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Scottish composer Anna Meredith has found a niche working with classical institutions in their efforts to engage new listeners. Her piece “Connect It,” which demonstrates a canon using body percussion and beatboxing—with rhythmic patterns passed around between performers—was part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces program, an endeavor to get kids ages seven to 14 interested in classical music. Her more serious works for the likes of the London Sinfonietta have used similar sonic and performative elements....

I’ve always thought of grappa as something old men drink, a rough spirit with lots of burn and little flavor, like a cheap vodka. The Italian spirit, distilled from pomace—the grape skins, pulp, seeds, and stems left over after grapes are pressed for wine making—has historically been a workingman’s drink, cheap and strong. In the last several years, though, better grappa has been making its way to the U.S.; Nonino’s much-praised single-varietal grappas have been available for a while now, Chicago’s Rhine Hall has been making grappa since it opened in 2013, and there are at least a few grappa options at most good liquor stores....

One of the TV ads put out to promote the Safe Roads Amendment is downright terrifying. Both the Tribune and the Sun-Times have urged readers to vote no on the measure, arguing that the campaign is fueled by cronyism, and that politicians shouldn’t need a constitutional amendment to force them into fiscal discipline. In September the Tribune ran an editorial blasting the amendment as “diabolical,” asserting that it would serve as a gravy train for the contractors and unions who make campaign donations to politicians....

The fourth Run the Jewels full-length, RTJ4, is the hardcore rap duo’s first since Donald Trump’s inauguration. Not at all by coincidence, it’s also the most sociopolitically outspoken album they’ve released to date. On their third, released at the end of 2016, rapper-activist Killer Mike and rapper-producer El-P let poignant, sober lyrics about war, religion, love, and redemption shine through the cracks in their armor of car-bombing braggadocio. Their fuck-the-power attitude and rap-battle instincts also inform RTJ4, which features plenty of the group’s characteristic mix of John Carpenter-esque synth sounds, boom-bap beats, and trap rhythms....

John Snyder lays downs gnarly, surging, needling analog synthesizer tones alongside multihorn player Joe McPhee on The Willisau Concert, a 1975 concert recording originally released by Hat Hut and recently reissued by Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey. The album, which also features the explosive drumming of South African Makaya Ntshoko, is a typically quizzical affair for McPhee, who’s built a career moving in and out of jazz orthodoxy while letting his curiosity and experimental impulses guide him....

The 20th Ward of Chicago stands at a historic moment. It’s on the verge of tying with the 23rd and 31st wards, both of which have had three aldermen go to prison since 1972, for the unprestigious distinction of most aldermen convicted for corruption. Its current alderman, self-described “gangster” Willie Cochran, awaits a federal trial on bribery, extortion, and wire fraud charges. Over the last 30 years two of his three predecessors—Cliff Kelley and Arenda Troutman—have gone to prison for bribery and fraud....

Here’s one thing about reproductive rights I know for sure: If men were the ones who had to carry a pregnancy for nine months, go through an excruciating childbirth, and then be responsible for the care and well-­being of another person for the next several decades, they’d be picking up their over-the-counter abortion pills at the drugstore along with their shaving lotion. Maybe even at the grocery store. Nobody would bat an eye....

Blues music thrives on live interaction between performer and audience, but for nearly a year and a half, that’s been in short supply. Clubs are caught between “waiting to reopen” and “slowly coming back,” and Millennium Park has been largely quiet—for two Junes running, the city has canceled the Chicago Blues Festival. Our blues artists haven’t shown any serious signs of decline, though, even in these grim circumstances, and we’ll get a sampling of what they have to offer when the city’s Chicago in Tune festival presents a free Pritzker Pavilion concert on September 18 to mark the 50th anniversary of Alligator Records....

The land my family owns is in Boley, Oklahoma. Boley is one of the more than 50 towns in the state where Creek Native Americans and the descendants of formerly enslaved Black people, called “Creek Freedmen,” found unoccupied land after the Muskogee Cimeter, a Black newspaper, posted an advertisement: “Thousands of our native people are land holders, and have thousands of acres of rich lands to rent and lease. We prefer to rent and lease our lands to colored people....

With dozens of gallery booths spread across Navy Pier’s 170,000-square-foot Festival Hall, Expo Chicago offers a prime opportunity to see new art. But is it also the right venue for someone who’s looking to begin collecting? Adam Fields, who’s been collecting for six years and has attended Expo since its inaugural, believes it is. “It showcases the majority of the local galleries and local artists,” he says. Fields is a Chicago native who now lives in New York, where he’s the founder and CEO of Arta, a start-up he describes as “Expedia for high-end art shipping....

Has anyone ever been disowned faster than Juan Thompson? A former reporter for the website The Intercept, he allegedly “fabricated several quotes in his stories and created fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people, one of which was a Gmail account in my name.” Until hours ago, stories by Thompson for the Intercept were topped by an intro that called him a “former reporter with a focus on crime, punishment, the police state, and race....

As it was for the people behind virtually every other progressive cause, the election of Donald Trump was a sad day for those of us who want to see the U.S. move toward a more efficient, healthy, and equitable transportation system. Under the Obama administration, our city won many federal grants and loans for CTA track and station improvements, as well as bike and pedestrian projects like the Divvy system, the Bloomingdale Trail, and the Chicago Riverwalk extension....

A man in a black suit with an earpiece met us at the front door at Mordecai. We’d missed the sign, but since he told us this with the cheerful demeanor of a prison guard—and without explaining why—we offered to exit and reenter next door through the Hotel Zachary. We wanted to do the right thing for Mordecai. There are TVs above the bar too. In kindness, they’re mounted behind screens—which oddly doesn’t allow much close scrutiny of the game, calling into question their very purpose....

It’s been almost 25 years since I first met Andrew Kitchen, but when we recently got together for not-drinks (“Sorry,” he apologized, “I only drink martinis and daiquiris”), the perpetually aspiring media mogul looked exactly the same as he had in the mid-90s. A long-running joke about Dick Clark—who kicked off the TV dance craze in 1957 when the Philadelphia show he hosted, Bandstand, went national and became American Bandstand—imagined that he never aged....

Eric Zorn noted the other day that Monday marks the 30th anniversary of his arrival in the pages of the Tribune as a columnist. Zorn counted his blessings. But Zorn dug in. He mastered the case file and sicced logic and common sense on prosecutor Jim Ryan’s case for executing Cruz. The case fell apart. “This case is not about technicalities; it’s about a massive miscarriage of justice, blatant misrepresentations to the jury,” Zorn told us then....

I’ve been a fan of Bay Area bassist Lisa Mezzacappa for years now, especially her work in several strong collectives—including Cylinder with reedist Aram Shelton (a former Chicagoan) and a nameless quartet with trumpeter Darren Johnston, saxophonist Aaron Bennett, and drummer Frank Rosaly (another former Chicagoan). But she came up big in 2017 with two impressive and very different albums, each of which reveals talents as a bandleader and conceptual composer that I hadn’t known she had....

The sketch group Hijinks has never settled for just being funny. In fact, the five-person troupe has never done the same show twice, no matter how many laughs it might have gotten on a particular night. Having for the past year put on monthly experimental shows utilizing offbeat formats and styles in nontraditional venues, Hijinks this month moves to a permanent home at iO. As a housewarming in its new digs, the group is doing something else it’s never done before—a 12-hour marathon production dubbed Hijinks Fest: We’re All Gonna Die....

Noah Berlatsky: Jeremih’s Green Stage set on Sunday had a similar communal vibe to that of fellow Chicagoan RP Boo the day before, albeit with less frantic virtuosity and more sex. The crowd enthusiastically shouted again and again for “old shit” rather than “new shit,” and Jeremih obliged, encouraging call-and-response and repeatedly thanking old fans, a number of whom were dancing on stage along with him. Chance the Rapper showed up too, bouncing around enthusiastically for a song or two....

Chicago has earned bragging rights as the birthplace of Black gospel music. It was here that gospel was first composed, sung, played, published, promoted, recorded, broadcast, and formalized—the last via a national convention with regional chapters. Migrants to Chicago from the south in particular found comfort in it, because it articulated their shared experiences as strangers in a strange land and reminded them of their southern roots. The seeds of gospel took root in Chicago with the planting of Pentecostal and Holiness churches on the south and west sides in the 1910s and 1920s....

Von Freeman Pavilion Noon | James Sanders Proyecto Libre Local violinist James Sanders is accustomed to moving between genres: he plays classical music with the Chicago Sinfonietta, straight-ahead jazz with the Blue Violin Quartet, and Latin dance with Conjunto. Proyecto Libre is Sanders’s take on free jazz, but it’s hardly a free-for-all—rather it’s a band where he’s free to mix it all up. Bassists Joshua Abrams and Harrison Bankhead spend as much time grooving with percussionist Jean-­Christophe Leroy and drummer Avreeayl Ra as they do weaving rich, intricate harmonies with Sanders and saxophonist Edward Wilkerson Jr....