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Peter Gannushkin/downtownmusic.net Mivos Quartet Because I’ve presented a couple of concerts by them in Chicago over the last year (including one this past Sunday at Constellation), I haven’t really had the chance to proclaim my adoration for the remarkable New York string ensemble Mivos Quartet, a fearless, precise, and forward-looking new-music group dedicated to some of the toughest material being written today. But I’m pleased as hell to watch them play, strictly as a listener, tonight when they perform an intimate concert at Experimental Sound Studio, the local premiere of the third string quartet by composer Patrick Higgins....

Atop an imaginary Tennessee hill, poet Wallace Stevens famously placed an imaginary jar, which “took dominion everywhere” and tamed a wilderness that “rose up to it.” In Stevens’s philosophy, the most commonplace object holds adequate wonder to create a new, poeticized world order. Chicago monologist and playwright Barrie Cole has long been placing imaginary jars atop imaginary hills. Her ambiguously concrete work layers childlike simplicity over seasoned melancholy to produce piercing, wondrous images of charming, discomfiting transformation....

COVID-19 couldn’t stop the 2020 Dance for Life. But it did turn the annual benefit performance, produced by Chicago Dancers United to raise money for its Dancers’ Fund and other charities, into a Zoom event. Pate’s position, as the organization’s only staff member, was abruptly eliminated May 19. On June 9 she posted a “Dear Chicago dance community” letter on Facebook, suggesting that the entire CDU board of directors resign, to be replaced by a smaller board with financial and operations expertise, plus an advisory board of dance professionals....

Kat Hawkins Assistant General Manager & Beverage Director, Shaw’s Crab House In 2019, she was named one of America’s “Best New Sommeliers” by Wine & Spirits Magazine. Hawkins is a Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers and a Certified Specialist of Wine and Spirits through the Society of Wine Educators. Prior to her residency as the assistant general manager and beverage director at Shaw’s, Hawkins fine-tuned her skills in Detroit’s bustling restaurant scene....

Despite the pandemic raging across the city, state, and country, the Chicago Public Library (CPL) system remains open. Other city services have made the jump largely online, such as the Cook County court system. The city has designated libraries as essential services, but some library staff say the current COVID-19 measures are not enough to protect the patrons and employees, and those measures also hinder the very services the staff are expected to perform....

A friend in Houston recently described multidisciplinary artist and space goddess Lisa E. Harris as a “force of nature” in the Texas scene and beyond. Upon investigation, I had to concur. Harris channels the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra, the transcendent devotionals of Alice Coltrane, and the deep-listening experiments of Pauline Oliveros—all while maintaining her own unique vision. Harris is trained in opera, and she can often be found playing theremin or synthesizers, but she also brings theater, spoken word, and dance into her colorful cosmic performances....

Jack Cooper, best known as half of the UK guitar-pop combo Ultimate Painting, turns inward on his solo debut, Sandgrown (Trouble in Mind). The album is charming and low-key, with songs that reflect on his teen years in Blackpool, England—specifically the summers he spent working menial jobs in the seaside resort town. Observing how tourists came and went with little thought to the town’s life and experiences during its long off-seasons, Cooper conveys a sense of broken-down hopelessness with unadorned beauty....

True-crime storytelling began in Victorian America. Newspapers eager to captivate their audiences relied on the same tools TV shows and podcasts still use today: sex, suggestion, and fright. By the 1920s, true-crime narratives had begun to incorporate gay panic as well. James Polchin’s new book Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall (Counterpoint Press) explores some of these early writings and the paranoia they inspired—which continues today....

This spring, the Reader got an advance copy of NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories, written by the band with Jeff Alulis (aka late-period Dead Kennedys singer Jeff Penalty). It wound up in my hands, so of course I read the whole thing. The book is a memoir a la Motley Crue’s The Dirt, and it details every up and down the popular California band has gone through since its inception in (holy shit) 1983....

Since long before any of us heard of COVID-19 (and before most of us heard of Anthony Fauci or Emily Landon), Chicago’s been home to a widely recognized infectious disease expert. He’s Gary Slutkin, the former University of Illinois epidemiologist best known for taking a look at the rampant killing on our streets and recognizing it, literally, as a plague. Gary Slutkin: The public messaging about this particular epidemic has been disastrous beyond the fact that there are different messages coming from the administration and the scientific community....

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....

Many an artist claims to have psychedelic or surf influences, whether you can hear them or not. But in the case of Los Mirlos those flavors are immediately obvious. The septet, formed in Lima, Peru, in 1971, play cumbia amazónica, a tropical subgenre of Peruvian cumbia that reflects the life and customs of the region. They’re all excellent musicians, but their secret weapon is lead guitarist Danny López, who plays with a slight tremolo that calls to mind instrumental-rock greats such as Dick Dale, Duane Eddy, and the Ventures....

Will the groundhog see his shadow? With global warming upon us, does it matter? Why not just avoid that whole mess all together with our recommended list of things to do. Fri 1/31-Sun 2/2: Inspired by the 120-mile long crack that ran along the Antarctic ice shelf (and subsequently broke into an iceberg) Luftwerk works in collaboration with Katherine Young for “Requiem: A White Wanderer,” a free immersive experience including art and sound....

It was only a matter of seconds before Chicago stole the show. Having been introduced as a visionary and a master of lurid cinema, Michael Mann took the stage at the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn earlier this month for the keynote of the career retrospective Heat and Vice, which launched on the Humboldt Park native’s 73rd birthday. (The series wrapped last week.) Asked off the top by moderator Bilge Ebiri why he became a filmmaker, Mann looked homeward....

I like Charly Bliss way more than I should. The NYC foursome—really a pop act disguised as a punk band—ticks countless boxes on the list of things that immediately annoy me or make me roll my eyes: goofy, quirky lyrics; cute and zany music videos; pristine production values; and an unabashed Weezer influence (more the bad era than the good). But I let my guard down for 2017’s Guppy (Barsuk), and I’ve been completely hooked ever since....

In a 2013 Reader piece, Sarah Nardi described Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi—the two members of local art studio Sonnenzimmer—as “naturally predisposed to working in a language that others can understand.” The same holds true for the duo’s music, which orbits the twin poles of reflective, ambient pop and glitchy electronica (and is often accompanied with painstakingly designed packaging and album art). Late last month, Butcher released Saccadic, a new cassette from his solo project Rhybadi that mixes archival recordings from his youth in Tennessee overdubbed with new vocal and instrumental parts....

The Belle of Amherst Here’s the problem: the intense inner life suggested by Emily Dickinson’s poems makes her an intriguing subject for theatrical exploration, yet her nearly complete lack of an outer life renders her hard to dramatize. In this 1976 solo piece, here revived by Court Theatre, playwright William Luce tried to turn the problem itself into a source of momentum. We first meet Dickinson near the end of her 55 years, living in almost complete seclusion—but cheerful, even perky about it....

Chicago trio Austaras aren’t an easy band to have heard of. This weekend’s CD-release show for their recent Prisoner of Sunlight is their first live gig since September 2012, and the new album is the first music they’ve put out since an EP in June 2011 (at which time they were a four-piece, with a bassist-vocalist who’s since departed). To make matters worse, that EP is their only other release....