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André Løyning Ola Kvernberg Norwegian violinist and composer Ola Kvernberg has strong jazz roots—early in his career he was a feverish exponent of jazz manouche (made famous by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli) before getting involved in more modern, progressive approaches. He’s played in Chicago before thanks to his membership in the long-running quintet led by bassist Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, who lived here for a few years. But Kvernberg’s latest album reveals a more composition-oriented mind-set—that’s a common thing for creative musicians from Norway, who frequently work in numerous traditions even if they identify primarily with improvised music....

Sometimes Marina Rosenfeld is a turntablist who layers the sounds of specially made, heavily used acetates into gritty sonic expanses. Other times she is a conceptual composer. Her performers’ histories, interests, and personalities become material influences on a composition; for example, her desire to work with people of a generation that had grown up having personal relationships with their electronics led to Teenage Lontano, which she devised for the 2008 Whitney Biennale....

After months of pushing by cycling advocates to bring dockless bike-share to Chicago, the technology finally debuted this morning in Beverly as 19th Ward alderman Matthew O’Shea cut the ribbon on a fleet of shiny new LimeBike cycles in the County Fair Foods parking lot. Meanwhile competing vendor Zagster is also rolling out bikes today, and dockless cycles from company Ofo and Jump will likely be popping up on south-side streets any time now....

O wen Daniel-McCarter is a longtime activist, lawyer, and Chicagoan. As one of the founders of the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois and the outgoing executive director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, Daniel-McCarter has fought for the past decade to make this city and state a better place for trans people to live. He’s guided me and many other Chicagoans on legal matters related to trans identity, and he’s taught me how to build a community that works towards trans liberation....

Darrell W. Cox, coartistic director of the now-closed Profiles Theatre, has denied accusations of abuse leveled against him by former actors and crew members in last week’s Reader cover story. In addition, three more actors have come forward since the Reader‘s investigation was published to share their previously untold stories of onstage violence and lack of supervision at Profiles: Kevin Bigley and Emily Vajda, who were both part of Killer Joe, and Larry Neumann Jr....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 13, 2017. A GOP state representative from the suburbs is running against Rauner from the right Republican state representative Jeanne Ives is trying to win conservative support for her primary challenge against unpopular incumbent governor Bruce Rauner. During an appearance in Arlington Heights Saturday, she criticized the governor for signing the sanctuary state bill, the school funding bill, and the reproductive rights bill HB 40, which allows state health insurance and Medicaid funding for abortion and eliminates a “trigger provision” that would have made abortion illegal if Roe v....

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story profiles one of the most glamorous stars of Hollywood’s golden age, but it’s not your usual silver-screen documentary. Drawing on several books (most notably Hedy’s Folly by science writer Richard Rhodes), writer-director Alexandra Dean moves past Lamarr’s movie career in the 1930s and ’40s to explore her little-known sideline as an inventor, one whose patented device for radio “frequency hopping,” developed to guide torpedoes during World War II, has become a building block of modern wireless technology....

On their latest album, the awkwardly titled 0-100 A the Speed of the Present (Hausu Mountain), this wonderfully squirmy improv-centric duo from Kent, Ohio, continue to collide acoustic and electronic—and silly and serious—in beguiling, bizarre ways. The bulk of their sound field is occupied by the gurgling, liquid electronics of Pat Modugno: steadily shifting combinations of queasy synth washes, space-age noodling, electronic drum sounds that seem sampled from a child’s toy, and atmospheric transmissions that suggest a leisurely swim through heavy cream....

The Humane League isn’t lovin’ McDonald’s treatment of chickens. On Wednesday morning, members of the the Humane League—including a man dressed as Ronald McDonald and a person in a disfigured chicken suit—protested outside the McDonald’s in the Loop at 23 S. Clark. The group is busy Thursday with a “virtual reality and 3-D tabling event” in Wicker Park, followed by a “community launch party” at Revolution Brewing (3340 N. Kedzie) later tonight....

In 2012 Northwestern University photography professor Pamela Bannos got a call from WTTW that sent her down a research rabbit hole from which she’s just emerged, new book in hand. That’s a major conceptual reversal, and Bannos told me in a brief interview last week that it was her impetus for writing the book. “I wanted to give her agency back,” she said. For years now, Bannos added, all we’ve heard about Maier, and all we’ve seen of her photographs is, “what the men who had her work were selecting....

It’s no surprise that COVID-19 has disrupted our typical dating routines. Forced into isolation with roommates or partners, or on our own, cruising for a fling just isn’t as easy (or recommended) as it once was. On top of casual dating, maintaining nonmonogamous relationships presents challenges for those trying to proceed with their romantic lives. For many folks, their partnerships are evolving day by day as social distancing shifts to the new normal and shelter-in-place circumstances disrupt poly formations....

The other day I was the beneficiary of a bucket of savory corned beef stock left over from a (quiet) neighborhood restaurant’s St. Patrick’s Day special. I strained it, skimmed the fat, reduced it to a super salty but pretty tasty concentrate, and squirreled it away in the freezer to serve as future soup or sauce base. Nitrates be damned, it’s gonna good.* *Don’t donate your leftover corned beef stock....

“Lit!” is what writer and publisher Mallory Smart says more often than not. I don’t always know what she means, but I think it’s a good thing. I first heard of Smart when she interviewed Giacomo Pope (the founder of the literary website Neutral Spaces) for her podcast. Smart’s podcast is called Textual Healing, which makes me laugh, but Smart tells me few listeners or guests get the Marvin Gaye pun....

Anton Chekhov’s famous dictum that if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must go off by the second is reimagined in Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco’s Kiev in the seemingly innocuous form of a diving board. No one literally goes off the board into the stinking murky waters of the pool on the Badenweiler estate, soon to be demolished by steamrollers. But what it hides has poisoned the whole family....

I know I should be feeling optimistic as 2020 mercifully draws to a close with our chief objective having been met—President Donnie bounced from office. Part of the problem is the age-old squabble between centrists and lefties—who used to be called progressives. On top of the intraparty rivalries, Dems have to contend with the ongoing hypocrisy of party leaders who say one thing and then do something else. Thus, undercutting the message they want to convey....

Milwaukee’s loudest Renaissance man, Peter J Woods has spent the last decade and a half keeping his energy flowing through a variety of media—he’s an absurdist, avant-garde playwright, a performance artist, a visual artist, and is probably best known as a harsh-noise wizard. Some might say that musical genre has a limited emotional palette and has its best years behind it, but Woods is having none of that, and his natural theatricality and inventiveness keep his work fresh and challenging....

John Avila’s mom and grandma tried to “sneak” some tikus rica rica into his bowl when he visited their hometown in the mountains of North Sulawesi, Indonesia, a few years back. Avila, who’s 32, has been cooking in Chicago for a dozen years under some familiar chefs. His first job out of culinary school was at Jackie Shen’s erstwhile Red Light before moving on to the Sofitel under Greg Biggers, and the Four Seasons when Kevin Hickey was in charge....