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Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Morgan Dixon, church administrator, youth minister, and GirlTrekker. “I work at DuPage AME Church in Lisle. AME is an acronym for African Methodist Episcopal. It is a predominantly African-American denomination, and we got a lot of publicity last summer because of the massacre in Charleston at one of our sister churches, Emanuel AME....

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....

This morning NPR Music published the results of the annual Jazz Critics Poll organized by Francis Davis—it’s been hosted by NPR Music for the past five years, but it started in 2006 at the Village Voice. Though only one album from my personal top ten landed in the upper echelons of the poll, I can heartily recommend all of the consensus picks, especially the new albums by Vijay Iyer, Craig Taborn, Nicole Mitchell, and Roscoe Mitchell....

When the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released its report last month detailing just how enhanced the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” got during the Bush administration’s war on terror, the least surprising response was probably Dick Cheney’s. The former vice president first said the report was “full of crap”; then, a few days later, he vehemently defended the interrogation and detention program as entirely justified and legal. In other words, I didn’t do it—and I’d do it again....

Michael Vallera has worked in a wide variety of Chicago bands including Cleared, Luggage, and Maar, exploring disparate facets of his musical interests, many of them aggressively loud. Over the last few years he’s pursued an interest in meditative ambient sounds. I was a bit surprised that on his 2016 solo debut, Vivid Flu, he’d removed most of the dissonance and bite that’s marked so much of his other music, instead revealing restrained and almost gothic atmospheres....

Courtesy the artist Platinum Boys HoZac’s Blackout weekend is underway, and helping get the notoriously debaucherous festival started tonight is Milwaukee’s Platinum Boys. Made up of stalwarts from Milwaukee’s arty experimental-music scene, these guys throw all subtlety and nuance to the wind and come out swinging with Miller Lite-soaked, unabashed party rock. On today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Cruisin USA,” the loose-gang vocals sing of the need for weed and speed, and the simple, straightforward punk tune and shredding guitar solos perfectly showcase that these guys are just in this for a good time....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. The Messthetics by The Messthetics Habibi Speaking of the Cramps, their cover of the eponymous classic by Texas protopunk/garage legends Green Fuz introduced its mighty stomp to a new generation—and now perhaps the most engaging version yet has appeared. The women of New York’s Habibi throw down Middle Eastern-tinged psych-rock replete with 60s girl-group singing—their cover of “Green Fuz” with Farsi vocals is spellbinding....

Kuzu formed in 2017, when electric guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer Tyler Damon invited saxophonist Dave Rempis to join their duo onstage at Elastic Arts. The set went so well that they recorded an album the next day. Anyone who knew what that record’s title, Hiljaisuus, means in Finnish probably just thought the trio were trolling—“silence” was the last thing you’d expect from three musicians so adept at managing high volume, and they’d delivered exactly the sort of blistering barrage you’d expect....

Queer history lives in its multitudes. While specific individuals like San Francisco politician Harvey Milk and Chicago businessman and photographer Chuck Renslow have historically dominated the spotlight, the real legacy of queerness is rooted in the untold stories of the historically forgotten and discarded, those refusing to passively accept their assumed fates. Every untold act of resistance echoes down to us today, whether we know it or not. As one web series of underreported trans narratives says: We’ve Been Around....

In the fall, Chicago nonprofit the Modern Dance Music Research and Archive Foundation kicked off a yearlong partnership with the Old Town School of Folk Music to celebrate the city’s house-music history. Tonight the Old Town School hosts an event born of that partnership, focusing on the labels, middlemen, and other behind-the-scenes operators who helped launch house from Chicago’s underground clubs onto pop charts around the world. The panel discussion, called the Business of House, is anchored by Kevin McFall, senior vice president of strategy and business development for the Johnson Publishing Company, and attorney Jay B....

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear,” went the intro toThe Lone Ranger radio and TV shows. Marriott Theatre’s revival of Oklahoma! might as well start with the same line. Interested in a realistic depiction of life in the Sooner State on the eve of its 1907 admission to the union? One that alludes to ugly truths about the way Native Americans were treated? One that so much as features a Native American?...

For years, Saint Jhn wrote for the likes of Usher, Joey Bada$$, and Jidenna, and even modeled on the side. But he grew tired of being another artist’s voice or a designer’s mannequin; with his debut album, Collection One (Godd Complexx/Hitco), Saint Jhn—who grew up in Guyana and Brooklyn—aims to tell his story for himself. In the vein of rappers/singers such as Tory Lanez, Bryson Tiller, and PnB Rock, he talks about getting with women, the temptations of alcohol, and reaching success, over standard contemporary R&B production: rumbling bass, stuttering hi-hat trap beats, and minimal melodies....

Governor Rauner made a royal ass of himself when he went on radio station WJPF in Carterville, “the voice of southern Illinois,” earlier this week. And no, I’m not talking about the part where Rauner vowed to keep the state out of education so the locals can control their schools. “I do not support legalizing recreational marijuana. I think it’s a big experiment on young people’s brains and development. We should study what’s going on in Colorado and California,” Rauner said....

At most any nightclub packed wall to wall, teeming with body heat, it’s not out of the ordinary for a few patrons to dance or lounge around shirtless—that is, if you’re a man. But there’s another important layer to Sullivan-Knoff’s suit, which she highlighted in an interview with the Reader last week. Sullivan-Knoff, a queer, transgender woman, points out that the ordinance also places transgender and gender non-conforming people in a precarious position—one that’s been reinforced by the relentless national debate about trans people using bathrooms, locker rooms, and other gendered public accommodations....

Update for June 5: Pivot Arts has made some changes to the schedule for this year’s festival. The livestream celebration and dance party originally scheduled for tonight’s opening night have been postponed to June 11. Instead, tonight will feature new works on video by Red Clay Dance Company (originally scheduled June 6) and the Era Footwork Crew (as scheduled). See the festival website for complete schedule. One of the “silver linings” of the reimagined Pivot Festival for Ehre is the ability to bring in artists from outside Chicago, including New York-based Obie Award-winning solo performer David Cale, who has been performing at the Goodman for decades....

Rockefeller Chapel has hosted some remarkable concerts in recent years. The organization Ambient Church, which presents atmospheric music in visually and sonically exalted spaces, chose the 91-year-old structure as the site for the concert it staged in Chicago last December. Rockefeller has also hosted minimalist composer-performer Charlemagne Palestine, drone-metal group Sunn O))), and local sound artist Olivia Block. This month, Sarah Davachi can add her name to that list. When the Calgary-born, Los Angeles-based composer and keyboardist toured Europe in 2017, she spent hours at a time in churches, finding not only respite from the blur of life on the road but also an inspiration for her marvelous 2018 LP, Gave in Rest (Ba Da Bing)....

Malik Taylor, aka Phife Dawg, the “funky five footer” whose limber, animated rhymes helped make New York hip-hop outfit A Tribe Called Quest one of the genre’s fundamental groups, died last Tuesday at age 45. By now this isn’t news, and not just because Taylor’s memorial was yesterday—he had such an immeasurable influence over hip-hop and pop that his death was immediately felt. And his work remains immediate too: the collagelike vitality of Tribe’s Afrocentric stomp makes it timeless....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is contest entrant Cynthia Kendall, 50. I put most of the money in the bank, and it has been helping me cover all sorts of things for the past couple of years. Right around that time my kids and I had planned a trip to Universal Studios in Florida. For the first time ever I was like, “Yeah!...