Posts

“Weird Al” Yankovic . . . with a symphony? That’s right—the paragon of parody has added orchestral accompaniment for his current Strings Attached tour. At each stop, local musicians will juxtapose their symphonic grandeur with Yankovic’s musical goofiness. It’s particularly apt for the highbrow vibes of Ravinia, but longtime Al fans shouldn’t fret; his set promises to include the nonsensical costume changes, props, and video projections that make his live show such a blast....

roadtrippers.com This is a buried giant in Chesterfield, Missouri. Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer who really tries the patience of his readers. First he made us wait ten years for his follow-up to Never Let Me Go. And it turns out to be The Buried Giant. This makes reading The Buried Giant an eminently frustrating experience, even if you remember Never Let Me Go and that Isiguro is a master of the slow burn....

Former Chicagon Ben Babbitt knocked me out with his 2014 score for the third act of Kentucky Route Zero, a magical-realist video game by Chicago indie developer Cardboard Computer. The fourth act came out last month, which I learned when I got an e-mail from Bandcamp this weekend alerting me to the release of Babbitt’s score for it. It’s immersive, largely instrumental, and suffused with wistfulness and mystery—I’ve listened to it several times a day all week....

Starting a theater company any time is tough. Starting one right before a pandemic shuts down performing arts venues around the globe is maybe the worst possible timing. But for Perceptions Theatre, going digital with their first full show provided possibilities they hadn’t imagined. And that show—Black Magic by Jerluane “Jay” Jenkins—addresses issues of pain and loss for Black women in ways that feel particularly poignant right now. Perceptions was in its second day of auditions for a live staging of Black Magic when they realized that the shutdown was coming....

It’s been almost eight years since we’ve heard new music from local weirdos Paper Mice, but their brand-new 1-800-MONDAYS (Three One G) was worth the wait—it’s easily their best record yet. This time around, the trio blur the line between pop and herky-jerky math rock more thoroughly than ever before, stepping up the polyrhythms and bizarre time signatures that provide the foundation for their catchiest and most sophisticated melody making to date....

QYou often mention asexual people. I believe I may be one. I’m a 51-year-old woman. I’ve been separated from my opposite-sex partner for nearly nine years. I’ve been approached by a variety of men, each one interested in becoming “more than friends.” I haunt Craigslist’s “platonic m4w” section, but each time I reach out to someone, he turns out to want a FWB or NSA relationship. It’s frustrating! That part of my life—the sex part—is really and truly over!...

Once you start talking to Dylan Lipe, Director of Culinary Operations at BBQ Supply Co., it’s clear he knows more about meat and the science of barbecue than perhaps anyone you have ever met before. Yes, you should have paid more attention in chemistry, but why not just enjoy some of the best Texas-style barbecued brisket, ribs, sausage, and pulled pork and chicken you’ll find north of the Longhorn state....

Laura Jacqmin spent “a solid ten years” (2006 to 2016) in Chicago as a playwright. During that time she developed an admirably eclectic body of work ranging from comedy (Dental Society Midwinter Meeting, about DDS dysfunction at a convention); docudrama (Dead Pile, about exposing conditions in a meatpacking plant); and searing intimate tragicomedy (Look, We Are Breathing, a twist on the dead-kid-grief-porn genre in which the deceased teenage boy at the center of the story, whom we meet through flashbacks, is actually a real jerk)....

The pandemic immediately cut off Patrick Shiroishi from public performance, and even in private it was nearly impossible for the Los Angeles avant-garde musician to perform with other people. This wore him down so much that by summer 2020 he was barely playing his saxophone. “I was really bummed out,” he says. “I didn’t touch my horn for two to three months.” The quartet completed an album, titled Fuubutsushi (風物詩), with impressive speed: the recording was done within two weeks, and Sage released it in late September....

UPDATE Tuesday, March 17: this production has been canceled. Check with box office for refunds. Imagine Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” crossed with a sex-positivity workshop and you’ve got the outlines for Sarah Ruhl’s 2009 In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), now in a revival with Idle Muse Theatre Company under Morgan Manasa’s direction. Catherine Givings (Kristen Alesia), a young doctor’s wife in a New York “spa town” circa the 1880s, wonders what her husband (Joel Thompson) is doing with all those neurasthenic female patients who make interesting noises behind the door....

It also means lost business for notaries—charged with confirming your signature on official documents or ID cards, in order to prevent fraud— stuck in the labyrinth. Surprised to hear this, Grode followed up with a supervisor at the notary association, who thought the rejection was unfounded but advised her to submit a second renewal application in any case. Now Grode has to wait four to six weeks to see whether her application will be accepted by the state....

Drummer Gerald Cleaver has explored the edges of jazz in a career that’s already stretched over more than four decades. On last year’s What Is to Be Done (Clean Feed) he joined saxophonist Larry Ochs and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline for a set that swayed and jerked about in the space between free playing, ambience, and balladry. But his latest album, Signs (577 Records), is probably his most adventurous to date, as he abandons drums altogether and turns instead to electronic composition....

By now, the distinctive methods with which jazz drummer Makaya McCraven composes albums are well-known. Many of us learned about his prowess as a producer from 2015’s In the Moment, an expansive double LP on which McCraven spliced together parts from more than two dozen of his live sets to form a cohesive, free-flowing groove that lands somewhere between improvisation and composition—the tracks sound even more effortless and multicomponent than when they were performed live....

Black Diamond recorded their brand-new album, Chant (Shifting Paradigm), during a five-week residency at beloved Logan Square venue the Whistler. But rather than host a traditional release show, the two-tenor-saxophone quartet, co-led by Artie Black and Hunter Diamond, are taking part in a multidisciplinary event called Zoetic: A Celebration of Visual, Aural, and Botanic Art. Just as Chicago’s jazz circles constantly break down barriers between genres, Zoetic hopes to break down barriers between artistic communities; its organizers realize how easy it can be to stay within one art circle....

In the 1970s, KC & the Sunshine Band and George McCrae recorded in Miami, but the bustling hit factory that launched them produced more than disco stars—it also gave the world Latimore, the sensuous soul-blues singer who broke out with a swinging cover of the blues classic “Stormy Monday” and followed it with a sultry, slow-simmering ballad of his own, the 1974 R&B chart topper “Let’s Straighten It Out.” Latimore Sat 6/8, 5:15 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion...

I’ve watched Lil Nas X seduce and murder Satan probably a dozen times now. And I’m not done. In fact, I may never be done. The video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” directed by Tanu Muino and Lil Nas X I remember when people would tell me they were fine with me being gay if I wasn’t too over-the-top. If I was still “one of the guys,” it was OK....

As gale-force winds whipped the city last week, two former firefighters stood in front of a Chicago Public Library branch in far-northwest-side Norwood Park, toeing the electioneering boundary. One—incumbent 41st Ward alderman Anthony Napolitano—was surrounded by a posse of aides who helped him pass out flyers to early voters heading inside to cast their ballots. The other—aldermanic candidate Tim Heneghan—tried to get the voters’ attention with help only from his wife, Stacy....

Paige Wynne Asado Coffee at 22 E. Jackson Asado Coffee began roasting beans and serving up potent espresso last fall at its third location, 22 E. Jackson, thought to be the site of one of the Loop’s oldest and tiniest buildings. Tucked away at the end of a nine-foot-wide private alley known as Pickwick Place, the 19-by-19-foot structure was built, according to city historian Tim Samuelson, a few years after the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed a stable on the site owned by Henry Horner, the grandfather of the Illinois governor of the same name....

Trombonist Papo Vázquez had plenty of reasons to feel reflective this past spring. He was about to record Breaking Cover, his tenth album under his own name, and he’d spent more than 40 years performing with some of New York’s top Latin ensembles, among them Jerry Gonzalez’s Fort Apache Band and the Fania All-Stars. The pandemic turned recording into a formidable challenge, and the horrifying impact of COVID-19 on the ability of people to safely congregate threatened to make the dances and concerts he typically worked a thing of the past....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. At that point Mabon was managed by Chicago DJ and promoter Al Benson, who launched the Parrot Records label in 1952. Willie Mabon & His Combo debuted on wax late that year with the Parrot single “I Don’t Know” b/w “Worry Blues,” where Mabon’s wheezy harmonica, classy vocals, and boogie-woogie piano are joined by Ernest Cotton’s tenor sax, Bill Anderson’s bass, and Bill Stepney’s drums....