Looking stylish when faced with extreme heat and thunderstorms is tough. These Pitchfork festivalgoers share how they rose to the challenge. DW: “I wanted to be kinda trendy for the festival, but I also wanted to be very breezy, so I went with the oversize tee with the shorts underneath. The T-shirt has little holes in it, so I put a bikini top underneath, which also gives it a pop of color....
Architecture biennials are created to take the pulse of the profession, to display what architects are making, thinking about, and valuing. If a pulse is what we were looking for, I would have put the Chicago Architecture Biennial in an ambulance years ago. Past editions were missing the critical, complicated histories of segregation and redlining; the grand, hopeful construction and spectacular destruction of large-scale public housing were glossed over; the seemingly unfixable disrepair that blight clearance brought was barely addressed....
It’s time to gear up for the weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Fri 6/17-Sat 6/18: For the second year, Chicago Ale Fest brings a spate of craft beers from across the nation to Buckingham Fountain (301 S. Columbus). Enjoy more than 200 beers—including sips from local breweries, like Moody Tongue and Temperance Beer Company—in the shadow of the city skyline. Fri 6-10 PM, Sat 2-6 PM
Casting is giddily age blind, even for opera. Both Luisa (soprano Krassimira Stoyanova) and her true love, Rodolfo (tenor Joseph Calleja), look to be—however miraculously—at least as old as their fathers ( baritone Quinn Kelsey, a Lyric favorite, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn). And why not? They all sound fabulous, as does mighty bass Soloman Howard, making his first Lyric appearance as the slimy Wurm, and mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova as the duchess Rodolfo’s father wants him to marry....
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Flesh of the Stars, Mercy Chicago’s Flesh of the Stars released this sweeping, super-clean doom album in June, but its elegant melodies and sense of old-world decay make Mercy feel like it was meant for fall all along. Negative Scanner and Oozing Wound at Bricktown on August 30 Seeing two of Chicago’s most-hyped acts playing a sweaty warehouse flashed me back to 2012....
On “Upset My Girlfriend,” from Metronomy’s 2019 album, Metronomy Forever (Because), Joseph Mount moans, “I used to play drums in a rock ’n’ roll band / But they kicked me out / ’Cause I used to feel it / And so I would speed up.” The song’s sparse, strummy indie pop and ambient keyboard flourishes aren’t rock ’n’ roll at all, but Mount’s lyrics about being so excited about the music (and about a type of stardom he’s not yet attained) make for a good summation of the British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s 20-year career....
On his gorgeous second album Make Way for Love (Dead Oceans), New Zealand crooner Marlon Williams engages in a rite of passage for most singer-songwriters—the breakup album. The ubiquity of such endeavors often means the results are pretty indistinctive, but numerous things set Williams’s version apart from those of other artists. For one, there’s the sophistication, fluidity, and melodic grace of his phrasing; his post-Roy Orbison warble imbues many lines with a gorgeous shimmer that seems to struggle with his emotion-laden lyrics....
Jean de Marco/Architect of US Capitol Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress Tuesday concluded with a ringing declaration ripped from Scripture—and then a standing ovation. Moses was addressing the Israelites on the bank of the River Jordan. As Moses knew, he was hours from his death, and in a handful of days the Israelites, led by Joshua, would cross the Jordan without him. They’d meet little resistance. For Miles’s purpose, which is to riddle out God, what is going on here is vitally important....
If you’re an indie-rock fan with a taste for emo, then the words “Philadelphia band produced by Will Yip” should get your attention. Philly has become a bastion for indie and underground rock this decade thanks to the likes of Yip, a prolific engineer whose studio guidance has helped many of this generation’s best posthardcore bands take flight. In March, Philly four-piece Caracara released the EP Better, which Yip not only produced but also released on his Memory Music label....
The gates of Union Park opened at 3 PM on the first day of the 2016 Pitchfork Music Festival. Reader photographers on the ground are capturing portraits of the audience, and we’ll be updating this post with more photos as the day progresses. Keep up to date in real time with our reporters and photographers on Twitter and Instagram.
When you walk into the second-floor gallery space of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum you might be surprised to see Art Fox’s photographs of birds literally hovering off the wall. For the exhibition “Broken Journey,” instead of being displayed in a standard gallery presentation—where the artworks are positioned flush against the wall—15 of Fox’s images are hung with wire to appear as if they are floating. The birds, all dead, are photographed against blurry backgrounds—the wings of some are bent; others are extended, as if in motion....
Pianist Dave Burrell has never bothered following a script, or at least the one that’s directed most figures involved with the free-jazz ferment of 1960s New York and the expat community that spent a number of fruitful years working in Paris in the late ’60s and early ’70s. His playing has always been built from a deep understanding of hard bop, even as he bent conventions to accommodate heavy-hitters like Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, and Grachan Moncur III, among others....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, July 1, 2016. Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend! The Obama Presidential Library now has two architecture firms working on its design Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, a small New York-based architectural firm, and Interactive Design Architects, a Chicago-based studio, have been chosen to design the Obama Presidential Library. They will be working together on the reportedly $500 million project. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, which designed the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, is known for “big, airy, modernist structures with expansive courtyards,” according to Wired, while IDA collaborated with another firm on the Art Institute’s Modern Wing....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, November 17, 2017. Have a great weekend! Emanuel appoints Andrea Zopp to police board Mayor Rahm Emanuel has appointed World Business Chicago CEO and former deputy mayor Andrea Zopp to the Chicago Police Board. Zopp also served as a prosecutor, ran the Chicago Urban League, and ran in the Democratic primary for Senate in 2016. “If anyone doubts Andy’s ability to call balls and strikes, you don’t have to look any further than her record,” Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said....
Courtesy of Argot Savile & Olin If you’re a Smart Bar regular you’d probably recognize Karl Stein. You can’t miss him if you drop by the club on Saturday—that’s the night Stein, who is just a few inches taller than six feet, works as a bouncer. He’s been working at Smart Bar for close to five years, and had been a longtime regular before that. “Smart Bar is unlike any other club in the city—it’s truly, in my opinion, the only club I’ve been to in Chicago that’s strictly about the music,” Stein says....
Most Americans became aware of Kraftwerk when “Autobahn,” the pioneering German electronic band’s first U.S. single, hit Top 40 playlists in 1975. But not fans of Chicago’s Triad Radio: they’d known about Kraftwerk for years, because the nightly radio show had been programming tracks from the group’s first three albums since 1971. Triad on-air host and program director Saul Smaizys had even played “Autobahn” in 1974—not the 3:27 single edit but the nearly 23-minute album version, from a test pressing of the Autobahn LP delivered by a record-company representative....
Michael Gebert Meat and vegetable empanadas, La Sirena Clandestina Fifty-two thousand empanadas. That’s La Sirena Clandestina general manager Joe DiTola’s estimate of how many empanadas the Fulton Market South American bar and restaurant has served since opening in late 2012, mainly because everybody who comes in orders an empanada or two—everybody. “When we first opened, every ticket said one meat and one vegetable empanada and ceviche, one meat and one vegetable empanada and ceviche,” DiTola says....
Blood Wedding Federico García Lorca’s poetic tragedy is transplanted from the author’s beloved Andalusia to California during the Great Depression in this production directed by Daniel Ostling. It’s still the story of nuptials derailed by hate and lust, and the language (translated from Spanish by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata) is still earthy and passionate. But the look is rough-hewn and dusty. With the sole exception of Kareem Bandealy’s fiery take on the bride’s ex (whom she is most assuredly not over), the acting also has the sort of dry, taciturn quality that would be better suited to a Dorothea Lange photo than to Lorca’s full-blooded poetry....
