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Reba Cafarelli is managing director for Third Coast Percussion, working primarily in booking, marketing, and day-to-day operations. The ensemble is incorporated as a nonprofit, and it has a board of directors and three full-time employees in addition to its four members. In May 2022 Third Coast Percussion plans to release its next album, which will include Perspective, a seven-movement piece created on commission in 2020 by footwork innovator Jlin. As told to Philip Montoro The primary role that I play with Third Coast Percussion is booking....

Michael Gebert Chalkboard over the kitchen pass at Vera Two of my favorite people to talk to about the restaurant business are Liz and Mark Mendez, co-owners of the West Loop Spanish wine bar Vera. They are thoughtful, unafraid to be frank about the ups and downs—plus they run a place small enough that they can more easily put their ideas into practice. The Mendezes’ current object of much thought and debate can be read on the chalkboard over the pass in their kitchen—terroir, the French concept of wine (usually) being an expression of the place, climate, and soil that it’s grown in, which can be undeniable (you really can taste chalk in wines grown in limestone) or marketing-speak designed to justify a high price....

This double bill of recent signees to Chicago’s invaluable Trouble in Mind imprint reflects the label’s knack for locating bands that evoke the heyday of 80s and 90s indie rock and convey a shaggy charm and melodic generosity that’s often missing in today’s underground scene. Chicago’s Ethers features four musicians who’ve been banging around for the last decade in bands such as Heavy Times, Radar Eyes, and Outer Minds, but its forthcoming eponymous debut pushes away from some of the garage-rock flavor one might expect given its members’ pedigrees (though not from its primal drive, thanks to the drumming of Matthew Rolin) for something more tuneful with sounds that recall music from the early 90s....

Even before Noah was born, it was clear his early years would be difficult. An ultrasound when his mother was pregnant showed two holes in his heart and other cardiac abnormalities. He stayed in the hospital after his birth, in November 2013, and had his first heart surgery two weeks later. Recovery from that operation kept him in the hospital until he was three months old. After two months at home, he had to return to the hospital for a second heart surgery....

There’s nothing so discouraging as a dumpling that falls apart. A dumpling is like a nicely wrapped gift, bearing not only its filling, but the pleasures of anticipation, suspense, and ultimate gratification. When a wrapper shreds at the touch of a chopstick, or sticks to the bottom of the steamer until it rips apart, a little piece of my soul dies. Four curries are on offer, from an assertive vegetable jalfrezi to a mild pork vindaloo, and there’s an assortment of small plates and sides, including fries (thick, hand cut, and undercooked) smothered in curry sauce and a complex raita with black mustard seeds and tart green apple slices....

F ive television screens sit around a living room among houseplants, table lamps, and easy chairs. Each screen shows a family member of Rekia Boyd, the 22-year-old woman who was killed by Chicago police officer Dante Servin in March 2012. As Boyd’s brother talks about his sister-the way she laughed, how she would brighten a room-the others listen and then respond. The installation, called Present Absence, evokes a “listening circle,” a virtual dialogue about the deceased, that gives the viewer a more personal look at the life lost....

In Griffin Theatre artistic director William Massolia’s adaptation of Ryan Smithson’s 2009 memoir, Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI, Ryan (Sam Krey), a high school student with little talent and no ambition, decides to join the U.S. Army after 9/11 when he’s struck by an overwhelming sense of love for his fellow Americans as he stands with his junior-college-bound sweetheart in front of a fence strewn with memorabilia for those who fell with the World Trade Towers....

Local singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth has kept busy recently working on a new Advance Base album, Nephew in the Wild, which will be his first full-length since 2012’s lovely A Shut-In’s Prayer. Tomorrow night Ashworth will perform at Comfort Station in Logan Square, which will be the last time you’ll be able to catch him in Chicago till August, which is when he’ll release Nephew in the Wild on his label, Orindal....

It’s common knowledge, though not commonly admitted, that biographers tend to identify with their subjects. Local author Andrea Friederici Ross, who’s written a deeply researched, briskly readable account of the life of Chicago grande dame Edith Rockefeller McCormick, admits this to her readers right up front. During the decade of research and writing that went into Edith: The Rogue Rockefeller McCormick (Southern Illinois University Press), Ross says in her preface, Edith became an obsession, in part because her story “mirrored my own (minus the jewels, the collections, the millions)....

Water covers about 71 percent of the earth’s surface, leaving oceans, lakes, rivers, lagoons, and fjords ripe for exploration. Entire communities of aquatic creatures and a world of coral reefs, shipwrecks, and underwater caves lie below the tides we see on land, and some of these hidden gems are as close as the bottom of Lake Michigan. Jobs didn’t fall into place so easily, however, and after a couple of flops trying to work at other scuba shops, he finally said “screw this” and took matters into his own hands....

Now that Lollapalooza has announced its lineup, it’s time to make predictions about who’ll play Riot Fest in September. This wolf hopes the punk-­centric blowout is where reunited Britpop heroes Blur will make their return to U.S. soil. Other guesses? For now let’s say veteran indie rockers Modest Mouse, Compton rap prince Kendrick Lamar, resurrected San Diego postpunks Drive Like Jehu, Minneapolis hip-hop family Doomtree, shock rocker Marilyn Manson, punky Bright Eyes side project Desaparecidos, and Indiana shoegaze band Cloakroom....

Has it really been just two months since the Illinois shelter-in-place order went into effect? Sometimes live music seems like a fading memory. But when the original experience is especially vivid, it’s not hard for a record like To Catch a Bird in a Net of Wind to bring it all back. The album captures a duo set that electric guitarist Tashi Dorji and percussionist Tyler Damon played at the May Chapel in Rosehill Cemetery, which was part of Elastic Arts’ 2018 Exposure Series....

When you were in high school, did you ever sneak into a girl’s house after school? And did her dad happen to come home, after being fired from work, in the midst of the action? So you hid in the bathroom, only for him to come in there and poop while you’re hiding behind the shower curtain? Well, Korporate has. “#BlackChicagoBeLike is meant to show life in Chicago on the other side of Michigan Avenue,” he says....

The pandemic has kept many of us from leaving the house, but honestly, why would you want to? There is too much TV to watch to go outside. Outside doesn’t have Hulu or Netflix or HBO Max. To encourage you to stay home and stay safe, comedian/writer Rima Parikh and myself (two people who watched just as much TV in the Beforetimes) will be diving deep into the shows we’re loving or lovingly hate-watching, social-distance-style, over Google chat....

It’s a nerd-out for people who love typography.” That’s how entrepreneur and Lumpen publisher Ed Marszewski describes Typeforce, the annual typographic-art show he cocurates with Dawn Hancock, the founder and managing director of local design studio Firebelly. This is Typeforce’s seventh year, and the event continues to grow in stature: Marszewski and Hancock received around 200 entries from all around Chicago, the country, and the world. Unfortunately, they can only showcase around 20 artists....

Grant James Varjas’s 33 to Nothing begins with a warning: This is a show about a rock band’s real-time rehearsal, and it gets very loud in A Red Orchid’s tight space. The production kicks off with an explosion of sound as the musicians immediately get to work before putting each other through intense emotional labor. Complimentary earplugs are provided on each of the seats. Affectionately described by lead singer Gray (a belligerent, despondent Aaron Holland) as “the gay Fleetwood Mac,” this group is falling apart as personal conflicts and dwindling audience numbers put its future in question....

The first Chicago guidebook I ever read was written by a New Yorker. One of my next discoveries was Isabella Bird’s An Englishwoman in America. Published in 1856, the book covers Bird’s travels around the United States and Canada a few years prior. Looking through the table of contents, I breezed by the chapter subheadings “The hickory stick,” “Hard and soft shells,” and “Nocturnal detention.” My eyelids began to drop and then I glimpsed the windiest one of all: “A Chicago hotel, its inmates and its horrors....

Berlin-based pianist Aki Takase has been performing for more than 40 years, and in that time she’s engaged with contemporary composition, spoken word, and even a turntablist—the trio Lok 03 includes her husband, fellow pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, and their son, DJ Illvibe. But no matter where she roams, her playing is fundamentally rooted in jazz. Her 1978 debut album, Aki, featured a piano-bass-drums trio, and on the new Auge she revisits that classic jazz setting for the first time in more than a decade....

I was once at a Nest Egg gig where a friend said to me, “The thing I love about these guys is that they’re punks who just happen to play psychedelic music.” This joyously astute statement gets at something important about psychedelia: though the word often conjures lovey-dovey visions of the pastoral and the perfumed, 1970s movements such as Krautrock and Eurorock took these heady, trance-inducing sounds into much bleaker and more experimental terrain....

Bettye LaVette had her first brush with stardom as a sassy teenage soul singer in the early 1960s, but she’s long since transcended genre—she’s now a magnificent vocalist who can make seemingly any song sound as though it were written specifically for her. Bettye LaVette Sat 6/8, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion Bettye LaVette’s debut single, 1962’s “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man” When her next single flopped, LaVette went to New York and audaciously demanded that Atlantic honcho Jerry Wexler release her from her contract....