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On July 5, 2013, people living in many north-side lakefront apartments and condos had their gorgeous Friday afternoon disrupted by pounding bass that made their floors quake and their windows rattle. Throughout their neighborhood, thousands of people, most young and many in beachwear, thronged the sidewalks and streets. The offending party was the Wavefront Music Festival, an electronic-­music blowout on Montrose Beach, and the annoyances persisted till late Sunday. The fest had debuted the previous year without causing much trouble, but for 2013 it grew from two days to three and got much bigger and louder—it used such powerful subwoofers that people in Rogers Park claimed to be able to hear them....

Crystal Pite’s evolution as a choreographer has been driven by a proverb: “Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.” Theater audiences want to feel represented by the performers, and Pite seeks to create that connection through dance. The three works presented in Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Winter Series are a series of experiments exploring this idea through narrative. But those narratives aren’t set in stone. A new company of dancers means a new approach to each of these works, which debuted between 2008 and 2012....

Singer-songwriter Johari Noelle lives in a South Shore apartment that’s filled with art. Colorful paintings—slices of nature, simple human figures, abstract symbols—cover the wall between her kitchen and living room, most of them her own work. They’re complemented on the adjoining wall by an array of black-and-white photos and several photography backdrops, courtesy of her boyfriend and manager, James McCarter. Noelle’s resumé includes acting, musical theater, and reality TV, but for the past 18 months, the 23-year-old Chicago native has focused less on bringing other people’s visions to life and more on creating a musical statement of her own....

In a darkened room, four overhead projectors snap on. A picture of a street in Bronzeville slides onto a movie screen. Behind one of the projectors, Jyreika Guest and Eunice Woods drop two paper cutouts onto the glass surface and move them back and forth. Onscreen, the silhouettes of two well-to-do white women circa 1950 stroll down the street. “Is this it?” they coo. “Is this where the Negro poetess lives?...

While it’s impossible to pinpoint a single peak in John Coltrane’s vast discography, Ascension is one of his most intense expressions of transcendental intent. Local musician Joshua Abrams knows his Coltrane, so it’s no accident that he’s given the name Descension to this summit between his group Natural Information Society and English saxophonist (and fellow Coltrane aficionado) Evan Parker, recorded in 2019 at London’s Cafe Oto. The title of the 75-minute piece suggests downward movement, but the recording proves just as effective as Coltrane’s music at inducing an ecstatic state—even though it incorporates influences that never showed up in the master’s work....

There’s nothing quite as disconcerting as the sound of a microwave pinging in the middle of a quiet restaurant. On a polar December night on Devon Avenue, that very sound gave me concern for the condition of my mohinga, a hot, fish-based noodle soup from Burma, or Myanmar, as its military dictatorship renamed it in 1989. If you, as a Chicagoan, have pined for Burmese food as I have, there are other dishes on the menu at the Family House that will immediately grab your attention....

Heather Ireland Robinson has been executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago for less than a month, having officially replaced the long-serving Lauren Deutsch on March 1. But she’s been working as an arts administrator for 20 years, most recently lending her expertise to the Beverly Arts Center, where she served as executive director from 2014 to 2017. She previously worked for the South Side Community Art Center, Marwen, After School Matters, and Gallery 37, among other institutions—and from 2002 to 2004, she was the Jazz Institute’s education and community coordinator, helping lay the foundation for its Jazz Links program....

Among the many outstanding live acts Gossip Wolf has missed over the past 15 months, few rank higher than the LowDown Brass Band. Their mix of New Orleans-style second-line horns with hip-hop and reggae rhythms can make any venue feel like a delightfully sweaty street parade. In February, the band began releasing a series of one- and two-minute tracks, each accompanied by a video (most were shot outdoors, including on the Riverwalk, by the Calder Flamingo in Federal Plaza, and in a convertible on Lake Shore Drive)....

Q: I can’t believe this is why I’m finally writing you. My husband is using Pokémon Go as an excuse to stay out until 5 AM with another woman. She is beautiful and about a decade younger than him, and he won’t hear me out on why this is bothersome. Our work schedules don’t match up, and he always wants me to meet him in the wee hours of the morning after I’ve worked a full day shift and done all the work looking after our pets....

Earlier this week, Red Bull launched Rise Till Dawn—an all-night Fortnite tournament in July starring local streaming sensation Tyler “Ninja” Blevins on the 99th floor of the Willis Tower. It’s no surprise that the event sold out in a few short minutes, Fortnite is arguably the breakout entertainment hit of 2018—played by 40 million people—and Ninja is the game’s biggest star. WHO’s inclusion of gaming disorder in the ICD earned significant coverage from many major news outlets....

Pitchfork is giving fans of hip-hop, soul, and R&B plenty to look forward to: Anderson .Paak & the Free Nationals, BJ the Chicago Kid, Jeremih, Kamasi Washington, Mick Jenkins, Thundercat, Miguel. But there are dozens more performers on the bill, and part of the appeal of a big, diverse music festival is that listeners can branch out and explore artists operating in genres outside their comfort zones. It’s a good way to get your money’s worth (those passes aren’t cheap) and enjoy everything Pitchfork has to offer....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media An attorney for convicted heroin dealer Jason Austin, shown here in 2008, says witnesses against him committed perjury. Who told the truth, and who didn’t? The central problem is that either police or the key witness in the case—or both—committed perjury, attorney Richard Kling argues in a brief filed last week. U.S. attorney Zachary Fardon called the 35-year sentence “a modest measure of justice” for the families of police detective Robert Soto and social worker Kathryn Romberg, who were shot while sitting in an SUV in West Humboldt Park on August 13, 2008....

Imagine a world in which men, not women, are the ones who get pregnant. They’d be buying their abortion pills over the counter at the drugstore. There’s no way they’d make it criminal to opt out. The strategy among antiabortion forces—in the face of the constitutional right established by Roe v. Wade in 1973—is to chip away at that right until it disappears. The Supreme Court could make a decision this month on a Texas case regarding a law that, by setting stricter standards for abortion providers, would shut down most of the state’s clinics and would in effect invite other states to enact similar restrictions....

Joshua Harmon’s 2018 Admissions opens in an administrative office at Hillcrest, an elite prep school in New Hampshire, where two blonde women bicker about the new admissions catalogue. Admissions director Sherri Rosen-Mason (Meighan Gerachis) points out that the images intended to cozen the privileged into throwing down cash for high school en route to an implied Ivy League future fail to represent Hillcrest’s current population, which has, under her ministrations, grown to 18 percent students of color....

It’s every bicyclist’s nightmare: You’re riding on an arterial street, perhaps in a bike lane, when a truck appears on your left. The driver fails to check for bikes before making a right turn, causing a “right-hook” crash. The truck blocks your path, you’re struck, and you fall under the massive vehicle. The rear wheels roll over your body, causing severe, likely fatal, injuries. A candlelight vigil and “ghost bike” installation for Kondrasheva is scheduled for tonight at 6:30 PM at the crash site....

Iconic singer Bette Midler cut her teeth at New York City’s Continental Baths, earning the nickname “Bathhouse Betty” and an adoring legion of LGBTQ fans. In an impersonation honed over the last five years, performer Caitlin Jackson expertly captures the exuberance, confidence, and devil-may-care sex appeal of the Divine Miss M in her formative years. But her talent can’t redeem a poorly constructed and written holiday revue. This Hell in a Handbag Productions show, adapted by Jackson and artistic director David Cerda and directed by Jackson and Marc Lewallen, is set in the early 1970s with a young Midler joking, “This is my 800th farewell appearance here at the Continental Baths....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, these shows have been postponed until August 27 and 28. Tickets already purchased will be honored at that time. Contact point of purchase for refund or exchange information. Black Pumas are an electrifying six-piece neosoul band led by Adrian Quesada and Eric Burton—a musical partnership made in heaven. Born in Laredo, Texas, and based in Austin, Quesada is a guitarist, composer, and Renaissance man (Texas Music Magazine called him “Texas’ version of Quincy Jones”), and he’s been central to a wide variety of influential musical projects in his home state, including the salsa-infused rock fusion of Grupo Fantasma, a norteño rock opera called Pancho Villa at a Safe Distance, and Latinx funk band Brownout....

My fascination with Rod Blagojevich knows no bounds. I used to live a couple blocks from him and would wave as he, inexplicably, jogged down the middle of the street. At parties—the ones I’m still invited to—I’m happy to find an opportunity to steer the conversation to Illinois’s disgraced former governor. And I once presented him with a magazine cover mocking his corrupt past and reality-show heel turn, which he signed: “Jonathan, you are F-ing golden!...

Several hundred people gathered in the sweltering gymnasium of Truman College Tuesday to share personal stories of shootings, beatings, and robberies by Chicago police officers, and call for the U.S. Department of Justice to “do something” about police abuse. It was the third of four community forums organized by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division designed to solicit public participation in the agency’s investigation into CPD. DOJ attorneys Nicole Porter and Emily Gunston listened patiently and empathetically for two and a half hours as a fleet of department staffers recorded every testimony....

More than 100 people gathered at a southeast-side community center Thursday evening to hear city and federal officials talk about manganese pollution recently discovered near an industrial storage facility owned by the S.H. Bell Company. The city’s Department of Public Health presented data from soil sampling conduced at 27 addresses; some samples revealed concentrations of the neurotoxic heavy metal that exceeds thresholds for emergency removal. Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the CDC were also present to outline next steps in analyzing the soil at homes near S....