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Approximately 400 people gathered outside the Chicago Police Department Thursday night in a Black Lives Matter march and demonstration around Fuller Park, honoring Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and condemning police brutality. Protesters heading to a @Chicago_Police station on the Southside. #PhilandoCastile #AltonSterling #ChiCallToAction pic.twitter.com/kxR7FGvShj — Justin Madden (@IAmJustinMadden) July 8, 2016 Both men were African-American—something they had in common with growing list of men and women shot and killed by police in cities across the nation, including Laquan McDonald, Ronnie Johnson, and Rekia Boyd, all fatally shot by Chicago police....

Chicago rapper Taurus Bartlett, better known as Polo G, rose to national prominence so quickly that new listeners could be forgiven for assuming he’s been a star for at least a few years. He broke out in January 2019 with “Pop Out,” a collaboration with New York MC Lil Tjay, where Bartlett mixes irrepressible joy and gut-wrenching sorrow in prismatic pop. Bartlett maintained that single’s narrative gravitas and melodic sweetness for the entirety of his debut album, June 2019’s Die a Legend....

Cook County’s chief financial officer claims the government agency never sought to define what art or music is, nor has it tried to tax small venues accordingly. For example, he says, no one in the county would dispute that a live set by famed Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles constitutes a performance of original music, and the show would be exempt from the amusement tax so long as it occurred in a small venue....

If a downtown building has a piano open to the public, Daniel Knox has probably played it. The Chicago singer-songwriter is a night owl, drawn to in-between places and in-­between times. When he’s not at work, asleep, or in the office where he has his recording studio, he’s wandering around the city, often in the wee hours. It was in downtown hotels in the late 90s, when he was about to drop out of the film program at Columbia, that he taught himself how to play music....

In his typical fashion, reedist, composer, and bandleader Geof Bradfield deployed a veritable notebook of conceptual conceits when writing and formulating his new album Yes, and . . . Music for Nine Improvisers (Delmark). The title refers to a comedic device famously devised by the iconic Chicago improv troupe the Compass Players to propel bits forward and expand them in new directions—actions that are guiding principles in strong musical improvisation too....

In Navot Papushado’s latest feature film, killing is a family business. Gunpowder Milkshake centers on Sam (Karen Gillan) who, after being abandoned by her mercenary mother (Lena Headey) as a teenager, follows in her weapon-wielding footsteps and becomes a killer on her own. But complications arise and a fuse is set off between a powerful group known as “The Firm” and the killer women they’ve taken from, forcing them out of the shadows....

Experimental drone and postmetal outfit Nadja got their start in 2003 as the solo studio project of ambient musician Aidan Baker, but by 2005 he’d enlisted the help of bassist and vocalist Leah Buckareff to bring his music to the stage. They’re a married couple as well as bandmates, and they’ve since relocated from their native Canada to Berlin. Over the years they’ve amassed more than 50 releases, issuing many on their Broken Spine imprint....

Participating vendors Sunday, August 7 11am – 5pm Plumbers Hall 1340 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, IL 60607 vendor map (PDF) The Made in Chicago Market is back! It’s a fun celebration of all things DIY—showcasing some of the best apparel, housewares, and food and drink that Chicago has to offer! Shop local and support your neighborhood makers. Free admission! Free parking! You should come! #MICM #MadeinChicago Brought to you by...

The Cubs and Reds were tied at two in the 14th inning Tuesday night in Cincinnati, and the north-siders were running short on players, when manager Joe Maddon’s neurotransmitters began heating up in the dugout. After the game, Maddon explained his machinations, but without PowerPoint it was hard to follow. There’s always a method to his Maddoness, but sometimes one suspects that a basic ingredient is simply having fun. Maddon allowed that when he made his first left-field change, “The infielders were kinda giggling....

These days, nihilism isn’t a choice—it’s a corner that we’ve boxed ourselves into in a feeble attempt to preserve some semblance of peace of mind. By 2020, Protomartyr had already spent more than a dozen years making malaise seem ineffably cool, with vocalist Joe Casey serving up tongue-lashings over gummy bass lines and bristling riffs. On the band’s new fifth album, Ultimate Success Today, Casey confronts the decline of his own health alongside the decay of our planet due to human recklessness....

Might Meets Right imperial stout aged in High West manhattan barrels, one of the two beers in Temperance’s first bottle release I got to Evanston’s Temperance Beer Company a bit late—I didn’t manage a column till last May, when their kegs had been turning up in Chicago bars for seven or eight months and they’d just debuted on retail shelves with Gatecrasher English IPA. (I felt a little better, and even a tad prescient, when Gatecrasher won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival that summer—I’d given it an immoderately positive review....

In the weeks leading up to the November 8 City Council vote that approved the $10 million purchase of a parcel of land for a new police and firefighter training academy, the organizers behind the #NoCopAcademy campaign stayed busy. Teens and adults from the campaign’s coalition of 50 groups have led a push to prevent the city from spending a total of $95 million on the new state-of-the-art facility, which is planned for West Garfield Park; they’ve been canvassing, calling aldermen, and showing up to ward nights....

Even before visual artist and designer Terrell Davis began his first year of classes at the School of the Art Institute in 2016, he’d already helped define outre pop and Web-centric electronic music. In the early 2010s, he contributed to the hallucinatory retro vision and sound of vaporwave. He made slyly funky songs under the pseudonym Visaプリペイド; the artwork for his 2013 album, スムーズOCEANS, for example, centers on a hyperclean disc shaded with a pastel emerald gradient and set atop a picturesque beachside image that looks too pristine to exist in real life....

“Oh fuck, what is he doing?” —Joe Schofield, in Chimerica And, like I say, I got the T-shirt. Bowling’s staging seemed diffuse, perhaps a little underrehearsed on opening night. The elements were all there, though, and I have no doubt that the show has pulled itself together by now. Coburn Goss is a charmingly obnoxious Joe, wearing his self-righteousness like a foolscap while others try their best to steer him toward their versions of growing up....

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has begun an impeachment inquiry into President Trump for asking Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter. I get that there is a strong desire for many Americans to be rid of what they see as the national nightmare of Trump’s presidency. But I urge caution for several reasons. A dozen years ago, Speaker Pelosi rejected calls to begin an impeachment inquiry against President George W....

T his play has an embarrassingly autobiographical origin story,” says playwright Clare Barron in the program for You Got Older, running now at Steppenwolf Theatre. And she runs down the real-life parallels to prove it. And so it goes. We meet Mae’s siblings—bossy older sister Hannah, lesbian PC-language-policeperson Jenny, big friendly lug Matthew—all of whom live outside Seattle and bear a zeitgeisty resemblance to the Tim Robbins-Holly Hunter brood in HBO’s Portland-based Here and Now....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed until a date to be determined in the future. Contact point of purchase for refund or exchange information. In January 2018, Berlin-based dance producer, vocalist, and composer Laurel Halo tweeted that she’d written a score for Possessed, a documentary by Rob Schröder and Metahaven, a Dutch design collective that’s branched out into film since forming in 2007. Metahaven’s work focuses on the dystopian aspects of our present lives, and those themes are central to Possessed, which navigates a wide range of technological horrors—some are obviously frightening (facial recognition software), and others are so quotidian we engage with them almost thoughtlessly (YouTube makeup tutorials)....

CumbiaSazo 1572 N. Milwaukee 773-489-3160 doubledoor.com Hosted by Double Door every fourth Saturday of the month, CumbiaSazo is part live music performance, part dance instruction, and part art exhibit, all dedicated to the musical styles of cumbia and tropical bass. Both genres—rooted in cross-cultural music traditions from South America, Africa, and Spain—continue to grow in popularity as they expand beyond mostly Latin American audiences. CumbiaSazo reflects cumbia’s and tropical bass’s reach in Chicago—while the event isn’t new by a long shot (it’s been around since 2011, practically unheard of in the nightlife world), it’s recently become a fixture in the scene that caters to younger crowds....

UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. It’s not just the establishment figures, represented here by glad-handing Charlie Swibel, head of the Chicago Housing Authority, and crooked First Ward alderman Fred Roti (both played with brio by Thomas J. Cox) who get in Byrne’s way. They want things to continue pretty much as they always have. (At one point Cox’s Swibel laments, “I could make this city beautiful if people got out of my way!...

As I write this, it’s roughly 8 PM, the polls have closed in half the states, and it’s pretty obvious that the electoral college firewall Hillary Clinton was banking on to prevent the Barbarian from crashing the gates and taking over our country has— The firewall, if you didn’t already know, is made up of the states that have consistently backed Democratic candidates in past presidential elections, including President Obama in his 2012 race against Mitt Romney....