important to make time for screenings when they can. The group started in Chicago at the beginning of quarantine and have met intermittently since. They operate outside the bounds of traditional distribution and exhibition, showcasing revolutionary cinema through their website, a digital archive, and at some (socially distanced) in-person events....
Links Hall founder Bob Eisen has always approached his work with a refreshingly honest, go-with-the-flow mentality. “I’m just not a big meaning guy in terms of making a dance,” the 69-year-old choreographer muses. “It’s not like I think it’s a bad thing, it just isn’t in my blood.” As a result, Eisen can come across as artfully coy. Asked about his latest artistic venture, he demurred: “It’s hard for me to say what this is about....
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney. Republicans pretend to care about traditional values; they pledge to fight the woke liberals trying to control our lives. Democrats pretend to fight for the poor and working class. But behind the scenes, both parties serve the interests of the investor class that funds them and demands, in return, a high rate of return on their investment capital. The public feuding between the two corporate parties depicted nightly on our cable news shows is as phony and staged as the 1970s-era wrestling matches between The Sheik and Dick the Bruiser....
UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been postponed. Contact box office for further information. A mix of the historic and the swashbuckling with a scosh of magical realism, this production captures what is most arresting about Johnson’s original story. Morrow is splendid as the callow Rutherford forced to grow up and (in one mystical segment) confront literal ghosts of his past. If he sometimes seems like a cipher in the mix of larger-than-life characters surrounding him, that too is a reflection of how a Black man must negotiate what to reveal and what to hide about himself for the sake of his life and liberty....
First Floor Theater artistic director Hutch Pimentel directs the world premiere of Lucas Baisch’s righteously nightmarish drama of office politics at the end of the world. My one quibble is that by naming each of his characters after a major philosopher or art historian—Roland (Barthes), (W.J.T.) Mitchell, (Linda) Nochlin, et al—Baisch has stacked the deck in a bid for a gravitas his work has already earned under its own steam. Through 6/9: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N....
On a cold, damp February night, a small but dedicated audience gathered at the Green Line Performing Arts Center to celebrate the accomplishments of black women for In the Spirit’s “Sister Girls and Freedom Fighters,” a performance combining poetry, spoken word, storytelling, and singing with created opportunities for testimonials from audience members. The performance is part of the center’s GreenLight Series, which features various performing arts disciplines. Baker played the talking drum and sang, providing the soundtrack for Lansana as she recited poems and told stories of brave women from across the world....
Chicagoan Nellie “Tiger” Travis’s 2013 song “Mr. Sexy Man” has become a modern-day soul-blues classic with its earworm guitar pattern, propulsive beat, and vernacular chorus (“What yo’ name is? What yo’ name is?”), but despite its good-timey vibe, Travis shouldn’t be typecast as merely a party girl. As evidenced by outings like the searing “Don’t Talk to Me” from 2008’s I’m a Woman (CDS) and the soul-baring “Walking in the Rain in Memphis” on last year’s independently released Mr....
